Archive for December, 2008
The Good Therapy Blog
December 24th, 2008 |
As the holiday season shifts into high gear, here’s a plea for a different kind of moderation: let’s all hear it (softly please) for moderate hosting. Moderate hosting means fighting the urge to measure your success as a host by the amount of food and alcohol and sociability your guests consume. It means not pressing the matter when a guest turns down an alcoholic drink, or a second helping of pie, or a third pass under the mistletoe, and keeping in mind the golden rule of being a great host: always make your guests feel comfortable.
A number of years ago I was facilitating a therapy group... Read More
December 22nd, 2008 |
Your husband drinks more, laughs less and has lost interest in hobbies and sports. On edge and irritable, he yells at you and the kids. Or maybe your boyfriend constantly checks up on you and his jealousy frightens you. He needs professional help. What can you do?
The Marlboro Man In Therapy?
Your husband or boyfriend may not be the Marlboro man or come from Mars, but he may believe that therapy is for wusses. After all, men are taught to be tough, self-reliant and never ask for help. This may explain why only one of... Read More
December 18th, 2008 |
Hurricane Katrina has left a disturbing percentage of children from the most at-risk and poorest families with mental health, behavioral and physical disorders, according to a white paper entitled, " The Legacy of Shame: The On-Going Public Health Disaster of Children Struggling in Post-Katrina Louisiana." The paper was published in November by The Children’s Health Fund and the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University Mailman School of... Read More
December 16th, 2008 |
We've become accustomed to reading about campus alcohol and drug use. Yet, the rates of both substance use and non-substance use psychiatric disorders pointed out by a new study sponsored by NIH (National Institutes of Health), are alarming. That only about one-quarter of those with disorders in the study group had received treatment is further cause for concern. Some interesting comparisons were also found between these groups.
This research looked at sociodemographic factors and DSM-IV disorders, substance use and treatment... Read More
December 12th, 2008 |
Dear Members and Visitors to GoodTherapy.org,
Today a virtual gathering over 100 GoodTherapy.org Members enjoyed the fifth teleconference in our Fall Teleconference Series: Good Boundaries: Centerpiece of Successful Relationships presented by Cedar Barstow, M.Ed. Big 'thank yous' to Cedar for presenting on boundaries and leading us through the exploration of our own boundary styles.
Cedar is a consultant and teacher on ethics issues. She has been designing, developing, and teaching the Right Use of Power, an Attachment based approach to Ethics since 1994. Her background includes 20+... Read More
© Copyright 2008 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Pleasant Hill Bureau - All Rights Reserved.
December 9th, 2008 |
A University of Utah psychologist whose research has been cited by groups that identify homosexuality as a mental disorder and promote “reparative” therapy is defending her work and criticizing the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality for distorting her findings.
"If NARTH had read the study more carefully they would find that it is not supported by my data at all,” says Lisa Diamond of the University of Utah. “When people are motivated to twist something for political purposes, they'll find a way to do it." Diamond’s videotaped comments are available in full... Read More
December 8th, 2008 |
A tool with good potential for predicting depression, called predictD, is now on-line for use by anyone who has a computer and an Internet connection. Although there are many depression assessments on the Internet, this is the only one based on empirical research of a depression assessment algorithm for predicting the disorder. Participating researchers believe the tool can become a tool for use by medical practitioners. The research study included 5,216 study participants in the UK, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovenia... Read More
December 7th, 2008 |
A recently completed study at Ohio State University suggests that group psychotherapy and psychoeducation can increase breast cancer survival rates in woman by helping them develop better coping skills.
Barbara Anderson’s research team studied 227 women, about half of whom participated in four months of weekly, 8-10 member group therapy sessions and eight months of monthly meetings with the same people. All subjects were diagnoses with stage 2 or 3 cancer, meaning their illness was fairly advanced. The therapy was provided after... Read More
December 5th, 2008 |
A new study to be published Friday in the British periodical BMJ offers surprising – though unreplicated and thus tentative – findings about what makes people happy. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego, found that having neighbors, friends, and even friends of friends of friends, increases the chances of being happy profoundly – more than coming into large sums of money, and, oddly perhaps, even more than having a happy spouse.
The effect was strongly correlated with the geographical... Read More
December 4th, 2008 |
“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” – Alan Alda
I got on the plane, bags in tow. Convinced that I needed everything I had packed, my attire reflected the “business like” image I had to reflect in my interview the next day. I was flying back to the United Kingdom, for a second interview. Driven a strong desire get back “home” and to pursue a job that seemed made for me; I just knew that it was the right path to take.
As expected, I landed in Wales... Read More
December 1st, 2008 |
What if we were able to identify who is at risk for development of bipolar disorder even before it occurs? What if we were then able to prevent the illness from ever occurring in those lives? What if we could individualize treatment for bipolar disorder according to the precise genes contributing to the person’s disorder? It now appears that with genetic testing, prevention and better treatment may be attainable in the foreseeable future, thanks to a major study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
The group of neuroscientists initially gleaned data from genome-wide association... Read More
