October 8th, 2020
By Eileen Weber
This past spring, the Food and Drug Administration banned the use of electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) because they present an “unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury” to patients with aggressive or self-injurious behavior. The ban is nation-wide but directly impacts one school—the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) in Canton, Mass. The device has been used for decades at the residential school for people with autism and other psychiatric, developmental, or mental disabilities. It is the only facility in the U.S. that uses the technique on its residents. “Since ESDs were first marketed more than 20 years ago, we [More]
Tags: treatment, aggressive behavior, electrical stimulation devices, Food and Drug Administration ban, self-injurious behavior, risk of injury
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July 17th, 2020
By John Grohol, Psy.D.
Online counseling services have gotten a big boost in the past few months, as the coronavirus pandemic closed down much of the face-to-face world. In fact, the only way for most to do psychotherapy during this time was either via some sort of teleconferencing or online therapy service, or going old-school and using just the phone. (You shouldn’t be using email to do therapy, because it is insecure). Unbeknownst to many, online counseling is now in its third decade. It got its start in the mid-1990s as a way of offering therapy services to people who would otherwise not get [More]
Tags: Mental health, treatment, coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, online health
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March 23rd, 2020
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
The man is smiling now, released from the grip of the terrible depression that brought him to the hospital so many years ago. He smiles often as he anticipates his next trip to a restaurant in the city with his social worker. Movement from the locked hospital setting to the community is slow. Evaluations for safety must be completed, tribunals of experts convinced, judges brought on board, permissions given, obstacles anticipated, solutions planned, and steps taken, one at a time, into the wider world. He has run the course of illness and recovery, guilt and forgiveness, and has begun the [More]
Tags: emotion, mental illness, depression, treatment, patient, Dr. Bodnar, time, kindness, self understanding
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January 4th, 2020
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
One day last fall, my colleague Martin asked if I had seen what had become of the hospital where we used to work. Martin is the hospital’s memory, and his passion for history and the natural world makes him someone I take very seriously. So, when he told me that they had turned the place into luxury condos, I had to go and see for myself. Later that same afternoon, I turned off the main street onto the hospital road and into a landscape that bore little resemblance to the grounds I had walked with my patients for nearly two [More]
Tags: mental illness, hospital, treatment, memories, Dr. Alan Bodnar, remembering, time passage
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November 4th, 2019
By Catherine Robertson Souter
E-cigarettes were originally introduced as a tool to help cigarette smokers quit. It was probably a sign of things to come, though, when retailers set up booths in shopping malls to reach clients. Flash forward 13 years from when the products were introduced to the United States, to where the market for e-cigarettes has seen unparalleled growth, a new nickname, “vaping,” and devices that no longer resemble the cigarette of yore. With greater awareness around teens using the products in schools and a recent spate of as-yet-unexplained lung-related illness and deaths, vaping has been more in the news in the [More]
Tags: interview, treatment, teens, vaping, health issues, e-cigarette addiction, lung-related illness, Dr. Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin
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October 10th, 2019
By Catherine Robertson Souter
According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in 59 children will be diagnosed with autism, many by age four. This number has grown over the past few decades, perhaps because of greater recognition or to changes made in the diagnostic criteria. And, right along with the increase in prevalence, the amount of research being done on the disorder has expanded. But, as is typical with research in many fields, the path from the laboratory to the clinician’s office is not always a straight line. Getting that information out to organizations, schools, and practitioners is key, said Cynthia M. Anderson, [More]
Tags: treatment, stigma, Q&A, best practices, autism spectrum disorder, expert interview, autism research, SAAGE, lack of funding, schools
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July 5th, 2019
By Susan Gonsalves
Inpatients with a range of mental health disorders reported improvements in mood and self-image following participation in an exercise and nutrition program at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Lead author David Tomasi, Ph.D., Ed.D-Ph.D, said that implementation of the research program was a natural progression of the “integrative modalities,” UVMC has used before in its clinical psychology practice. Tai chi, free body movement, and psycho education topics like self-esteem were incorporated into patient care. “We are pretty unique in that the University of Vermont has always been one of the first pioneers of natural-based, integrative approaches,” Tomasi said. In [More]
Tags: treatment, exercise program, patient care, David Tomasi Ph.D, natural-based approach, integrative approach, bipolar, schizophrenia, borderline personality, psychosis, mental health benefit
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July 5th, 2019
By Catherine Robertson Souter
As part of a much broader plan to institute changes to a mental health care system that has seen serious degradation over the past three decades, the New Hampshire legislature recently passed a bill aimed at addressing the issue of emergency room boarding for men and women facing mental health crises. The bill was signed into law by Governor Chris Sununu in late May. New Hampshire’s mental health care system was once listed as the second best in the country according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) but had sunk to 32nd by 2011 (and risen slightly [More]
Tags: New Hampshire, treatment, legislation, hospitals, mental health crisis, emergency room boarding, mental health care system
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May 12th, 2019
By Catherine Robertson Souter
Technology has become an integral part of our daily world. We ask Alexa about the weather, tell Siri to place a phone call and use voice recognition software to write emails. How far a step is it, then, to reach out to a therapist via technology? Telepsychology, or telehealth, the practice of providing psychological services over telecommunication equipment, is not exactly a new facet of the profession. Since video conferencing equipment was first developed in the 1990s, there has been a slow, but steady, expansion of therapists who offer the option. Insurance coverage has been a bit slow to follow, [More]
Tags: therapy, treatment, technology, Relationship, Telepsychology, telehealth, computer
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May 12th, 2019
By Catherine Robertson Souter
In the country’s convoluted health care system, forging a path towards recovery can be frustrating at best and a setup for failure at worst. A patchwork system, grown organically over the years as need arises or funding is available, US health care encompasses a wide variety of services, both public and private, for and not-for-profit. It can be overwhelming for individuals trying to navigate and find help for themselves or loved ones, especially for mental health services. With its whole person approach, Walden Behavioral Care, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based mental health care system that specializes in treating eating disorders, looks to [More]
Tags: interview, treatment, behavioral health, psychiatric hospital, Q&A, mental health care, Walden Behavioral Care, eating disorders
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