Owner: Dare To Dream ... URL:http://dare-to-dream.us Join Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:24:23 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Dreaming is like gazing into a mirror that looks into the future. Each time we step into the reflection, the image changes into a more real possibility. Mental health information from a licensed mental health professional. Site statistics:Click here
About Eight Percent of US Experiences Depression Each Year 2007-08-03 22:49:41 SAMHSA released incidence statistics for depression over the the years of 2004 and 2005. Statistics were sorted by age and state and included all individuals who experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year. Youths aged 12 to 17 had a higher rate of incidence at 8.88 percent. Adults aged 18 or older were measured at 7.65 percent.
But thats not all. The data demonstrates a confusing variation in the rate by state.
Among 12 to 17 year olds, rates of past year MDE were among the highest in Idaho (10.37 percent) and Nevada (10.28 percent) and among the lowest in Louisiana (7.19 percent) and South Dakota (7.40 percent)
Rates of past year MDE among adults aged 18 or older were among the highest in Utah (10.14 percent) and Rhode Island (9.88 percent) and among the lowest in Hawaii (6.74 percent) and New Jersey (6.81 percent)
Certainly, it is unlikely that the differences reflect any real differences in incidence of depression by state. It is more likely that t Read more:Eight
, Percent
Sometimes Even the Experts Lack Common Sense 2007-07-20 13:29:53 I think it's probably a human trait that we seek the simplest solution to a problem even when more complex and proven methods are well known. Even scientists seem to do this, even in their area of study!
Our culture seems to have decided thousands of years ago that negative emotions are bad and should be avoided. Everywhere in the psychological literature is examples of researchers seeking to find ways to help people avoid psychological pain.
Has it occurred to anyone that psychological pain has a purpose? For those of us that believe we evolved to be human beings, we have to assume that most attributes that make us human in some way enhance our survival, or that trait would have been selected out of the gene pool. Negative emotions help us. I make that assumption and help people make sense out of their misery, rather than find ways to avoid it. Misery is the single most powerful motivation for change.
Here is a good example. Surviving a traumatic event involves recurring "flashba Read more:Sometimes
, Experts
, Common
, Sense
Support Vs Co-rumination 2007-07-16 10:48:23 Here is another example of how the media doesn't really do much to enhance understanding of mental health. A researcher releases his results for peer review and integration into professional knowledge. A reporter sees the alarmist headlines and shares it with the general public with the first line of the article: "A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed."
The danger here is that the average parent will see this as a reason to intrude into their daughter's friendships in hopes of preventing "co-rumination" by interrupting an unhealthy peer relationship. That could be a very destructive approach and may in fact drive those relationships "underground", outside of the parents' awareness where the real danger lies.
Every child needs supportive peer relationships. As children move into adolescence, peer relationships allow them a means to develop Read more:Support
Dustbowl Empiricism 2007-07-15 19:58:18 Here is an excerpt from Deric Bownds' MindBlog titled "A New Description of Our Inner Lives."
"Paul and Pat, realizing that the revolutionary neuroscience they dream of is still in its infancy, are nonetheless already preparing themselves for this future, making the appropriate adjustments in their everyday conversation. One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. "She said, 'Paul, don't speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocortocoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren't for my endogenous opiates I'd have driven the car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I'll be down in a minute.' " Paul and Pat have noticed that it is not just they who talk this way - their students now talk of psychopharmacology as comfortably as of food."
Deric is drawn to this article because
John Nash: Schizophrenia Serves Evolution 2007-07-15 19:39:56 John Nash, Nobel prize winning mathematician and subject of the Oscar winning biographic movie "A Beautiful Mind", delivered a speech to the American Psychiatric Association's annual conference. He suggests that schizophrenia represents just one facet of the diversity created by evolutionary development of human beings.
Mind Hacks
In his talk, he suggested that mental illness may be the result of the otherwise healthy evolution of mental diversity. Applying his specialized understanding of "game theory" to an analysis of mental illness and his own experience with psychosis, the 79-year-old Nobel Laureate suggested that severe mental illness exists in nature as a consequence of the diversification of species, and that it may serve the needs of adaptation by its not infrequent association with genius. Read more:Schizophrenia
, Evolution
Vienna Psychoanalyic Society 2007-07-15 19:12:35 Tripped over a great post from Just Noticeable Differences on the "Vienna
Psychoanalyic Society
". Organized by Freud as a support group for his students, it eventually launched the careers of the first dissenters from his orthodox view of psychiatry. In retrospect, Freud got a lot of attention perhaps because of his preoccupation with what many people confused with sex. Yes, sex was included in his concepts if the ID. His definition of sex included sensuality of all kinds. He called certain sensations "sexual" because of the pleasurable sensations the body produced when satisfying these sensuous urges.
I've always thought the Adler was the father of modern psychology, he received none of the recognition. This article makes this point well. A good read.
Are Personality Issues Changable? 2007-07-07 21:21:34 Dr. Deb made some comments about the finale of The Sopranos. I never watched Sopranos, I don't watch much TV. So I won't comment about the show. But I was struck by one of Dr. Deb's comments.
Personality
disorders are resistant to cure - so Tony's antisocial and narcissistic personality issues were not changeable. That is true. But treatment was successful in reducing panic attacks and his depression - and the insight gained helped Tony find an greater understanding to his life experiences. A total failure, I think not.
Sometimes the whole process of diagnosis is misleading to everyone, the client, and the professional. People who qualify for a personality disorder have learned maladaptive patterns to cope with life. Most often, those experiences occurred in childhood, too often in the form of emotional or physical neglect or abuse. The child who eventually develops a personality disorder becomes impaired in his ability to learn more effective coping. That impairment usually show Read more:Issues
Ideas on Treating Schizophrenia Have Come Full Circle 2007-07-07 13:13:31 [Updated] Ideas about treating schizophrenia seem to be gradually coming full circle. What began as little more than blaming, shaming and confining, evolved over hundreds years into a state policy of institutional care with "humane treatment". Over the next hundred years treatment has evolved into primarily a highly professionalized medication regime with an inconsistently available community based supports.
Now there is evidence that early intervention in the course of schizophrenia with psychotherapy, medication, and consistently applied community based supports may sometimes prevent the usual long-term permanent disability. Medication alone is not sufficient treatment. What has always been assumed as a manifestation of the illness, may in fact be a by-product of a paternalistic and de-humanizing treatment by the community and service agencies as well as isolation due to the pervasive experience of stigma and discrimination by the individual.
In this article, I will review some o Read more:Schizophrenia
, Circle
, Full Circle
The Function of Pride 2007-07-01 12:19:05 Pride is concept that appears to have cultural significance world-wide. That in and of it's self makes studying the concept interesting. However, I think it is a mistake to assume pride is an "emotion". I think pride is very likely a composite of several emotions and attributes that each have a related but very different function. So studying the concept of pride is more relevant to the study of how humans organize concepts used in conceiving what it takes to be successful and transmitting survival skills to others.
The problem with studying a complex topic like pride is that it's very difficult to draw conclusions beyond how complex the concept of pride really is.
We're Only Human... had an interesting post a couple weeks ago. He reports on the results of a study that probes what he calls "the emotion of pride". The researchers did not define pride in any formal way. Instead they came up with a list of words subjects associated with pride.
So pride appears to be universal, and Read more:Pride
Teens Misuse of Psychoactive Prescription Drugs 2007-06-27 21:18:02 It would appear that one of the most abused drug among teenagers maybe available at home in the medicine chest. Prescription drugs were reported abused by a disturbingly high proportion of high school students. If I recall my numbers correctly, the usual proportion for life time alcohol abuse at about 60%, marijuana abuse in the 25% range, cocaine and sniffing glue around 10%. Nearly 1/2 high schoolers have abused prescription drugs and about half of them had given or sold the drugs to others. Ten percent to PARENTS!
Remember the classic and coarse stand up comedy of George Carlin, and his 1970s diatribe on "DRUGS Store"? He observed that the young people's preoccupation with getting high in the 60s and 70s were driven by the culture of pill popping parents who bought their drugs off the glitzy TV ads from pharmaceutical companies. I think his point is well demonstrated in the data in this survey.
Rates of prescription use and misuse were high in this single-site survey. Several su Read more:Teens
, Drugs
Brain Function As a Process 2007-06-21 14:08:34 Psychological research in general seems to have drifted from it's roots. Thirty years ago, when I was in training, there was a plethora of theoretical articles and books that discussed at length theoretical frameworks for constructs that serves as the building blocks of theory. Concepts in psychological measurement were verified in a process called "construct validity". Construct validity refers to ability of a concept to explain what is known about the phenomena. Construct validity can seldom be proven because in order for a concept to be meaningful, it must generalize to many similar circumstances. The more meaningful a concept is, the more difficult it becomes to measure. So construct validity can only be supported by repeated measurement from different perspectives.
Word Net defines "theory" as a:
a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set o Read more:Brain
, Process
Do Violent Games Lead to Violent Behavior? 2007-06-19 13:15:43 Cognitive Daily today has a nice post on a recent MRI study of brain activity while playing violent games. The question a lot people have on their minds is are gamers more likely to be violent.
It's well established that playing violent games is associated with aggressive behavior, but it's difficult to determine whether violent games cause aggression. After all, people who are predisposed to aggressive behavior might seek out violent games. But a team led by Rene Weber did realize that a neurological study could provide another link between violent games and aggression.
Research in the past few years has found that adolescents with antisocial and aggressive behavior disorders tend to have the same type of activity in certain regions of their brain as normal individuals do when they are imagining aggressive behavior. The key brain regions are the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is divided into the dorsal and rostral parts (dACC and rACC). For normal individu Read more:Games
, Behavior
Comments are working now. 2007-06-15 02:44:25 I finally fixed my templates for comments to work. I struggled with it all day, but I finally got it by comparing my version to the default version. It seems that there is some confusing experimental code in the templates I'm using.
You will have to register with Typekey to post. Everything is held confidential.
Hope to see more comments!
I hope to be posting more often. So check back often to see if I actually do it! Read more:Comments
, working
Cognitive Therapy Generally As Effective As Medication 2007-06-13 19:36:52 The decision about how to treat depression has been entirely reframed by recent research. First of all, the debate about whether anti-depressant medications actually contribute to suicidal and other impulsive behavior has called to question routine, first choice prescriptions for Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, the so-called SSRIs, for even milder forms of depression. Secondly, the STAR*D trials have documented that SSRIs are no magic pill.
SSRIs have been implicated in controversial criminal trials where defendants have claimed the medication made them violent, even homicidal. More recently, research has found a confusing array of results indicating a possible association with increased suicidal impulses in children and adolescents and now adults. However, retrospective studies seem to indicate a weak association of increased suicide attempts only with the younger population.
Unfortunately, the STAR*D trials were designed before the suicide risk with SSRIs hit the newsst Read more:Cognitive
, Therapy
, Medication
Competition Does Not Ensure Quality 2007-05-27 21:30:28 Competition gets a lot of visibility for aiding in creation of a quality product. The assumption is that everyone will work harder and improve the outcome if there is a competition for rewards.
However, in practice, it really doesn't work that way. Here are articles about two studies that demonstrate in different ways that winning induces the competitor slack off, losing makes one try harder.
We're Only Human
Psychologist Wesley Schultz of California State University, San Marcos believes that despite the fact that we want to be normal, most people are very bad at estimating what normal human behavior really looks like.
[...]Schultz decided to test this idea in the real world. He enlisted nearly 300 residents of San Marcos, California, who agreed to let him monitor their home energy consumption. He measured their energy use once to start, again soon after, and once again several weeks later. Throughout the experiment, he gave them information about their actual energy use and ho Read more:Quality
Vets Need 24 hour Suicide Crisis Care 2007-05-17 13:16:48 Tragically high suicide rates among Iraq War Vets
have been a topic of this blog before. More recent information in the press have been about high rates among Vets in Great Britain.
Now we may have some answers and a suggested course of action. A recent report by the Veterans Affairs Department's inspector general finds that at least one factor is that Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are at increased risk of suicide because Veterans Administration health clinics do not have 24-hour mental health care available.
Sometimes I forget that, unlike Minnesota, most states don't have 24 hour emergency mental health care. Here such care is manditory, required by state law and funded by a variety of sources, including Federal Medicaid, state grants, and county fee for service contracts.
It found that nearly three years after the VA adopted a comprehensive strategy of mental health care, services were inconsistent throughout its network of 1,400 clinics. Many facilities lacked Read more:Suicide
, Crisis
Schizophrenia and Bipolar Illness: Shared Risk Factors 2007-05-07 13:26:57 Recent genetic research has found genetic links between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The researchers are surprised, but clinicians are not. It is common to find both illnesses in the same family. And it is common to find the two diagnoses in the history of the same client!
From a clinical point of view, mental illness appears to be more of a process that has functional properties, rather than a phenomena implied by calling it an illness. In fact, ALL illnesses are processes that evolve with internal and external feedback. It's only the venerable old "Medical Model" that misleads us to think of illnesses as an "entity".
So since illness evolves, one would expect diagnosis to evolve with it. To apply a phenomenological name to an illness is descriptive of the present. That description may or may not apply in the future.
The other problem with separating schizophrenia and bipolar illness is it's hybrid presentation, called schizoaffective disorder. This disorder is manifes Read more:Schizophrenia
, Bipolar
May Is Mental Health Month! 2007-05-01 19:11:24 One of every three people you know will be treated for a mental illness sometime in their lifetime. If you know someone in your family who suffers from a mental illness, chances are there are others struggling as well. As many as 60% of those who suffer from mental illness self-medicate with alcohol or drugs.
Chances are if you know someone with a drug or alcohol problem, they are self-medicating their mental illness.
Educated yourself about mental illness. The problem WILL affect you, if it hasn't already. It's just a matter of time.
Join thousands of other Americans in observing Mental HealthMonth
under this year's theme, "MIND Your Health," which calls attention to the important message that mental health is fundamental to overall health.
Download free Mental Health
Month tip sheets for posting in your workplace, doctor’s office, or place of worship. Visit our online store for additional “MIND Your Health” merchandise including pens, post-its, and buttons t
School Shootings: What Can We Do? 2007-04-22 19:26:03 Why all the mayhem? What consumes people to go on murderous rampages? While I can't pretend to know the answer to these questions, there are patterns in the many incidents that suggest several contributing factors. In this article, I will review several news articles and suggest a perspective on causes that many may find uncomfortable to consider. Then I'll propose social policy solutions.
Historically, murderous rampages have been called "amok" or "running amok". For two centuries, the term was used by colonialists to refer to the native people who reacted to brutal subjugation with violent rampages. Somehow the colonialists couldn't see how their conquests could have inspired what appeared to them to be irrational mass murder. The concept amok or running amok is a phrase derived from the Malay word mengamok, which means "to do furious battle." It's use was more a product of cultural bias than identification of a real phenomena.
Experts have agreed that Cho appeared to have suf Read more:School
Child Abuse Drives Societal Dysfunction 2007-04-15 11:27:23 There seems to be a lot of talk about how chaotic our society is. However, there is a heavy stigma associated with the chaos. People who are unable to function, are blamed and shunned by our society. While there is a general knowledge that alcohol and drug abuse is involved, but there is very little talk about what causes the basic problem. There is a stigmatizing assumption that people are of "weak character", inferior in some undefined way. Some related it to a lack of religious practice in their lives. Too many just write it off to laziness and a desire to live off of welfare.
Why do people self-destruct? There are as many answers as there are people who walk through the door of an emergency department. But there is one frequent common denominator. People who engage in self-destructive behavior often have been traumatized. Sometimes they are crime victims or veterans from past wars. But most have been abused, or have witnessed others, usually loved ones, suffering abuse. Sometimes Read more:Child Abuse
Iraqi Troops Suicide Rate Highest Ever 2007-03-15 11:26:53 AlterNet has the best article I've seen in the media about PTSD and the Iraqi
veterans. Unfortunately, the news is not good. The proportion of vets with PTSD is higher in this conflict than in any other previously monitored war. Suicide
accounted for over 25 percent of all noncombat Army deaths in Iraq in 2006, that's double what it was in peace time and much higher than rates from Iraq War I and Vietnam.
With the VA reporting inadequate resources to treat returning veterans, slow response to those most at risk for PTSD: the National Guard and Reserve troops, and the continuing stigma of mental illness are greatly exacerbating the problem. Female vets are returning home with PTSD due to sexual trauma, too often allegedly perpetrated by fellow American soldiers.
There is some good news in all this. There is evidence that treatment is helpful to improving the quality of life of vets. Brief Cognitive Behavior Therapy can mitigate initial symptoms, but doesn't impact long-term prognos Read more:Troops
We Are Smart Enough To Make Ourselves Sick 2007-03-04 20:06:01 Much of the stress we all suffer from is of our own creation. That may seem absurd at first glance. Why would we spend so much energy making ourselves sick?
Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky says that people, apes and monkeys are highly intelligent, social creatures with far too much spare time on their hands. He discussed the biological and sociological implications of stress in a lecture titled "Stress, Health and Coping" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
EurekaAlert
"Primates are super smart and organized just enough to devote their free time to being miserable to each other and stressing each other out," he said. "But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick." Read more:Smart
, Enough
Criminalizing Drug Abuse Made the Problem Worse 2007-03-01 19:57:37 Alfred Blumstein, the winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology published a paper titled "An O.R. Missionary's Visits to the Criminal Justice System". It appears in the February issue of Operations Research, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
He challenges the very political and ideological foundations of our correctional system. I've previously written about the self-defeating nature of our corrections policies. Rehabilitation has been little more than a symbolic effort rather than the central tenant of corrections. The mentally ill, released from institutions 30 years ago, are now populating the streets and our prisons.
EurekAlert
"By bringing their analytical skills and system perspectives and without being constrained by the traditional presumptions that permeate all fields—perhaps to an extreme in criminal justice because of the strong ideological perspectives that pervade it—operations researchers br Read more:Problem
Ask your senator to support the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007 2007-02-17 16:35:23 In some ways, the medical insurance business is in the Dark Ages. Mental and chemical health treatment are often not even included in insurance coverage. Even if it is, it is seldom afforded coverage equivalent for what you might get for a heart attack or other major surgery. Senator Paul Wellstone led a 5 year fight for mental health insurance parity, until he tragically died campaigning for a second term. His and other's attempts to changing the law has been beaten back by business lobbies concerned about increased costs and special interest lobbies with considerable clout, like Scientology. The fact is, mental health coverage does not increase insurance costs. Finally, with changes in the legislature, there is a growing consensus to change this blatant discrimination. But this is not a sure thing and it needs your support. Send an email with just a click to your legislators at the link below to urge his support.
Mental health parity took its critical first steps toward enactment w Read more:Health
, Mental Health
The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids 2007-02-12 21:53:36 I've always been very much aware of the power of praise. What I didn't know is that not all praise is helpful. To say the least, I was stunned by this article. This should be required reading by every parent, teacher, day care provider and anyone who works with children.
New York Magazine
For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.
When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, ac
Get Out of the Rat Race! 2007-02-10 11:51:20 Feeling overwhelmed with the daily rat race? Is career, gathering material goods, consuming more time than you want, taking time from your personal time, your family time, your life? Have you noticed that every time you reach a material or career goal, you find little sense of achievement, just an emptiness that can only be replaced with a new goal?
Then perhaps you need to rethink your values. More and more people are redefining the "American Dream". The traditional goals of money and consumption does not bring us happiness.
Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments
According to economic and psychological experts across the board, more money almost always brings with it more stress and leads to decreases in the quality of an individual's physical and mental health. Popular philosophy reasons that money grants one greater opportunity to live the life he or she wants. But independent studies have ironically found that, the more money people earn, the more stress they incur while
The Emotional Roots of Rationality 2007-02-03 22:21:01 Perhaps the most common problem I see in my clients is pervasive avoidance of emotion. I suspect that the American culture encourages us to value rationality above all else and hide our emotional "weakness". I recall as a teen hearing guy talk about girls and their intuition about things how irrational and erratic that process made them. My Norwegian extended family certainly modeled stoicism, but paradoxically also demonstrated in a grand fashion why emotion was perceived as a problem of dramatic excess. Indeed, most people who find themselves persistently avoiding and suppressing emotions are those who have experienced emotional excess at it's worst and been traumatized as a result.
All human beings share a neurological system that produces the manifestations of rational thought and florid emotion. We have all experienced how often our thoughts and feelings contradict. Perhaps we can recall times of particularly lucid convergence of emotion and thought that provided us with a depth Read more:Emotional
Antidepressants and Suicide 2007-01-20 12:03:49 Anyone taking or contemplating anti-depressants for treatment of depression have been concerned about the blackbox warnings from the FDA. The FDA has issued blanket warnings to anyone considering or taking anti-depressants that they may actually induce suicidal thinking.
The truth is that there is still very little and conflicting information about the risks. Highlighting the risks in the way the FDA did by issuing a blackbox warning has been controversial. The problem is that the risks have been assessed in only a few studies and it is not clear what is happening. The other problem is that anti-depressants also treat and prevent suicidal behavior. Not taking an anti-depressant when you need one can also be a grave risk.
There is concern within the psychiatric and advocate community that the FDA is driven more by politics than science these days. A coalition of psychiatry and advocate organizations has issued an open letter to the FDA pointing to the life and death consequences of t Read more:Suicide
Prescription for Resilience 2007-01-19 21:10:03 Ever wondered why some people survive a major stress or trauma better than others? There really is no magic. People who in general have healthy lifestyles and attitudes survive trauma better than others. People who in particular have unhealthy attitudes about stress, themselves and life in general are much more likely to suffer stress related symptoms.
Here are a list of ten traits of healthy POWs from the Vietnam War. This information is not just for soldiers, it's for all of us.
Psychiatry News
Charney and Steven Southwick, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, identified personality traits associated with resilience in 250 American POWs during the Vietnam War who were held captive for up to eight years and subjected to torture and solitary confinement. Remarkably, years after their release, they had a lower-than-expected incidence of depression and PTSD. To determine how these men, mostly pilots, handled such a dire experience yet in many cases came out stronger t
The Truth About Drug Abuse 2007-01-09 08:16:07 There is a secret that is just not talked about in a lot of circles. Drug abuse is not solely the scourge of poverty. In fact, drug abuse among poor minorities is dropping. Drug abuse among educated white middle aged women is higher than it's ever been and growing. Along with it, aging baby boomers are well represented in the latest crime wave.
New York Times
When releasing last week’s Monitoring the Future survey on drug use, John P. Walters, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, boasted that “broad” declines in teenage drug use promise “enormous beneficial consequences not only for our children now, but for the rest of their lives.” Actually, anybody who has looked carefully at the report and other recent federal studies would see a dramatically different picture: skyrocketing illicit drug abuse and related deaths among teenagers and adults alike.
[...]According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of Americans dying from Read more:Truth
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