Owner: Dare to Dream.... URL:http://dare-to-dream.us Join Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:13:28 -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
Public-Education Campaign Battles Depression Myths 2006-10-23 04:42:58 A group of physician, patient and constituency groups concerned about confusing messages in popular culture suggesting that depression is "just the blues" or worse, a "made-up disease." Although they don't say so, I suspect this movement intends at least in part, to counter the very well organized and highly funded... Read more:Public
, Campaign
, Education
, Battles
, Myths
Latest Schizophrenia Study: Interesting Science, Bad Policy 2006-10-19 05:06:16 Anti-psychotic medication has gotten very expensive, especially when compared to long standing generics. Now research is finding the generics work just as well as the new "atypicals". But the fact is, medication has to be subscribed one client at a time. While on average, some of the generics work as... Read more:Schizophrenia
, Study
, Science
, Policy
Mental Illness Awareness Week October 1-7 2006-10-05 04:33:49 It's Mental Illness Awareness
Week! There is all kinds of information and materials to lead your own media campaign at NAMI.org Since 1990, mental health advocates across the country have joined together during the first week of October
to celebrate Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW). What is Mental Illness...
Can Chat Room Support and Phone Counseling Be Effective? 2006-10-02 05:26:57 On-line education with chat room support for eating disorders, on-line self-help support for depression, on-line treatment for panic disorder, on-line and phone-based help for sexual problems, and phone therapy with miscarriage sufferers have been recently studied as reported in recent journal articles. While this is exciting and concerning at the... Read more:Support
, Counseling
Many Vets Suffering Recurance of PTSD 2006-08-30 05:00:39 Post traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder caused by experiencing intense trauma where life is threatened in terrifying ways. This disorder has life long consequences as I've talked about before. AP Wire reported on a former Senator who is a Vietnam vet who has had a recurence of PTSD... Read more:Vets
, Suffering
New Orleans Mental Health Infrastructure Is Overwhelmed 2006-08-29 06:39:30 New Orleans
was a social service nightmare before Katrina. It's mental health infrastructure was likely underfunded like many other inner city services. But the results of the devastating trauma of Katrina spawned flood, people are stressed beyond their ability to cope. Psychiatric beds have shrunk by 80% while many professionals... Read more:Health
, Infrastructure
, Overwhelmed
, New Orleans
, Mental Health
Perceptions Have More to Do With Depression and Happiness 2006-08-05 19:06:30 From the outstanding site of Anxiety Insights, there is a summary of a recent research study that produces results questioning conventional wisdom about income, poverty and depression. None of the socio-economic indicators studied was found to be significantly associated with an episode of common mental disorder at follow-up, after baseline...
A Higher Risk of Diabetes From Depression and/or Anti-depressants? 2006-08-05 09:19:52 Here is a heads up for everyone taking or considering anti-depressant medication. One study has found a higher incidence of diabetes in high risk pre-diabetic persons undergoing intensive preventative treatment. What is not clear is whether anti-depressant use was associated with previous serious depression. The results could indicate depression and/or... Read more:Higher
, Diabetes
, depressants
Cognitive Behavior Therapy - the 'New Coca-Cola'? 2006-07-24 01:02:11 Cognitive BehaviorTherapy
(CBT) has become "THE" evidenced-based psychotherapy. The National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists explains what that means. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most researched psychotherapeutic approach because: each cognitive-behavioral approach has specific techniques that can be tested for effectiveness; CBT encourages the development of specific goals that are measurable,... Read more:Cognitive
Paranoia Is A Widespread Problem? 2006-07-23 05:21:08 Recently, a post at Anxiety and Depression Treatments Blog got my attention. It refers to a BBC NEWS article titled "Paranoia
'a widespread problem". The article is about a survey done in the UK by the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. The blog characterized the results as laughably... Read more:Problem
Depression Related to Inaccurate Perceptions of Peer Relations 2006-11-01 03:13:51 Thanks to PsychCentral.com, I found facinating article from the Los Angeles Times. A recent study has found that depression is related more to misperceptions of peer interactions, especially during puberty. Truth sometimes hurts. But for children closing in on adolescence, a firm grasp on the truth about one's standing with... Read more:Relations
Suicide Rates for Oldest and Youngest Dropping 2006-11-04 01:25:38 The American Journal of Public Health published a study showing suicide rates from 1970 to 2002 by age group. Suicide
rates have been dropping in all age groups. But there have been some changes, increases and decreases in rates during this time that suggest age specific pressures. Perhaps the most... Read more:Rates
Cognitive Behavior Therapy Again in the News 2006-11-04 21:56:56 The National Health Service in Britain has adopted CognitiveBehaviorTherapy
(CBT) as the first choice treatment for depression and anxiety. Collective experience is that medication is very expensive and has disappointing results. The article from Times Online argues that CBT has trouble maintaining results in the long run. However,... Read more:Again
Mental Health Problems From Katrina Persist 2006-11-09 15:08:11 The tragedy of Katrina
continues in resources stretched beyond capacity with no relief in sight. This nation needs to take another look at relief efforts on the Gulf coast. washingtonpost.com Hurricane Katrina left more than gutted houses and empty streets along the Gulf Coast. The most devastating impact of the... Read more:Health
, Mental Health
The Limits of Reductionism: Misreading the Mind 2008-03-09 22:23:28 I've previously complained about research that so often is focused on small parts and pieces so small that they mean very little to the average person, or even the practitioner in the field. Worse yet, few authors seem willing to reach beyond the data and advance theoretical knowledge. It is at the level of theory development that research reaches into application and education. There have been few willing to take the grand theory from nearly 50 years ago and integrate the research results during that time. There has been some important new knowledge with broad applicability that may foretell a integration of divergent and contradictory psychological models into a single grand theory.
The so-called "objective" human sciences reduces people to parts and pieces so small that we can't recog Read more:Limits
Internet Addiction Graduates 2008-03-01 11:18:23 While still excluded from the DSM IV TR, Internet
addiction has graduated to a subject worthy of research. And not surprisingly, like all other addictive behaviors, what I like to call "temporary feel goods", are associated with a lot of other diagnoses. Avoiding negative emotions has serious consequences, beyond even addictions.
CNS Spectrums
Internet addiction were more likely to have MDD, dysthymic disorder, social phobia and adult ADHD than their unaffected counterparts. Adult ADHD is the most significant predictor for Internet addiction, followed by depressive disorders. Social phobia, however, was not correlated with Internet addiction in our sample after controlling for depressive disorders and adult ADHD. Further, depressive disorders and Internet addiction were associated in the Read more:Graduates
, Internet Addiction
NIU Killer: Mental Patient, Honor Student 2008-02-16 14:48:05 Enough background is emerging to suggest Kazmierczak was suffering from a mental illness. The sad and scary part of this is that the fear generated by this and other tragedy may contribute to the isolation and stigma of mental illness.
ABC News
Though Kazmierczak seemed friendly and normal, he had a troubled past. After high school, Kazmierczak's parents sent him to Thresholds-Mary Hill House, a psychiatric treatment center for teens, where he lived for a year while getting therapy and medication for what was described as "unruly" behavior.
Louise Gbadamashi, a former employee at the Chicago treatment center, told the Associated Press that he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. "He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of Read more:Killer
, Student
Who Was the Illinois School Shooter? 2008-02-15 12:29:33 Details are beginning to emerge from another mass killing at a school by a young person. Some information suggested a young man interested in corrections, other information suggest he was being treated for mental illness.
Preventing these kind of tragedies needs to be a high priority effort by all of us. The solution can not be found by locking up everyone who might be violent, we can't afford that many jail cells. It must be based on how we raise and educate our children, not just academically, but emotionally. We can no longer afford to ignore emotion education.
ABC News
Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois
University lecture hall, killing five and then himself Thursday, was described as "fairly normal" and an "unstressed person" by NIU Read more:School
, Shooter
Emotion Defines Morality; Culture Sets Priorities 2008-01-21 08:03:59 “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.” - Anton Chekhov
Our modern culture highly values our rationality. Genius, seemingly defined as those with great accomplishment, is highly celebrated by our culture, if not by income, at least by notoriety. Our emotionality, on the other hand, seems to get attributed with causing many of the problems our culture finds criminal. Rage is said to have led to many murders, domestic abuse, child abuse and greed to theft and fraud for a couple of examples. Combining genius and emotional disturbance however seems to characterize those that gain infamy in the history books. Hitler and Stalin come to mind.
We are part rational, part emotional. From my clinical experience, we are unable to separate the two effectively. In other words, Read more:Emotion
, Morality
The Process of Grieving 2007-12-27 21:23:22 The Journal of the American Medical Association [February 21, 2007—Vol 297, No. 7] published an important article on grief, Maciejewski et al (2007). While it's hardly definitive research, it represents an exciting trend in research that I've seen in recent years. Researchers seem more willing to take some risks with the rigor of their research models to produce information that is immediately relevant to practice. While, we are a long way from having clear guidance towards an evidenced-based practice in psychotherapy, testing models in active use in the field provides immediately useful information.
Grief is one of the most common issues that emerge in psychotherapy. Grief unfolds in a purposive and meaningful way from the first awareness of loss. The grief process guides us through t Read more:Process
Is Schizophrenia A Prenatal Autoimmune Disorder? 2008-04-22 17:07:02 Scientific American has a very interesting article on growing evidence that implicates the immune system. The body's reaction to infection from the flu virus or even strep in pregnant woman and their unborn children may play a role in the development of schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, autism and other brain diseases.
More than 200 studies have suggested that schizophrenia occurs between 5 and 8 percent more frequently than average in children born in the winter or spring. Scientists realized that viruses, which are most prevalent in the cold, dry winter months, could be one of the factors influencing this correlation.
In 2004 Alan S. Brown, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, analyzed blood samples collected from 1959 through 1966 from 189 pregnant women, 64 of whom had Read more:Schizophrenia
Mindfulness Effective 2008-05-07 14:09:14 Mindfulness is a very simple concept, but a skill that escapes a lot of people. Simply put, when we are mindful we act as an observer of our minds, our thoughts and feelings, without judging, or holding onto anything. The object is to be completely present in the moment, mostly focused on our senses, our eyes, ears, nose, and skin. Having complete faith in ourselves, we simply accept whatever comes, assuming we have all we need to cope with anything as best we can. Worry and regret becomes a major distraction from being mindful in that it distracts from our attention to what is happening now.
Jon Kabat-Zinn's stuff in the right sidebar provides great training material.
Mindfulness has wide application in treatment of anxiety, depression, mood regulation as well as crisis stabilization. N Read more:Mindfulness
Negative and Cognitive Symptoms in Schizophrenia Related to Low SES 2008-05-15 11:08:40 It's been apparent to me for a number of years that there appeared to be problems with the concept of schizophrenia. Sub-types of the disorder have very different symptoms. Some include paranoia, some do not. Some include prominent disorganization, some do not. Today, I tripped over an article with information on another part of the disorder that fits only into some sub-types. Symptoms are roughly Read more:Negative
, Cognitive
, Schizophrenia
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