November 13, 2009 WASHINGTON - Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, where troops are seeing record violence in the 8-year-old war, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence, the Army said Friday.
November 12, 2009 LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Nov 12, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Swiss scientists say people who are stressed and reach for dark chocolate -- the "chocolate cure" -- do seem to experience less emotional stress.
November 12, 2009 Nov. 12--Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg will take his research on teen brain development and risky behavior international with a word_count_title="25" rssimage="0" million award he received yesterday.
November 11, 2009 WASHINGTON - Far from winding down, the numbers of U.S. soldiers coming home wounded have continued to swell. The problem is especially acute among those fighting in Afghanistan, where nearly four times as many troops were injured in October as a year ago.
The glow of the alarm clock is all too familiar. Insomnia refers to an inability to fall asleep or stay asleep, or a tendency to wake up too early or experience poor sleep.
Sources:
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV-TR
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Information Center
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
National Institutes of Health - National Library of Medicine
If you're old enough and have been interested for a long time in psychological issues, you may remember Synanon, the California organization that specialized in treatment of addictions and was gradually revealed to have been both emotionally and physically brutal in its methods. A surprising allusion to Synanon cropped up the other day in a New York Times article about union organization. In his article "Some Organizers Protest Their Union's Tactics" (Times, Nov. 19, 2009, pp. B1, B5), Steven Greenhouse described organizing methods that involved finding vulnerabilities in the personal histories of potential union members and using this information to manipulate people. Some members of the relevant union denied this, and I have no way of knowing who is correct on this point. However , the article contained an important statement from some of the organizers. According to Greenhouse, these organizers compared the union's methods to "a practice that Cesar Chavez, former president of the United Farm Workers, used when he embraced a mind-control practice developed by Synanon, a drug rehabilitation center... Union staff members were systematically subjected to intense, prolonged verbal abuse in an effort to break them down and assure loyalty."
It's surprising, isn't it, to hear that the decade of "peace and love" was also characterized by vicious manipulation of attitudes and beliefs? And it's equally surprising to find that those manipulative methods were passed down and around, to the point where they emerge as almost conventional practices.
But union organizers (for example) have not been the only ones to inherit and use resources from the less appetizing side of the Sixties. We continue to see some of the same things in fringe practices aimed at child guidance and child psychotherapy. For example, in the last few years we have seen caging of children in the Gravelle case in Ohio and the Vasquez case in California. A therapist who recently had his license revoked in Colorado was known for intimidating children by shouting and verbal abuse, by physical restraint, and by licking their faces.
Are these simply bizarre behaviors that occur spontaneously among a few emotionally-disturbed practitioners, or is there a historical connection that goes back to the Sixties, like the possible connection between the union organizers and Synanon? It's hard to prove that a historical influence caused some present-day event, but we can see a paper trail that leads from the Sixties through various intermediate steps to the present day. Beginning in the 1960s, Robert M. Zaslow, a psychologist who was a professor at San Jose State University, began to write and speak about certain beliefs he held on the subject of personality development. In 1975, he and a colleague, Marilyn Menta, published a book entitled "The psychology of the Z-process: Attachment and activity." The "Z-process" was Zaslow's term for a postulated set of events in personality development, in which fear, discomfort, and intimidation caused a child to form an emotional attachment to his or her parents. This attachment, according to Zaslow, was responsible for making children cheerful, affectionate, and obedient; lack of attachment caused a wide variety of behavior problems and even mental illnesses like autism or schizophrenia.
Zaslow theorized about-- and put into practice-the idea that if a child had somehow missed the formation of attachment at the usual time, later exposure to intimidation and pain could correct problems by causing attachment to occur. The correction would be based on the "draining off" of rage resulting from pain and fear; once the rage was gone, attachment could easily take place. Zaslow and his admirers carried out his methods with clients ranging from toddlers to adults. In sessions that lasted many hours, the individuals were held down by four or more people while Zaslow applied "tactile stimulation" in the form of painful prodding of the ribs and underarms. Zaslow stressed that it was necessary for this to hurt, and suggested informed consent documentation that stated that some bruises were likely to result from treatment. He continued to claim his treatment as effective for many problems, and in a paper in a German journal in 1982 described having cured the blindness of a child at the Colorado School for the Blind.
Zaslow eventually lost his license as a result of an actual injury to a patient. But he continued to travel and to write, and in the course of his travels encountered a Colorado physician named Foster Cline, now a major figure in the commercial parent education organization called "Love & Logic". Cline adopted much of Zaslow's thinking, and in material published in the 1990s stated baldly that in his opinion "all bonds are trauma bonds"-- an opinion which, to the best of my knowledge, he has never retracted.
A detailed account of the ways Zaslow's ideas were passed along would be very lengthy. Suffice it to say here that various organizations and individuals have continued to support the Zaslow approach, with disastrous effects for the children in their power. Perhaps the most important question is, why were the ideas and methods advocated by Synanon and by Zaslow not called down when they began, or soon afterward? Part of the answer is undoubtedly that most of the public, and indeed most professionals, had no idea what was happening. But another, less easily acceptable, part is that the Sixties admired unconventional thought, and tolerance of unconventional thought can be overdone. When we encounter really unusual ways of thinking or acting, we need to consider carefully the consequences of those ways, rather than being afraid that disapproval might make us "uncool". The Sixties were a time when "cool" was desperately desired. Let's hope that the Aughties have learned a lesson from this and become ready to think critically about the unconventional and the conventional alike.
Excessive sleepiness that intrudes on daily functions for a month or more may affect teens and young adults. It is also a common accompaniment to depression. Stimulants and adherence to good sleep routines can alleviate symptoms.
DSM-IV TR (2000).
Textbook of Clinical Neurology. 3rd ed.
University of Maryland Medical Pages
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced that soon all New York City Metrocards will be stamped "OPTIMISM." Positive thinking, our unofficial national ideology, is becoming harder and harder to escape.
Happiness and cheerfulness are good things, to be sure, as are self-confidence and faith. Nor is optimism bad, by any means. But there are downsides.
Right now, for example, in the aftermath of our financial crisis, we have very good reasons to be wary of optimism. Too many people rashly overestimated their ability to pay the mortgages they were encouraged to take out on their houses, while too many investors bought mortgage derivatives based on the false expectation that real estate values would spiral ever upwards. Banks over-extended themselves, while regulatory agencies and ratings services stopped worrying just at the point when they should have been fearful and pessimistic, when they should have forcefully said "no."
Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bright-Sided, describes our national obsession with positive thinking at a critical moment when it looks as if we are trying very hard not to learn the lessons of our recent mistakes. She chronicles how positive thinking has been touted as a cure for cancer, causing many suffering from it to blame themselves if they do not get better. It is seen as the key to financial success and upward mobility, some writers going to far as to proclaim: "God wants you to be rich." Increasingly it is viewed as a management strategy, where the "right attitude" is viewed as essential to success.
She notes that this trend parallels the deepening of the problems we face in our society, our deteriorating ssafety net, the growing gap between rich and poor, and rising uncertainty and pressure in the workplace. She cites a recent meta-analysis that found Americans ranking only twenty-third worldwide in self-reported happiness, adding that we account for two-thirds of the global market for anti-depressants. This is similar to a point made by Carlin Flora in Psychology Today last January: "According to some measures, as a nation we've grown sadder and more anxious during the same years that the happiness movement has flourished." Maybe, she offers, "that's why we've eagerly bought up its offerings." (See, "The Pursuit of Happiness.")
There are a few other problems with positive thinking. A full and rich life includes other mental and emotional states. Life inevitably includes frustration, disappointment, loss, illness, and ultimately death. Without the capacity for sadness those experiences engender, life would be two-dimensional. Without nostalgia, longing, wistfulness, regret, and even grief, how could we understand others and expect to be understood in turn?
Moreover, anxiety and fear are clues that something is amiss. Sadness tells us something, often something we need to hear about our relationship to the world.
Far worse, though, is the danger of proscribing such feelings by refusing to meet each other in their presence. Nothing is worse that the isolation and guilt we induce by being unwilling to recognize what others are experiencing. That makes us ungenerous, sometimes even cruel and punitive.
I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now.
One of my favorite resolutions, because it’s so much fun to keep, is Read at whim. Instead of trying to be very targeted about my reading, as I once tried to be, I let myself read whatever I want to read.
The other day, at coffee with my blogpals Caren and Leah from the great site, Drinking Diaries, Leah highly recommended Blake Snyder’sSave the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need. She wasn’t writing a screenplay, but she said that the book was extremely helpful for writing any kind of story.
I’m not writing a screenplay, or a novel either, but it sounded intriguing, so I picked up a copy. And she’s right, it’s a fascinating look at storytelling.
Save the Cat also included a terrific exercise to foster creative thinking. Doing these types of games can boost happiness -- even for people who don’t consider themselves to be particularly “creative.”
This kind of playful thinking is – fun! It’s fun to mess around with ideas, to have new thoughts, to come up with a great idea. It’s stimulating. It might even inspire you to write a screenplay or start a novel. (Shameless teaser: in my forthcoming book, I talk about my experience of writing a novel in a month, inspired by the book, No Plot? No Problem!, written by Chris Batyk, also the founder of National Novel Writing Month. Yes, I wrote a novel as long as The Great Gatsby in thirty days.)
Sometimes creativity exercises are a bit boring – what’s the one with the candle, the cup, the matches? – but these exercises by Snyder, meant to jump-start ideas for movies, are very amusing:
1. Funny _____ Pick a drama, thriller, or horror film and turn it into a comedy.
2. Serious _____ Likewise, pick a comedy and make it into a drama. Serious Animal House – Drama about cheating scandal at a small university ends in A Few Good Men-like showdown.
3. FBI out of water. This works for comedy or drama. Name five places that a FBI agent in the movies has never been sent to solve a crime. Example: “Stop or I’ll Baste!”: Slob FI agent is sent undercover to a Provence Cooking School.
4. _____ School Works for both drama and comedy. Name five examples of an unusual type of school, camp, or classroom. Example: “Wife School.”
5. Versus!! Drama or comedy. Name several pairs of people to be on opposite sides of a burning issue. Example: A hooker and a preacher fall in love when a new massage parlor divides the resident of a small town.
6. My ______ Is a Serial Killer Drama or comedy. Name an unusual person, animal, or thing that a paranoid can suspect of being a murderer.
Feeling creative helps boost happiness, and it’s also true that while people often associate brooding melancholy as the spirit most appropriate to creative outpourings, research shows that people are more creative when they’re feeling happy. If this sort of thing appeals to you, check out Blake Snyder’s website. It has great information and exercises for screenwriters.
* I love this video of a pebble frog. Ah, nature! It looks like CGI, but it's real.
Patients coping with the chaos and misery of Borderline Personality Disorder now have reason for strong confidence in making major life changes through a new treatment, Schema Therapy. For the first time, three major outcome studies have shown that many patients with Borderline Personality Disorder can achieve full recovery across the complete range of symptoms.
The European Medicines Agency has been formally notified by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd of its decision to withdraw its application for an extension of indication for the centrally authorised medicine Abilify (aripiprazole) tablets, orodispersible tablets and oral solution. Abilify was expected to be used in the treatment of major depressive episodes, as adjunctive therapy, in patients who have had an inadequate response to previous treatment with antidepressants.
"Mental Health America is pleased to endorse the nomination of Chai Feldblum to serve as a commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
On the day that the consultation period for the Government's Green Paper on adult social care closes, mental health charity Mind has expressed its concerns that the Paper does not address the needs of adults with mental health problems, instead skewing the debate towards older people.
The results of the 2009 Pfizer Health Index announced at the Royal College of Physicians Ireland reveal that the recently unemployed are four times more likely to claim to have depression than the general population. There is also evidence that the recession is leading to anxiety over money, is bad for self-esteem and is leading to relationship tension. The greatest impact of the recession is apparent among those between the ages of 25 and 50, who are parents and who live in urban areas.
Daily service providing the latest research news in the field of psychiatry including addiction, anxiety, mood disorders, eating disorders, personality and behavioral disorders, schizophrenia and psychosis, and Alzheimer's disease and dementia, in addition to the drug and psychotherapeutic treatment of psychiatric conditions.
There is no gradient in affective temperament scores from bipolar I disorder through unipolar depressive patients to healthy individuals, say UK researchers who found high dysthymic scores in both patient groups.
There is wide range of ages and diagnostic groups among patients with first-episode psychosis, warn UK investigators who highlight the lack of research and treatment guidelines for such patients.
Polymorphisms in two genes related to the circadian rhythm may be associated with the development of pediatric bipolar disorder, although not with age at onset, US researchers have discovered.
Schizophrenia patients have no deficits in the anticipation, experience, and memory of positive affective events, but they are unable to translate these into motivational states, US scientists have found.
There are limited differences between bipolar II disorder depression and unipolar depression, say Australian scientists who suggest previously suggested differences can be explained by age, gender, and severity.
