The Drugs Don't Work, Discover What Does

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:41:00 +0000

Mental Illness is UK's Biggest Health Problem But Gets Just 10% of NHS Budget

Royal College of Psychiatrists report highlights huge disparities between mental and physical health treatment

By Hannah Osborne: Subscribe to Hannah's RSS feed

March 26, 2013 12:42 PM GMT

Report calls for better equality between treatment of physical and mental health (Reuters)

More people in the UK suffer from mental health problems than cancer or heart disease yet just 11 percent of the NHS's budget is spent on treatments for mental illness.

A report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists has highlighted huge disparities between treatment of mental and physical health.

Whole-Person Care: From Rhetoric to Reality has been published a week before new NHS structures come into force. It offers recommendations on how mental health can be better treated.

Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: "Much has been done to improve mental health in the last 10 years but it still does not receive the same attention as physical health, and the consequences can be serious.

"People with severe mental illness have a reduced life expectancy of 15-20 years, yet the majority of reasons for this are avoidable.

"Achieving parity of esteem for mental health is everybody's business and responsibility. I therefore urge the government, policymakers, service commissioners and providers, professionals and the public to always think in terms of the whole person - body and mind - and to apply a 'parity test' to all their activities and to their attitudes."

The report found that mental health accounts for 22.8 percent of the so-called "disease burden" in the UK - more than cardiovascular disease (16.2 percent) or cancer (15.9 percent).

Mental health overshadowed
Under the NHS reforms, services will be opened up to competition from care providers and local authorities will take on a bigger role, assuming responsibility for public health budgets.

The report says that the government should make treatment for physical and mental health problems equal with agreed waiting times and emergency care.

Public health programmes should include a focus on the mental health dimensions of physical health problems, such as smoking, obesity and substance abuse, as well targeting stigmas attached to mental health illnesses.

Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said: "People often tell us about the stark differences they have experienced in accessing NHS services for physical and mental health care, feeling they have to 'settle for less' with their mental health.

"One person told us they get immediate attention for slightly high blood pressure, but face indifference and long waits about their mental health needs unless they are suicidal. Others have told us that they experience far better treatment in A&E for physical symptoms than when they need emergency help in a mental health crisis or for self-harm injuries. This is not acceptable."

Sean Duggan, chief executive of the Centre for Mental Health, said: "For too long our mental health has been overlooked. Children and adults alike have not received the timely help they need when they become unwell. And the physical health of people with a mental illness has been overshadowed.

"Today's report sets out clear objectives and welcome commitments to putting this right. The disparities we face today require change at every level, from national decisions about how money is spent to the everyday work of health and care professionals.

"But by starting on the journey today we can make great progress and start offering people with mental health conditions a fairer chance in life."

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:40:00 +0000

Give mental health same priority as physical, says Royal College of Psychiatrists

Mental health should be given as much priority as physical health, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has claimed, as those with severe mental illness die 15 to 20 years sooner.

''Achieving parity of esteem for mental health is everybody's business and responsibility," said Professor Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
10:02PM GMT 25 Mar 2013
The organisations, which take charge of commissioning NHS services from next week, should ensure that patients get ''equivalent levels of access'' to treatments for mental health problems as for physical health problems.

The ''long-standing and continuing'' lack of parity between mental and physical health is ''inequitable and socially unjust'', according to a new report by the College.

''Much has been done to improve mental health in the last 10 years but it still does not receive the same attention as physical health, and the consequences can be serious,'' said Professor Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

''People with severe mental illness have a reduced life expectancy of 15 to 20 years yet the majority of reasons for this are avoidable.

''Achieving parity of esteem for mental health is everybody's business and responsibility.

''I therefore urge the Government, policy-makers, service commissioners and providers, professionals and the public to always think in terms of the whole person - body and mind - and to apply a 'parity test' to all their activities and to their attitudes.''

Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb added: ''I have made it clear that our goal - and that of the health and care system - is to make sure that mental health has equal priority with physical health.

''It is very encouraging to see that a number of organisations have made specific commitments to put mental health on a par with physical health as part of this work.

''I will consider these findings and recommendations carefully to think through what more the Government can do. I would urge others in the health and care system to do the same.''

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:54:00 +0000

Children With Mentally Ill Parents Lack Support

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Ofsted have issued a recommendation to the UK government to make it compulsory that mental health services gather data about children who have parents or carers with mental health problems.
The report, titled "What about the children?", was published by the two bodies as a joint survey, it brought to light the need to identify children living with parents/guardians who have mental health problems, considering many of them are not receiving the help they need.

Children who live with parents or carers with mental health problems are at an increased risk of harm.

Although it is mandatory to gather data about children living with parents who have drug or alcohol problems - which is reported to the National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse - there is currently no such measure among children living with parents with mental health problems.

Often, children who are being raised by parents/guardians with mental health issues are very poorly supported.

The most common characteristics of families in which children had either died or been seriously harmed were either mental health difficulties or drug/alcohol problems, according to an Ofsted analysis of case reviews between 2007 and 2011.

Mental health problems common among adults

Around 1 in 6 adults in the UK, close to 9 million, experiences mental health problems at some point in their lives. It is estimated that around 30 percent of adults with mental health problems have children.

Childhood abuse can cause severe long term damage. A previous study published in the journal Child Development revealed that children who suffer abuse can suffer from chronic stress which can harm development and health - leading to depression.

According to the Deputy Social Care Director for Ofsted, Sally Rowe:

"This report raises some significant concerns for children who are living in very difficult and vulnerable situations. If children living with parents with mental health problems are to receive the right support and protection then the same level of scrutiny should be applied as those whose parents have issues with substance abuse.

That is why we believe it should be a mandatory requirement for this data to be collected to ensure local agencies are focused on the needs of these children."

The regulators believe that although the majority of parents with mental health problems live fairly ordinary family lives, there are also many families who would benefit from additional support.

The CQC Director for Regulatory Development, Philip King added:

"Adult mental health services and drug and substance misuse services play an important role in child protection. The point of our joint work is not to question the parenting ability of people with mental health problems, many lead perfectly ordinary family lives.

However, information from some notable serious case reviews highlight the fact that some parents and their children need additional support due to the effects that mental illness can have on families. In these circumstances identification and early help is key, and this is what we have identified as the issue."

There's a recent example where the mental health of a mother of two children, who had a history of anxiety and depression, worsened following the death of her partner to a point where she spent most the day asleep and hadn't showered in 6 months. Had it not been for a hospital admission, a referral to social services on behalf of the children would not have been made.

Children in such cases should receive sustained support for long term help, say the two regulators.

Written by Joseph Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:27:00 +0000

Mental Health Expectations On Police 'Unacceptable'

New Supers' President calls for urgent review of legislation, claiming "too many" officers are being called upon to deal with mental health issues.

Date - 22nd March 2013
Courtesy of - Royston Martis - Police Oracle

The new president of the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales has called for an urgent review of legislation relating to police powers and mental health.
Ch Supt Irene Curtis (pictured), who took up the role on March 18, said expectations placed on officers dealing with mental health issues had reached an “unacceptable level”, adding: “Police are always seen as the last resort, as the ones that will pick up the pieces.”
She said more clarification is needed to enable officers to deal with people who have mental health problems.
Currently, under the Mental Health Act, officers cannot detain people who are not in a public place and, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, officers can force entry to protect life but cannot detain a person in order to do so.
“The legislation surrounding the use of police powers to deal with mental health is in urgent need of review and clarification,” said Ch Supt Curtis.
The Police Service needed to identify and address the increasing demands created by gaps and reductions in other agencies' provision, she said.
“Currently, the police play too great a role in what is, after all, a medical emergency,” Ch Supt Curtis added. “Far too many people detained by police under the Mental Health Act end up in police cells simply because there is nowhere else to take them.
“It is not a crime to be unwell and the chronic lack of provision for mental health assessment places ("places of safety") needs to be addressed immediately, as well as the lack of training for officers to deal effectively and safely with incidents involving people suffering from mental illness.”
Home Secretary Theresa May is said to have written to chief constables and police and crime commissioners earlier this month urging them to work more closely with new local NHS commissioners around mental health matters.
“We all want to see less routine use being made of police stations as a place of safety,” said Mrs May, adding: “Detention should not be a substitute for treatment and care.”
Ch Supt Curtis has been a police officer with Lancashire Constabulary since 1985 and vice president of the Superintendents’ Association since 2010. She took over from retiring colleague, Derek Barnett.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:55:00 +0000

Depression:
Soul's Quest
for Depth, Meaning & Wholeness

by Maureen B. Roberts. PhD

As a soul-centred psychiatric therapist, I am disturbed that so many people are being seduced into viewing the often valuable and necessary sufferings of soul, which include most experiences of depression, as 'mental illness'. In other words, sufferers of depression are often forced to endure, in addition to their pain and energy loss, the stigma of being told that they're 'ill', hence that their depression is a problem to be eliminated, or that it has no value, meaning, or purpose.
From a soul-centred psychiatric perspective, however, depression is not primarily another word for unhappiness; nor is it 'mental illness.' It is, rather, in many instances a response to soullessness (or what shamans call 'soul loss'), including, ironically enough, the soullessness of the materialist medical model which continues to 'treat' depression as a biologic illness that can be band-aided with damaging drugs.
Wholeness vs 'Happiness'
In contrast to this deeply entrenched 'mental illness' fiction, I believe that what our ailing culture needs, above all, is not a happiness which requires the elimination of suffering. I believe that to achieve genuine individual and cultural healing, we need, instead, more wholeness , that is, more soulful and well-rounded individuals who embody life's dance of opposites and in so doing live fully human, fully divine lives. We need more people who are not ashamed of, or embarrassed by their pain, but who can instead respond to their own and others' suffering - as an unavoidable facet of the human condition - with love, patience, sympathy, nurturing and respect.
True happiness, after all, does not exclude sadness, but rather embraces it within the living paradox which personal wholeness demands. As the quiet contentedness of joy, such happiness is not, I suggest, attained by seeking happiness, nor by eliminating sadness through addressing purely personal wants, needs, fears, anxieties and insecurities. Indeed, a reactionary cult of 'happiness', based on the indiscriminate elimination of all psychospiritual suffering, is in the longrun as lopsided, narrow, false, repressive and self-defeating as the current 'epidemic' of depression. Endorsing happiness above sadness, in other words, simply amounts to replacing one extreme (which is falsely viewed in a totally negative light) with its opposite, which is seen as positive. In reality, though, not all happiness is positive - and not all depression is 'bad'.
Depression as Soul Loss
Given that many concerned folk are desperately seeking to address the depression 'plague', there is, I suggest, an urgent need to 're-vision', or re-evaluate depression from a soul-centred angle, if we are to avoid exacerbating this cultural crisis through misguided attempts to stifle the urgent needs of soul which depression is often calling our attention to. From soul's angle, far from being an 'insidious illness', depression is often a valuable phase of a person's life journey, a critical juncture at which a soul-searching re-assessment of priorites, directions, relationships, work, gifts, self-image, home life, spirituality and/or values is being called for. For this reason, dreams and myths often contain the theme of the 'buried treasure',
symbolically the soul hidden, or trapped in the unconscious depths, which the hero or heroine must retrieve in order to become healed, mature, content and whole.
Mythically, the gods reside not only in celestial realms, but also down below in Underworld, the mythic equivalent of the unconscious. Soul, which unlike light, airy 'spirit', gravitates to the body, the Earth and the watery realms of night and ocean depth, does not lift us to mountainous heights, but pulls us - when it's neglected, stifled, or shunned - down into neurosis, depression, suicide, psychosis and psychospiritual chaos. As an example, in the Greek myth of the human girl Psyche, whose name means 'soul', Psyche abandoned by Eros (the divine Love which soul needs) is left alone, directionless, depressed - literally, 'pulled down' - hence she is finally driven to Underworld depths. For Eros, mysterious god of entanglements in relationship, involvement with life, immersion in suffering, depth and joy, is
the god behind human vulnerability, the one who exposes us, through love, betrayal, cruelty and kindness, to life's inseparable blend of woundedness and pleasure.
Psyche Down Under
Psyche, in other words, is a myth that provides a 'psych-ological' context for understanding depression as soul's need to descend in order to retrieve its Underworld treasure. By exploring depression from this soul-centred perspective, we have thus re-mythologized a universal (archetypal) human experience: soul's hunger for depth and for the elusive riches harboured by Hades, Lord of the dark Underworld of the unconscious.
My intuition is that just as Psyche had to journey 'down under' to find her way back to lost Eros, so we shall be driven to the depths of our wounds, depressions, madness and fears in order to be reunited with lost soul. It is my shamanic vision that this re-mythologizing of our lives is the medicine we need if we are to help one another reconnect to a life wrestled with, shared and celebrated in all its fullness, vibrancy, imaginal richness, pain and joy. With this guiding vision at heart, the following soul-centred delineation of depression offers itself as a yeast, vessel and catalyst to help reactivate the sense of soul within the individual, in the floundering field of mental health, and throughout Australian culture as a whole.
What is Depression?
Depression, which literally means 'a lowering', occurs when energy (libido) which is normally available for day-to-day conscious living, becomes depleted, blocked, pulled down, or trapped in the depths of the unconscious. Depression can arise through endless combinations of psychospiritual and physical causes, but in many cases, its primary source is an unresolved, repressed, or forgotten grief, trauma, crisis, conflict or loss. In addition, depression is often an emotional, relational and spiritual response to a sense of meaninglessness, lack of harmony with Nature, or lack of truthfulness with oneself and others. Poor diet, seasonal changes, lack of sunshine and lack of exercise can contribute to depression, as can soulless environments, materialism, lack of imagination, damaging relationships, dull routine, empty forms of work, and apparent lack of life purpose.
The suggestion that depression is 'mental illness' is absurd, given that nearly all of us get depressed at times. From a soul-centred psychiatric perspective, depression is a natural human response to an endless variety of circumstances and states of unresolved suffering, or tension within the psyche. While it can be debilitating (for example, in cases of repressed conflict, extreme crisis, or forgotten childhood trauma), it can also have a creative outcome. For example, some depressions are caused by a lowering of consciousness in order to retrieve needed wisdom, or creative and healing gifts from the unconscious. This kind of depression is best dramatized as myth, when the hero or heroine must go through a symbolic death and rebirth. Examples of such myths are Dionysus, Osiris, Christ, Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice. Reading and reflecting on such myths can help provide an imaginal context for soul's journey through depression. Bear in mind that the depression is never the end of the story. There's always a rebirth at the end of the journey!
Cocoon Therapy
What about (so-called) 'Seasonal Affective Disorder'? The psyche has natural diurnal, mythic and seasonal rhythms and cycles. Calling winter sadness a 'disorder' creates the distasteful and stigmatizing impression that seasonal depression is a 'mental illness', rather than a normal response to the decreased light, activity and energy output that characterize winter as Nature's time of symbolic death and hibernation. Just as bulbs lie dormant and bears hibernate, so the psyche as part of Nature instinctively lowers (that is, 'depresses') its energy levels and output in winter.
In winter, allow yourself time, as Native Americans do, to go 'back to the blanket' when you need to. Using what I call 'cocoon therapy', wrap yourself - for however long you need to - in warm blankets, or animal skins which form a symbolic cocoon in which the psyche feels protected and can rest, regenerate and prepare for a Spring rebirth. Make sure you are in a quiet, dark, safe, comforting space that cannot be interrupted by other people, noise, or phone calls. (Quiet pets, open fires, incense, essential oils, candles, stones, music and plants can be good company, however).
Above all, be kind to yourself; listen to your heart and gut intuition to find out what the soul in you needs. Remind yourself that it's alright to do nothing, except rest, wait, reflect, unwind, let go, sleep and renew, whenever you need to. Alternately, gentle, non-strenuous exercise, long walks (particularly in sunshine, through forests, and/or near flowing water, or the ocean), warm baths, restful music, meditation and gardening all help calm and nourish the psyche and re-attune it to Nature. As well, wear energizing and uplifting colours, particularly reds, yellows and oranges, and decorate your home similarly.
Dangers of Anti-depressant Drugs
In contrast to the healing power of Nature, anti-depressant drugs are toxic substances which work by manipulating an increase in levels of neurotransmitters in order to elevate moods. However, these transmitters are then dispersed instead of being reabsorbed, as would occur naturally. This may eventually lead to a depletion of these necessary transmitters, such that the original depression becomes worse.
All psychiatric drugs work by disabling normal brain function. They never improve the brain but instead dampen feelings that a person may need to feel, in order to work naturally through unresolved pain or trauma. In addition, biologic psychiatry has not proven the genetic/biologic cause of any so-called 'mental illness.' This does not, however, stop psychiatry from making unproven claims that depression, psychotic, anxiety and alcohol 'disorders' are primarily biologic and/or genetic in origin. Such pseudo-medical beliefs are based on unprovable materialist dogma. In other words, from the contrary wholistic perspective (in which psyche and body are inseparably one), one expects physical factors to be involved, without presuming that they are the sole, or main cause of the depression.
Jungian & Shamanic Therapy
Given the dangers of psychiatric drugs, what safe, drug-free therapies are available for depression? Firstly, it is vital for a person's dignity and well-being that his/her whole range of needs - physical, emotional and spiritual - be respected and addressed. Healing therapies include Jungian and shamanic approaches. The effectiveness of Jungian psychotherapy resides in the fact that it gives equal attention to both the conscious and unconscious situations, and with depression the unconscious cannot be ignored, since most of the person's energy is moving about 'down' there. Jungian therapy involves a non-authoritarian, one-to-one dialogue which draws on the healing potential within the individual's unconscious, as it expresses itself in dreams, visions, artwork, sculpture, and through guided visualization (which Jung called 'active imagination'). Through this shared therapeutic journey, the cause of the depression can be gently unearthed, by patiently and respectfully exploring the person's life story, in which is embedded the trauma, conflict, loss, or crisis which has triggered the depression.
During shamanic journeys, the shaman acts on behalf of the patient, by exploring World or Underworld through intense imaginal journeying. Led by guides, the shaman seeks lost, wandered, or trapped soul parts which, in being separated from their parent personality, have caused what shamanic cultures call the patient's 'loss of soul', one form of depression. Depressive soul loss can occur through unresolved childhood trauma, pining for a person or place elsewhere in the world, suppression of one's creativity, disempowering relationships, environments and work, or through damage to the aura caused by astral vampires and parasites. The shamanic therapist guides the wandered soul part(s) back to the patient and often, through a ritual, blows them back into the patient via the ears, heart or stomach.
What to Avoid
Avoid any therapies which aim to control, repress, or manipulatethe unconscious, since this can backfire or amplify the depression, if its cause is a buried trauma, unresolved grief, deep-seated conflict, or latent psychosis. Avoid 'rebirthing', since it can push an unstable person into psychosis. Stay clear of 'positive thinking' methods, or simplistic techniques, counselling and theories, since they fail to do justice to the complexity of thepsyche and do not honour the unavoidable demands of the unconscious. Be wary of distanced, clinical, hurried, authoritarian, or cerebral practitioners. Just as a plant needs nurturing and care, so the therapist (as a 'servant of soul') needs to be a kind, respectful, non-controlling, intuitive, natural, imaginative and patient midwife to soul's journeys.
Always seek an initial evaluation by a practitioner who works from a soul-centred psychiatric perspective, which honours emotional, individual and psychospiritual values and needs. This will allow for a reliable assessment of whether the depression is primarily a psychospiritual response, or whether nutritional and/or exercise factors play the prominent role. If you wish to avoid anti-depressant drugs, be wary of consultations with GPs and psychiatrists who have no time to listen to your personal story, or who try to convince you that depression is a 'chemical imbalance' that can be 'treated' with drugs. Also, bear in mind that GPs and biologic psychiatrists (which Medicare funds) are not trained, or qualified to offer soul-centred psychotherapy for acute psychospiritual crises, conflicts, depression or trauma.
Who Can Help?
Seek out any Jungian Analysts, or experienced shamanic and depth psychotherapists in your area, or contact the Schizophrenia Crisis Helpline. In cases of severe depression, suspected
trauma, psychosis, or manic-depression, avoid self-proclaimed 'spiritual healers' and suchlike, particularly if they have no reputable credentials, training and experience in the field of soul-centred psychiatry. Hypnotherapy may be helpful when dealing with suspected repressed trauma. Naturopaths, massage therapists, homeopaths, aromatherapists, herbalists and acupuncturists can help address associated dietary and physical needs.
Remember, the therapist is the therapy , so reputable credentials are not enough. As well, look for desirable personal qualities, such as compassion, wisdom based on experience, flexibility, respect for your values and experiences, and lack of desire to offer hasty advice, or to dominate and control. Finally, each of us can help ourselves, by trusting our intuition, by reclaiming our personal power and right to control our own lives, by avoiding whoever and whatever makes us feel ill, uneasy, or bad about ourselves, by remaining close to Nature, and by following our hearts - wherever they lead us. Though we walk 'through the valley of the shadow of death' (= depression), we need not fear.
In the end, the unshakable radiance of joy comes only through a life of integrity, ruthless honesty, meaning, detachment (from joy and pain), kindness to all, and the selfless service of the World that arises from each of us following our unique 'path with heart'. As someone who in this way shares the heart-rending pain and torment of many sufferers of depression and schizophrenia, I cannot separate the joy of serving truth and the World from the Wounded Healer's marriage of sorrow and pain.
In this sense, when consciousness operates from the level of the heart - symbolically the divine centre at which all is one and where all opposites are reconciled - we live and breathe an inseparable blend of joy and sorrow, death and life, dark and light, since at this level, we empathise the suffering of those with whom we are one. Such empathy, or ability to feel another's pain as if it is one's own, is the 'passion of com-passion', given that compassion means 'to suffer with'. And compassion, as the truth of love, is inseparable from the love of truth. To become a balanced, content and healthy culture we must, in other words, replace the 'mental illness' lie with the truth and needs of soul.
Text c. 2001 Darknight Publications by Maureen B. Roberts, PhD
from Soul in Crisis: Shamanic Diagnosis & Healing for
Psychospiritual Wounds Not to be reproduced whole or in part
without the author's permission.

Dr Maureen Roberts, a Member of the International Council of
Analytical Psychology, is a soul-centred psychiatric therapist,
prize-winning writer, artist, musician, and initiated Celtic
shaman who practises in Adelaide, South Australia. She has
taught courses on Jungian psychology for The University of
Adelaide and is Director of the Schizophrenia Drug-free Crisis
Centre. Dr Roberts, who has been flown interstate by families
seeking drug-free psychiatric help for relatives, is available for
private shamanic training, Jungian therapy, shamanic healing
and soul retrieval work, seminars, retreats, Vision Quests and
conferences.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:17:00 +0000

The 5 Myths of Extreme Self Care or What Kind of Excuses can I Come up with Today? - By Lori Smith ***
------------------------------------------------------------

Eight years ago I was a control freak perfectionist workaholic! I worked 16 hour days, every day. One day, I found myself siting in my car in the parkade and crying. I was tired, sooo tired!

I decided that I needed to take care of me!

It wasn't easy and it took time, but today I can say that my life has changed 180 degrees. I make decision everyday that lead me further down the path of self love and self care.

Often people comment on my life and ask how I did it... but many immediately become defensive and start to list off excuses for why they can't make these changes in their life.... do you find yourself feeling the same way?

Myth: This makes me feel too selfish!
Truth: If you don't take care of you, who will?

It is human nature to take care of others first; normally it is our immediate or extended families.

Ask yourself this... what would your family do if you died of a heart attack? Who would fix them then?

They would mourn and miss you, sure! But they would pick up their lives and move on.

* What exactly have you done for yourself lately?
* How do you take care of yourself?
* How do you acknowledge yourself?

There are many things that you can change about your life: jobs, careers, husbands/significant other, cities, countries, houses, cars... But does changing any or all of these things accomplish the feeling you are looking for? And if you make changes and do NOT change how you are taking care of yourself, does it really impact your life?

Things might change for a while, but they return you right back to the same space unless you decide to change yourself. Then and only then will things flow together and begin to feel like what you are looking for.

Myth: My Family doesn't understand me!
Truth: Do you know how to ask for what you need?

It is not that you family doesn't understand you.... It is that you have let them walk all over you, of course not intentionally.

Taking into consideration that we are ‘doing what must be done' to make sure things are taken care of, what steps have you taken to let your family know what you need? It is easy!

* Talk to your significant other and family
* Ask for what you need
* Your family says sure, they would be happy to help; that's what families do

The next important step is put into words that feeling you are looking for. I recommend reading this over every week or so and updating it. As you start working through the steps you will start to see new improved visions and feelings. You will be able to be clearer and clearer of what you are looking to feel.

* The goal I want to achieve is:
* The reason I want to achieve this goal is:
* My life would change in the following manner if I achieved my goal:
* I would be happier if I achieved my goal because:

Maybe you have a very simple goal; maybe you just need to spend 30 minutes a day in peace and quiet.

So let's try that discussion again.

* Call a family meeting -- just let them know you have something you want to run past them
* Ask them what for what you need -- I would like it if for 30 minutes after I get home from work, I can spend time alone in my office/bedroom, I just feel that I want to be able to switch gears from work and then I can spend better quality time with you because I am not worrying about things at the office.
* Your family says sure -- well of course they do, your family loves you, they just didn't know that you needed the time.

There is one catch to this though. You actually need to do it. Use your 30 minutes: meditate, exercise, read, BUT leave work at work and truly be fully present with your family. If they can see that nothing has changed, then they will not accept your boundaries.

Myth: I don't have the time!
Truth: Creating organization gives you the time.

Daily habits or rituals will help you organize your time. How much time do you spend looking for your bills at the end of the month? How much time do you spend on Saturday on doing laundry?

Now I have made a conscious effort to get up 30 minutes early so that I have time to myself in the mornings. To me the effort to get up is very little compared to the enormous benefits I get from having my day completely organized.

The point is start something... even if the only thing you do is wake up 15 minutes early and drink your water/juice in silence while you are writing your "To Do" list for the day.

Myth: If I can't do it correctly, I don't do it at all!
Truth: Simple changes make a big difference.

You may be a control freak or a perfectionist. You have being doing it for as long as you can remember and you probably have no clue about where to even begin to stop.

But you can stop and you can move on from here.

First: Breathe
Second: Breathe again
Third: Pick just one thing to change

It is not possible to change everything in one day, one week or one year even; this is a process, a journey to create a better you.

Let me tell you about the actions I took to do this.

1. I hired people around me that could take on some of my redundant tasks.

2. I started to say no to taking on additional tasks. I would simply say that I was loaded right now, but they could check back in 3 months or I would recommend an ‘up and comer' who had promise.

3. Sometimes, you just need to shut off the light and leave the office. Maybe you didn't get something completed; it will be there tomorrow. But your wife or husband might not be, your kids are another day older, your parents are another day older.

It starts with just one baby step, one simple little thing, like delegating those reports.

Myth: I know ALL of this, I have tired and I failed!
Truth: Knowing is one thing, taking ACTION is totally different.

I am not one to dwell on the negative or the failures. You tired and failed before - that means one less way to try it. Now is the time to try something new.

Now is the time to take action! Success doesn't have to be complicated. It's about doing the little things every day. Each week, focus on making one change.

Once you get it down, focus on something else. If you improve just one thing every week, imagine the change you'll see over the next five years.

Did you hear yourself in some of these excuses? Did they make you feel uncomfortable? Great! Now you have a great starting point. Now you can make the decision to take back control and you can choose each and every day to focus on self love and self care.

Take your first simple step today!

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:28:00 +0000

Thousands of teenagers 'denied' mental health care

Page last updated at 06:57 GMT, Monday, 11 March 2013

E-mail this to a friend

By Greg Dawson
Newsbeat reporter

Thousands of teenagers in England are being denied access to free mental health care because of funding cuts, it is being claimed.

Newsbeat's been given exclusive access to figures from the charity Young Minds which show a number of local authorities have reduced spending for mental health services for young people.
The charity conducted a review of Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) across the whole of the UK.
Of the 51 local authorities to respond, 34 revealed they had cut their budgets since 2010.
Although NHS funding has remained steady, it's claimed the cuts in funding from local authorities means services such as drop-in counselling and advice lines are losing out.
Lucie Russell says it is 'vital' young people can get mental health advice Central government cuts have put pressure on local authority budgets in England since 2010, with many being forced to make major savings.
Young Minds says it appreciates cuts need to be made, however it claims not treating people when they show early signs of mental health problems ends up costing the economy more in the long term as many end up needing expensive NHS care.
"When a young person approaches someone and says 'I don't feel ok' it's vital for them, and for our economy, that those problems are seen to," said Lucie Russell, campaigns director for Young Minds.
One service that's been affected is Off The Record Bristol, a charity offering free counselling service for young people aged up to 25.

Council cuts 2010-2013

Derby City Council - 41%
Redcar and Cleveland - 27%
Norfolk City Council - 35%
Sefton Council - 29%

Source: Young Minds

The group is partly funded by Bristol City Council and was recently told it had to stop treating people from nearby areas like South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.
Carina Andrews, 19, lives in South Gloucestershire and has benefited from Off The Record counselling in the past when she was treated for anxiety.
"Things were getting on top of me. These low moods appeared, I had anxiety for a long time. The counselling was fantastic, it completely built my confidence."
However, she's worried that if she needed similar support in the future she would be turned away because of where she lives.
Carina Andrews says she has benefitted from 'fantastic' counselling "I literally live a street into South Gloucestershire and I couldn't receive counselling anymore because of that. That worries me a little bit.
"If I did start to struggle, where would I go?"
The charity's director Simon Newitt estimates they're now turning away at least 200 people a year.
He says: "It's a rubbish conversation to have, to say 'We can't help you and there's nothing in your area that you can access.'"
The Department of Health say they've spent more than £50m over the past four years on talking therapies and have also put pressure on local NHS departments to make sure they deliver services.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:04:00 +0000

Bill Would Require Mental Health Assessments For Schoolchildren

Measure Runs Into Opposition From Home-Schooling Parents; ACLU Says Screenings Should Be Optional -

(May god and Reason save us from politicans who don't understand and who are probably primed by pharma companies! Because no child needs to be labelled as mentally ill or potentially so, it's stigmatising and self -fulfilling. Once they start on the drugs, they'll never come off them. - editorial comment)

MIDDLETOWN — Lawmakers are considering a measure that would make Connecticut the first state in the nation to mandate universal mental health assessments for school-age children.
Senate Bill 374 — one of several relating to mental health policy in the aftermath of the Newtown attack — would require all public schoolchildren in grades 6, 8, 10 and 12 to undergo a behavioral health screening.

The law would also apply to home-schooled children ages 12, 14 and 17. It makes no mention of private or parochial school students.

The assessments would be confidential, the bill says; the results would be shared only with the child's parents.

Public schools already conduct vision and hearing screenings and school nurses periodically check spines for scoliosis. This bill would add mandatory behavioral health assessments to the list.

Several mental health experts said the legislation, while flawed, could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment of behavioral health problems in children.

But the proposal has been met by intense opposition from home-schooling parents, about three dozen of whom attended a hearing held by the legislature's public health committee Friday. More than 70 others registered their opposition in written testimony, a committee staffer said.

"Those kinds of decisions for our children need to be in the hands of my husband and I, in conjunction with whatever health care professionals we work with,'' said Sarah Wallace of Prospect, who home schools her three children. "Having assessments done by screeners is really an unnecessary invasion."

Another home-schooling parent, Jeanette Sterling of Southington, waited for hours to testify against the bill. Her two daughters, who accompanied her, got a real-life civics lesson.

"What will they do with the information?" Sterling said. "How will they label these kids?"

Some of those same concerns were raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.

"If the screenings were optional, the ACLU of Connecticut would most likely support this legislation,'' David McGuire, a staff attorney for the organization, wrote in testimony submitted to the committee.

While the ACLU recognizes the value of such screenings, "help will not be effective if forced on children and their families, whose consent and cooperation is essential to successful screening and to any ensuing diagnosis and treatment,'' McGuire said. "Proceeding without consent would threaten families' privacy and the parents' rights to choose what is best for their children."

The assessment bill is one of several measures relating to mental health policy that state lawmakers are considering in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Earlier this week, a legislative subcommittee recommended the formation of a task force to examine mental health issues in greater detail.

But several speakers pointed out that people with mental illness are generally not violent, and some studies show that they are far more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators.

Daniela Giordano, public policy director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Connecticut, applauded the idea behind the bill but said the vaguely worded measure doesn't address the crucial issue of treatment.

"We agree that better screening and early detection are extremely important measures to successful ... recovery efforts,'' Giordano told the committee.

But, she added, without a plan for treatment, such screenings would not address the real problem. "Only about one-fourth of children and youth who currently identified as needing behavioral health treatment currently receive such treatments,'' she said.

Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut and a critic of the bill, said improving the mental health system for children and adolescents is more complex than simply assessing every child.

"The problem is not that troubled children go undiagnosed,'' he said, "but in the delivery of services. What parents really need is better access to services and the consolidation of agencies so that parents with troubled children are not sent from one agency to another."

JoAnn Eaccarino, president of the board of the Connecticut Association of School Based Health Centers, backs the bill. But she said the mandatory assessments should start even earlier than the middle school years.

"Our suggestion would be to start these assessments with their first entry into school,'' she told the panel in written testimony. "Educators have told us that they can identify a troubled child by first grade...so waiting until sixth grade may have missed some critical developmental milestones."

The hearing was held at Wesleyan University in Middletown as part of an effort by House Speaker Brendan Sharkey to increase public participation in state government by holding hearings outside the Legislative Office Building.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:49:00 +0000

Autism Shock Therapy Practiced In US Is Torture, Says UN Official

Some practices used as “therapy” for autism in the United States amount to torture, a U.N. representative says. The U.N.’s Juan Mendez is the organization’s special rapporteur on torture, and in his report examining torture worldwide, he’s called out the only facility in the United States that uses “skin shocks” to ‘treat’ people with severe mental illness or developmental disabilities, including autism.

That facility is the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), formerly the Behavioral Research Institute. While it once was located in California and then moved to Rhode Island, the facility is now sited in Massachusetts. Mendez expresses concern in his report (p. 84) that if Massachusetts becomes too hot to hold the JRC, the center might simply relocate again, and he urges action at the federal level to end the use of such aversives nationwide.

But wait, you might say. What does shocking people have to do with autism or mental illness treatment in the United States?

If you look at the science, not one thing. But the JRC is the reality. This center has been the focus of considerable controversy, especially since the release of this graphic and disturbing video of a teenager being “treated” at the center with what the JRC, in its posted response [PDF] to accusations, calls “skin shock treatments.”

The center, which a report says “brought in $55 million in revenue in the year ending June 2011,” received a warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stating that the devices the staff uses to shock patients–who wear a backpack wired to various parts of their bodies for easy zapping–violate FDA regulations.

The devices, which center staff created and designated as “Graduated Electronic Decelerators” (GEDs), were approved in 1994. However, since that approval, the JRC team has jacked up the voltage on them. It has done so twice, in fact, putting them out of compliance. Their rationale, it seems, was that the original device was just too weak to hurt enough.
According to reports, some parents argue that these shocks are the only effective therapies for their children who engage in harm to self or others. But this story, “The Shocking Truth,” by Paul Kix, which appeared in Boston Magazine in 2008, describes the use of these shock aversives to punish a young girl with cerebral palsy for moaning and reaching for a staff member’s hand and as a consequence for another child who closed his eyes for more than five seconds.

The story is a tough read, and there are other, unconfirmed stories from residents who have described similar experiences at the center.

Unfortunately for some ‘students’ at the center, the end doesn’t appear to be in sight. Mendez says in his report (p. 83) that while

the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) approved regulation changes that limited the use of Level III Aversive Interventions (including skin shock), this new regulation does still allow the use of electric shocks for those students who had an existing court-approved treatment plan as of September 1, 2011 (115 CMR 5.14). Under the revised regulations, only new students in Massachusetts are protected from Level III aversives, including electric shock or prolonged restraints.

In other words, these interventions are bad enough that no one should have them administered and should be protected from them, but students who were unfortunate enough to have them in a treatment plan already are … grandfathered in for torture?

What science backs up the use of electric shocks to the skin as an appropriate way of modifying behaviors? Not much, unless you’re a rodent. First, this “therapy” is not to be confused with electroconvulsive therapy which, although controversial, is administered to patients under general anesthesia and involves electric currents to the brain to induce seizures.

Case studies and some reports indicate efficacy of this extremely controversial treatment for depression and other disorders. But the kind of shock used at the JRC is called “contingent shock,” and the small group of authors, including those affiliated with the JRC, who publish on it do so in rather chilling language.

An example comes from a study (abstract only) led by JRC collaborator P.C. Duker. The authors were trying to determine whether or not shocks administered to the same area would be more effective–i.e., cause more pain–than repeat shocks to different areas. Here’s what they write in their abstract:

Electric shocks were identical to those that (sic) used in clinical practice. The second shock in succession to the same location of the body produced higher pain intensity ratings than the first shock and (sic) that the third shock in succession to the same location of the body produced higher pain intensity ratings than the second shock in succession.

For most people, that escalation would be a bad thing, this heightening intensity with repeated shocks to the same place. But the authors see it differently:

Our data suggest that repeated shock to the same location is likely to be more effective to establish suppression than repeated shock to different locations.

The “suppression” references suppressing the negative behaviors the shocks are intended to stop.

The literature on “contingent shock” is sparse, at best, mostly pertains to being effective in rodents, and seems to have come almost to a complete stop at the turn of the 21st century.

One would like to think that perhaps with the dawning of a new millenium, we had entered a new age of evidence-based, nonbarbaric practices to help–not restrain, seclude, or shock–those with the most intense mental disturbances or developmental disabilities and that this new insight precluded even conducting clinical studies to evaluate these “therapeutic” approaches.

However, since 2002, according to a PubMed search, there has been one article [PDF] evaluating contingent shock; more specifically, the investigators evaluated its side effects. Two of the four authors cite their affiliation as the JRC, and one is Matthew Israel, JRC’s founder. Perhaps not surprisingly, the authors conclude that there are no negative side effects with this therapy.

Matthew Israel, also possibly not surprisingly, seems to have studied under B.F. Skinner, inventor of the Skinner box, which can include an electrified floor to shock rodents and condition them.

According to a 2007 interview Israel did with Mother Jones, early aversives Israel used in his work with people included spanking, pinching, spraying water in the face, and breaking a vial of ammonia under the nose. In the interview, he says these approaches have fallen out of favor because they are ‘politically incorrect’, and he describes how he turned to shock aversives:

You do find a lot of these in the literature of the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s—more so then, because it has become so politically incorrect. What you’ll also find is the skin shock. They would use a cattle prod. My consulting psychiatrist would say, “Why don’t you use the skin shock? It’s so much cleaner.”

He developed the higher-voltage GED, he tells the interviewer, because

… some students had adapted to the GED. You can adapt to aversive conditions and procedures. The body is made that way. Odors, for example, are aversive at first, but the body adapts. That happens, unfortunately, with many kinds of punishment as well.

“Unfortunately.”

Israel left the JRC in 2011 to avoid doing a prison sentence for allegedly destroying evidence in a criminal case in which the center was accused of wrongfully administering dozens of shocks to two disabled teens. In the Mother Jones interview, he is quoted as saying that the GED4 “leaves a mark.” He says,

…in some students it creates a mark that may last for days. I can’t think of a single one (negative side effect) except that it leaves a mark.

The mark that we can see and the hidden scars we can’t both represent what the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, calls … well, torture. To quote Mendez:

The rights of the students of the JRC subjected to … electric shock and physical means of restraints have been violated under the U.N. Convention against Torture and other international standards.

The U.S. government appears to agree that the practice is insupportable, having been cited in Mendez’s report (p. 83) as stating:

“The use of aversive therapy by JRC has been challenged through a variety of state and federal legislative and judicial actions,” including the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation into possible violations of civil rights laws, which remains open and ongoing.

Yet the JRC remains open and ongoing … and shocking. Why is that?

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:24:00 +0000

5 ways you trick yourself into prolonging emotional stress

Wednesday, March 06, 2013 by: Mike Bundrant

iNaturalNews) Most people are surprised to learn that their favorite coping mechanism for stress actually causes more problems than it solves. Let's look at five steps to effectively dealing with stress and five reactions to stress that trick you into prolonging it.

Imagine something simple that might cause emotional stress, such as coming home to find that your husband has ignored his promise to clean the house and is self-absorbed in his favorite hobby.

To deal with this situation effectively, you can 1) take notice of how you feel and 2) make sure your feelings are valid. Then, 3) express your feelings assertively, 4) clear up any misunderstandings, 5) create new expectations and a plan. Then, you can let the stress go, feeling like you have dealt with the situation.

This isn't always easy, but if you do it consistently, you'll find yourself able to let go of emotional stress more readily. In fact, I don't know anyone who does the above consistently that is chronically stressed in the area of concern.

The problem is, we don't do the above five things.

Worse, typical ways of reacting to stressful situations actually encourage hanging onto and expanding the stress. It's as if some part of you does not want to let it go, but indulge in the emotional fallout.

Why on earth would you hang on to emotional stress? The gist of it is that it maintains the status quo. At some point in life, probably before you can remember, you grew accustomed to a certain brand of emotional pain and your mind assimilated it as part of the deal. You developed a tolerance for it and perhaps even developed an identity around suffering.

Now, if you have not consciously come to terms with it, you trick yourself in to hanging on to the status quo. In fact, some people do not know who they'd be without their particular brand of emotional angst. The solution is to see the truth - that typical coping mechanisms for stress are actually a means to unwittingly prolong the agony.

Once you see how you trick yourself, you can stop doing it.

Here are five ways you trick yourself into hanging onto emotional pain.

So, you've walked in the door to a messy house and a self-absorbed, hobby-obsessed spouse. Here we go:

1. Outright denial. A sure way to keep your stress festering is to deny its existence. Just pretend you don't notice the messy house. When he asks how you're doing, tell him, "Oh, just fine." Make nice and completely bury your feelings. Hopefully you will forget all about it.

But you won't. It will eat at you. It will fester. It will turn into resentment that will pop out unexpectedly and create more stress. You have tricked yourself into carrying this one and adding it to the pile of other stressors you have denied.

2. Refusing to express. Ok, you have acknowledged to yourself that the messy house is a problem, but you won't speak up. You tell yourself that you shouldn't have to say anything or that he wouldn't care anyway. So, you mope around. When he asks what is wrong, you tell him, "Nothing."

"Ok, whatever," he says and returns to his silly hobby. You are still stuck in stress and now it is building.

3. The freak out. In this case, you swing the other way and let your emotions rip. You are righteously indignant, beside yourself in a rage and in his face.

This encourages him to get defend himself, accuse you of being insane and pretend he is no longer obligated to do anything for such a lunatic. Does this alleviate your stress or just invite more?

4. Making excuses. "He's been so busy lately. I don't blame him for ignoring the house. Besides, his boss is overbearing and I don't need to be adding to it. He's been wanting to do his hobby all week, so who am I to ruin it?"

Letting him off the hook by making excuses for him may help avoid a conflict, but won't ease your stress. The house is still a mess. He is still ignoring the problem. You've made excuses for him, so he is no longer obligated in your (conscious) mind. Now, you've just added the burden of cleaning the house to your list. Are you less stressed now, or more?

5. Sugar-coating. Mary Poppins sang, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down," but I don't think stress was the medicine she had in mind.

Just the same, sugar coating emotional stress makes it more tolerable. Believe it or not, human beings (including you) are masters at it. How could you sugar coat your husband's negligence?
Oh, the house is not that messy. It will just take me a little while to spruce up.

Look at him, so cute out there doing his little hobby. He's so sweet.

Well, I guess I just have to keep a positive attitude here, take charge and clean up this mess!

You've just made your stress tolerable, instead of dealing with it, like sugar-coating small doses of cyanide - it's easier to swallow that way.

If you catch yourself doing any of the above, ask yourself if it will really help to resolve your stress, or encourage you to hang on to stress. When you realize you are setting yourself up for more stress again and again, you may begin to see it as simple self-sabotage.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039365_emotional_stress_tricks_coping_mechanisms.html#ixzz2MkY4wBNo

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:08:00 +0000

Majority of kids with ADHD face mental health woes as adults, study shows

inShare1

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can face a lifetime of mental health challenges, according to a new long-term study.

The study tracked children with ADHD through the time they were adults, and found almost 60 percent of them had been diagnosed with at least one other psychiatric disorder. The authors say this study confirms that ADHD is a chronic, lifetime disorder for many adults.

"We suffer from the misconception that ADHD is just an annoying childhood disorder that's overtreated," study author Dr. William Barbaresi, associate chief of developmental medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, said in a written statement. "This couldn't be further from the truth."

ADHD is considered a common neurobehavioral disorder in children marked by being overactive, trouble paying attention and problems controlling impulsive behaviors. More than 5.4 million children between the ages of 4 and 17 were diagnosed of ADHD according to recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- that amounts to 9.5 percent of children and adolescents.

Many of the same problems children with ADHD experience are seen in adults, Barbaresi explained on CBS This Morning.

"It's just that those problems play out in the adult world of employment, education, adult relationships -- and unfortunately risk-taking behaviors," he said.

Researchers looked at a study pool of all children born in Rochester, Minn between 1976 and 1982 who lived in the city until they were at least 5 -- which allowed doctors to look at their medical records. That amounted to more than 5,700 children, which included nearly 370 who were diagnosed with ADHD, two-thirds of whom who received ADHD treatment as kids.

After following-up with the children through an average age of 27, the researchers determined that 29 percent of those who had ADHD as kids still had the disorder as adults, as confirmed through interviews with a psychiatrist. A closer look revealed 57 percent of children with ADHD had at least one other psychiatric disorder as adults, compared with 35 percent of control subjects who hadn't had the disorder as children. Substance abuse disorder, antisocial personality disorder, hypomanic episodes (such as what might occur when someone has bipolar disorder), generalized anxiety and major depression were the most common disorders found among participants who had been diagnosed with ADHD as kids.

Of kids with ADHD who still had the disorder as adults, 81 percent had at least one other psychiatric disorder, as compared with 47 percent of previously-diagnosed kids who no longer had ADHD as adults.

Ten children with ADHD had been arrested and were serving time, the researchers discovered. Seven of the children with ADHD died during the study, three from suicide. There were 37 total deaths among the children without ADHD, five of whom died from suicide.

The study was published online March 4 in Pediatrics.

Barbaresi argued these statistics provide a "best-case scenario" and that socioeconomic challenges could make outcomes worse for people with ADHD.

He calls on parents of kids with ADHD to ensure their children are getting high-quality treatment and remain in treatment as they enter adolescence, making sure they are getting screened for other associated problems like substance abuse and depression.

"The treatment needs to be by qualified individuals, it needs to start early, and...we need to reform our health care system so that we treat this as a chronic medical condition worthy of our attention -- for the long haul, and not just in children," he said on CBS This Morning.

Dr. J. Russell Ramsay, co-director of the University of Pennsylvania's adult ADHD treatment and research program in Philadelphia, told USA Today the study "is particularly telling because it used a community sample of children with ADHD followed to adulthood and not a clinical sample of individuals seeking treatment for their problems."

"It is chilling to see evidence, at least in this study, of the increased risk for death by suicide among children diagnosed with ADHD, with most of these tragic cases also having a history of substance abuse and at least one co-existing psychiatric diagnosis," said Ramsay, who was not involved in the research.

Dr. Mary Solanto, director of the ADHD Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, told Reuters that ADHD does not have to get in the way of success in adulthood.

"There are a lot of people who have had it that learned to cope and deal with it," said Solanto, who was not involved in the study. "But in order for that to happen, it's important to diagnose and treat it as soon as possible."

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:54:00 +0000

ur Unhealthy View of Mental Health (and Mental Illness)

Posted: 03/02/2013 2:52 pm

Mental Health , Mental Health Disorder , Mental Illness , Mental Illness Awareness , Impact News

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Mental illness. Two words that cause people to cast judgment or turn away. It is, perhaps, the ultimate example of a stigma. Society probably spends more time trying to ignore mental illness than to understand it. And that's not easy to do given how many people mental illness affects.

Of American adults, more than 25 percent (more than 57.5 million adults) experience a mental health disorder in a given year, but only 36 percent receive treatment.
Of 13-18 year-olds, more than 46 percent have or currently experience a mental disorder. Strikingly, 20 percent of all 13-18 year-olds have or have had "a seriously debilitating mental disorder," and only 36 percent of them receive treatment.

But recently, it's been nearly impossible to turn a blind eye to it. Why?
There's been a rash of events that saw the words "mental health" and "mental illness" (terms that I've consistently seen elicit a visceral and negative reaction, which we need to change) in our daily lives and discussions.
Silver Linings Playbook, the Sandy Hook massacre, Charles Dorner, and the gun control debate. The return of enlisted military personnel. Brain trauma and suicide in sports. Side Effects, a seeming outlier. Each is connected to mental illness, albeit in different ways. This swell of attention should help break down barriers and help de-stigmatize the issue, but we have to let it.
Here are six ways that our cultural and societal view of mental illness is unhealthy:
1. Silver Linings Playbook is a vivid and honest representation of someone struggling with bipolar disorder, from inpatient treatment to arguments about how many medications one person can take to prevent the recurrence of manic breaks. The movie conveys messages about mental health, but also more broadly as Harold Koplewicz Dr. observed, it shows that "it takes a lot of mutual support for people to be their best selves, whether or not mental illness is involved." Yet when Bradley Cooper travelled to Washington to discuss mental illness and mental health, we didn't hear about meetings with patients who suffer from bipolar disorder, but rather reports focused on a screening and meeting with veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. When he went onHardball, NPR, and on other shows, there seemed to be little talk about mental health. Instead discussions focused on football, Robert De Niro, Philadelphia, and so on. Bradley Cooper has spent time helping to understand mental illness and raise awareness of its prevalence. His intent is clear, as he's spoken about his hope that this movie will break down the stigma around mental illness. But there needs to be a more substantive, public discussion, not just in 30 second sound bites.
Cooper also participated in a panel discussion at the Center for American Progress, where he spoke about the need for increased public dialogue to remove the stigma and the importance of people coming to terms with the fact that mental illness is something that they can relate to and have more than likely experienced or witnessed. The event, however, also focused heavily on the "invisible wounds" of returning veterans. Again, the discussion was moved to a place beyond most people's everyday reality. Perhaps I am overly skeptical, but to me, focusing on a cause beyond our capacity to change -- invisible wounds -- is just one example of continuing the stigma when it comes to the majority of mental illnesses.
2. We gravitate towards issues beyond our grasp framing them in a manner that is easier to understand by providing a cause-and-effect lens, because it seems that society has an easier time "understanding" and "accepting" mental illness when it is about a specific group and mostly discussed around a specific issue. In this case, the group was veterans and active duty servicemen who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Just from observing conversations and coverage of the issue, there appears to be greater acknowledgement and acceptance of PTSD, especially for veterans, than of mental illness more generally. Why? Yes, they are heroes, but perhaps also because of the clear causality. The public understands they faced hardships the likes of which the vast majority of people never see -- it is a foreign experience (evoking "that would never happen to me" thoughts), but also one with an identifiable origin. For example, confrontation by enemy combatants caused an identifiable trauma that has resulted in a tangible mental illness, PTSD. And, we have also seen and heard stories about how people have been "cured" of PTSD or have overcome it. Society does not see it as an incurable, chronic condition like so many other mental health diagnoses. This is just one example of how when engaging the public about mental illness, we gravitate toward topics that are more "user-friendly."
3. Chris Dorner and Adam Lanza are just two representatives of another take on mental illness. From reading reports and listening to the gun control debate, mental illness is seen as at least a contributory, if not the primary, factor for the horrific acts of murder they both committed. And in Lanza's case the first reports would have had you believe that Asperger's Syndrome makes people dangerous. Not only tragically wrong, but offensive. The conclusion: mental illnesses or disorders make people dangerous. Not the guns, but the unstable individuals who somehow gain access to them. This is naïve at best, but regardless is highly prejudicial and flawed. These men do not represent "mental illness" and should not be our frame of reference. Yes, they suffered from mental illness, but their problems and compounding factors make them the exception. They must not be what we think of when we think of mental illness.
4. As for the gun control debate, recall that more than 1 in 4 adults in America has suffered from mental illness over the past year alone. So do we preclude more than 25 percent of the population from owning guns because they suffer from mental illness? Those who are against comprehensive gun control may try to walk back their sweeping statements by saying those with mental illnesses should not own guns and calling that a compromise. To be clear, I strongly support comprehensive gun control legislation, but this is a timely example of the flawed logic that many are using to shift the burden of fatality from the weapon and the owner wholly to the owner's mental state. That reasoning is flawed. Beyond gun control, people with mental illness who are being or have been treated and whose diagnosis is under control, in principle should not be precluded from an activity solely because of their mental illness. The Americans with Disabilities Act has grappled with this issue more broadly.
5. From Junior Seau's suicide to the death of three NHL players in three and a half months in 2011, it is hard to turn a blind eye to the relation between mental illness and elite athletes. These tragedies have led to a lot of discussion of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and mental illness. Often the suggestion is that the TBI leads to the mental illness, because if that were the case there would be a specific causal relationship, as with PTSD. A 2007 University of North Carolina study found a correlation between TBI and depression, but it showed no causality. There is some good news, throughout February, seven Canadian NHL teams have been working together to raise awareness about mental health. Hopefully next year American teams will take part. As Dr. Thelma Dye Holmes, Executive Director of Northside Center for Child Development, says in a great piece by William Rhoden, "Mental health has a stigma that is tied into weakness and is absolutely the antithesis of what athletes want to portray." This doesn't pertain just to sports. But, the real strength comes in seeking help. NFL player Brandon Marshall made this point writing, "In sports, those who show they are hurt or have mental weakness or pain are told: 'You're not tough. You're not a man. That's not how the players before you did it...' We must break the cycle, and that starts with prayer and by seeking help.'' We need to work together to promote the importance of seeking help.
6. And then most recently along comes Side Effects. (The film is an entertaining thriller and should be valued for those qualities.) Without spoiling the movie, in it depression, anxiety and dependence on psychopharmacology are seen as weaknesses. (Perhaps the drugs are not presented as beyond common experience. But then again the story is based in Manhattan where I've heard more than one discussion about what SSRIs someone has taken and how they have tried more than the other person -- as if it is a contest.) What is clear is that depression is seen as a burden and something that like any other ailment a pill can cure. An oversimplification of the issue, after all, people don't stop going to physical therapy because they can take Tylenol.
It is good to see discussion of mental health in the mainstream, and I hope this is just the beginning of a bigger discussion and growing awareness. I agree fully with Bradley Cooper and Brandon Marshall. We need a dialogue to de-stigmatize mental illness, and the best way to do that is to enable people to realize that it is something they literally face everyday. Perhaps if we come together and work together we can create a national conversation and further de-stigmatize mental illness.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:52:00 +0000

Skype revolutionizing mental health care

By Dr. Keith Ablow

The Mind of the News

Published February 28, 2013

FoxNews.com

Quietly, with almost no headlines, Skype has revolutionized the practice of psychiatry and psychology.
Doctors all over America are now meeting with their patients via Skype, instead of in person. And this may be just the beginning.
Related: Health care 24/7: New system allows patients to connect with docs online
Skype has folded down the walls of psychiatrists’ offices. It is allowing patients who previously would not have had access to talented mental health professionals in states far away from them, or to those literally in other countries, or to those 100 miles away, to choose from many of them.
It has dissolved some of the resistance to getting help from people who were loathe to drive an hour to see their therapists, then spend another hour talking, then drive an hour back to work or home. Now, they can turn on their laptops, sit in their offices or living rooms and get to the bottom of what is limiting them.
Skype allows people to vastly increase their ability to choose a well-regarded psychiatrist or psychologist, rather than one an easy drive away. This alone could create competition (based on excellence) in fields like mine that sorely need it.
I have a client in Italy, another in Kuwait, and another in Paris. I have counseled people in China, Russia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Great Britain. My friend, a talented psychologist about 20 years older than I am, has patients around the United States.
While I might have questioned the effectiveness of a Skype session compared to an in-person one, it turns out very little, if anything, seems to be lost. Sitting together has immediacy and warmth to recommend it, and going to see a healer can be a journey with spiritual power, but Skype has a few intriguing advantages of its own. When people speak to one another on Skype, they tend not to look away. Their faces are literally just a few feet from one another (on-screen).
This creates a surprisingly intense connection while addressing emotionally-charged topics, and when the commitment to address them is significant. And Skype can be available during the exact times when a person is suffering anxiety or feeling most depressed or struggling with an emotional issue or experiencing a moment of epiphany. If the doctor is available, then the session can begin. In seconds.
As my readers now know, most forms of technology don’t impress me. I think most are toxic. Facebook, particularly. But Skype, used for psychiatrists, psychologists and their patients, seems not to be. I even wonder whether using Skype to burrow to the core of the genuine, heartfelt matters troubling people is a bit of an antidote to the normally sterilizing and deadening effects that computers can have on people.
Skype for psychotherapy (and medication management, by the way) turned the Internet inside out—humanizing and intensifying it. Research studies comparing Skype sessions to in-person sessions would, of course, be welcome.
But here’s my initial diagnosis: Barring the good fortune to have an extremely talented psychiatrist or psychologist within a reasonable drive of me, if I needed a psychiatrist, I would pick the best one I could find, anywhere in the country (perhaps, anywhere in the world), and try using Skype to get help from that person.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:16:00 +0000

Top 30 Biggest Worries & Top 10 Symptoms of Worry

By Mike Bundrant
Beneden Health in the U.K. has produced a worthwhile study that shows the average person spends years of life wrapped in chronic worry.
The study shows that people spend an aeverage of 14 hours a week brooding over the weight, poor relationships, the cost of living and other stressors.
Many claim stress makes it impossible to concentrate at work, only adding to the worry. Additionally, an average of six night’s sleep per month were lost due to excessive worry.
Here are is the list of the top 30 biggest worries.

Top 30 Biggest Worries

1. Stomach/ being overweight
2. Getting old
3. Lack of savings/ financial future
4. Overall fitness
5. Overdrafts and loans
6. Low energy levels
7. Credit card debt
8. Paying rent/mortgage
9. Job security
10. Diet
11. Keeping the house clean
12. Finding a new job
13. Sex life
14. Generally unhappy
15. Wrinkles or ageing appearance
16. Whether or not I am attractive
17. Physique
18. Meeting work targets or goals
19. Does my partner still loves me
20. Whether I’ll find or / are am with the right partner
21. Whether I’m in the right career
22. Friend or family issues
23. Parenting skills
24. Unhealthy reliance or addiction
25. Driving
26. Pet’s health
27. Child’s health
28. Dress sense
29. Worrying I’m ill but yet to be tested/ seek help
30. Partner is cheating/may cheat

Most Common Effects of Worry

1. Sleepless nights
2. Lost confidence
3. Arguments with partner
4. Reduced appetite
5. Poor performance at work
6. Distance from partner
7. Avoided a social event
8. Increased alcohol consumption
9. Got a bit paranoid
10. Nausea

Time Spent Worrying

14.31 hours per week worrying
744 hours worrying a year
45, 243 hours of worry in a lifetime
1,885 days of worry in a lifetime
5.2 years of worry
Around 45% of those studied admitted stress and worry had directly affected their health.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:09:00 +0000

What Emotions and Cravings Have in Common

By Shannon Cutts
For years I have been subscribing to a correspondence course that focuses on different aspects of self-care and self-improvement.
I like to save the lessons. Sometimes I also like to go back and read them years later. When I do this I often discover they are just as fresh and insightful as they were when I first received them (which either means I haven’t learned anything or they are timeless. Personally, I prefer the latter interpretation).
Recently I read an old lesson about how to deal with cravings. The advice was simple – ignore them. They are like waves in the ocean – they arise and then they subside. For a moment I thought I had picked up the wrong lesson and was reading the one about how to deal with emotions instead.
It seems that great advice has many applications. Even better, I tried it on my cravings and it works just as well as it works on my emotions. Yahoo!!
As it turns out, emotions and cravings apparently share a common DNA. They both arise and subside. They both happen rather routinely. They both can encourage us to do or say things we later really wish we hadn’t.
And they both are quite manageable if we know what to do.
Interestingly, I can easily visualize a future where I feel totally fine and happy in my life without having to deal with any cravings at all. I might still have preferences, but I think I would be perfectly okay with this. Preferences feel more like choices or polite requests from me to me, while cravings feel like mean bullies.
But to never again feel emotions – to feel sad, joyful, angry, afraid or content – is actually kind of a scary contemplation to me. It’s not that I don’t vastly prefer some of those emotions to the others, but would I want to give up on feeling all emotions just to avoid some? I don’t think I would. I’m not even sure what it would be like to be a human being without feeling emotions from time to time. I’m also not sure it would be a healthy experience to pick and choose among my emotions like that.
However, I can foresee a time when having emotions will affect me in less intense ways. In fact, I think I am already experiencing this – when I was in the grips of an eating disorder, I felt numb all the time. Then I started recovering and I felt fragile all the time. Now I am in strong recovery and emotions are a part of my life, not absent or the sum total of my experience of being me.
So the signs of progress are there. Best of all, I now have a new enhanced understanding of cravings thanks to all the work I continue to do around emotions. When I see cravings as random – like waves – some big, some small, some wide, some narrow, some gentle and some violent – they are much less intimidating and much more interesting to work with.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:23:00 +0000

Six habits to breakout from:

1. Clinging to the status quo. Fighting change uses up energy you could put to better use. It's

like trying to cling to a rock as a tsunami roarsin instead running for high ground. One of the

toughest laws of the universe tells us, "you either expand, or you contract." You can't just

hover; you'll crash.

2. Blaming. The fixed idea that someone else determines the outcome of your life blocks

creativity. It sucks the life force right out of you. The more you are will to be responsible for,

the more freedom you have.

3. Resenting the success of others. It is very hard to attract to yourself what you condemn in

others.

4. Complaining. A little whining goes a long way. It turns people off. Not only that, it keeps

your focus on what you don't want. What you focus on grows!

5. Fear. Many people actually keep themselves in a state of fear and anxiety on purpose due to

the misguided belief that fear will help them avoid danger. Fear bombards their bodies with

adrenalin and wears them out to the point of giving up.

6. Shame. The belief that there is something shameful about loss and hardship is prevalent.

I've explored it with lots of people. It has never proved true.

Seven habits to cultivate:

1. Flexibility: You may have to move, downsize or expand. It can be a nightmare (if you do

not break out from the habits above) or a great adventure. Your choice.

2. Gratitude: Being aware of the miracles around us natures our sense of wonder. Feeling

grateful alters your private version of reality from one of lack to one of abundance and

blessings.

3. Looking for opportunities: One of my favorite quotes is, "What you see is mostly what you

look for." Keep an eye out for open doors in places you might not expect to find them.

4. Asking for help: Often a simple shame-blame-and-complaint-free request brings big

benefits. Friends, family and Facebook Friends are often glad to provide introductions, useful

advice, leads and other assistance if they know what you are looking for.

5. Learning: A return to school, some training in your field, working with a coach, a how-to

book, a master mind group, an exciting hour with Google - just for starts! So much to learn, so

little time. Learning about how to improve your financial health is fun and profitable.

6. Desire: Use your desire as a sense of direction. Follow it and your intense curiosity.

7. Break out from Limiting Beliefs: When you develop the habit of challenging any belief that

blocks happiness and success you move out of the prison of lack into the space of miracles.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:46:00 +0000

6 Ways to Achieve Eternal Happiness -- According to Science

What does science have to say about the pursuit of happiness? A lot.

February 26, 2013 |

The following article first appeared at io9:

Science has all the answers, right? Wrong. But it has a pretty good sense of things, a lot of the time*. So what does science have to say about the pursuit of happiness? A lot. Like, build-an-entire-industry-around-it, even-the-pseudo-scientific-stuff a lot.
So let's look at some of the more recent things science has had to say about happiness and how you can score some for yourself — including one tip that might actually work (and you won't even have to pay us to hear it).

1. Surround yourself with happy people

Or, at the very least, surround yourself with people who surround themselves with happy people. A longitudinal investigation conducted over 20 years in collaboration with the Framingham Heart Study revealed that shifts in individual happiness can cascade through social networks like an emotional contagion. That's right, happiness is kind of like a disease. (The researchers don't mean Facebook, btw, but physical, old-school networks — like live-in friends, partners and spouses; and siblings, friends and neighbors who live close by.)
"Most important from our perspective is the recognition that people are embedded in social networks and that the health and wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others," conclude the researchers, noting that the relationship between people's happiness was found to extend up to three degrees of separation (i.e. all the way to friends of friends of friends). "This fundamental fact of existence provides a fundamental conceptual justification for the specialty of public health. Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals."
Also worth noting: the researchers found sadness to be nowhere near as "infectious" as happiness.

2. Master a skill

This one is kind of a tradeoff: a study published in a 2009 issue of the 100% real Journal of Happiness Studies found that people who dedicate themselves to mastering a skill or ability tend to experience more stress in the moment, but reported greater happiness and satisfaction on an hourly, daily, and longterm basis as a result of their investment.
"No pain, no gain is the rule when it comes to gaining happiness from increasing our competence at something," said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University in a statement. "People often give up their goals because they are stressful, but we found that there is benefit at the end of the day from learning to do something well."

3. Self-government is key

The same study that found mastering a skill could bolster overall, longterm happiness found that the minute-to-minute stresses of mastering a skill could be lessened by self-direction and a sense of fellowship. "Our results suggest that you can decrease the momentary stress associated with improving your skill or ability by ensuring you are also meeting the need for autonomy and connectedness," explains Howell. "For example, performing the activity alongside other people or making sure it is something you have chosen to do and is true to who you are."

4. Smile for once

Darwin laid it out for us all the way back in 1872: "The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it," he wrote. And recent studies — involving botox, of all things — suggest he was onto something. SciAm's Melinda Wenner explains:

Psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic botox injections are happier, on average, than people who can frown. The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting botox injections. The botox recipients reported feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment's cosmetic nature.
"It would appear that the way we feel emotions isn't just restricted to our brain-there are parts of our bodies that help and reinforce the feelings we're having," says Michael Lewis, a co-author of the study. "It's like a feedback loop."

Either that, or botulism-to-the-face is like a shot of good feels? Let's just chalk this one up to smiling. Note that this is different from harboring feel-good happy-thoughts (more on that below).

5. Get therapy

First of all, a side note: if you think you might benefit from psychotherapy, but are too worried about what your friends and family will think, get over yourself and do it. Why? Because it works (especially if you find the form of therapy that's right for you).
Anyway: in an interesting twist on the age-old question of whether money makes people happy, psychologist Chris Boyce compared the cost-effectiveness of psychological therapy versus monetary compensation following instances of psychological distress. His findings, which were actually published in an economics journal, found therapy to be 32 times more cost effective at increasing happiness than cold, hard cash.
"Often the importance of money for improving our well-being and bringing greater happiness is vastly over-valued in our societies," notes Boyce. "The benefits of having good mental health, on the other hand, are often not fully appreciated and people do not realize the powerful effect that psychological therapy… can have on improving our well-being."

6. STOP IT. Stop trying to be happy.

If you take away one thing from this post, let this be it: to be happy, there's a decent chance you'll have to stop trying to be happy. Sorry to get all zen-master on you, but that's the way it is.
Nevermind the fact that measuring happiness is a lot like trying to weigh an idea in pounds and ounces. Yes, there are ways to gauge happiness, whether chemically or with a questionnaire, but when you get right down to it, "happiness" means different things to different people, and is one of the single most nebulous ideals in existence — and one of the biggest downsides to this truth is that setting a goal of happiness can actually backfire.
Some of the most important research on happiness to emerge in recent years stands in direct opposition to the cult of positivity typified by bullshit positive-thinking self-help books that place a lopsided emphasis on setting grand personal goals of happiness. In a review co-authored in 2011 by Yale psychologist June Gruber, researchers found that the pursuit of happiness can actually lead to negative outcomes — not because surrounding yourself with positive people, mastering a skill, smiling, getting therapy or practicing self-governance aren't conducive to happiness, in and of themselves, but because "when you're doing it with the motivation or expectation that these things ought to make you happy, that can lead to disappointment and decreased happiness," says Gruber.
So be the zen master. Stop trying to focus on becoming happier and just be. Surround yourself with people not to become happy, but to enjoy their company. Master a skill not to increase your happy feels, but to savor the process of becoming.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:53:00 +0000

Cuts in mental health services 'leaving people' stranded

The Green Party of England and Wales conference, meeting in Nottingham from 22-25 February 2013, condemned cuts to mental health services taking place around the country, warning that they are leaving people stranded.

In November 2012, mental health charity MIND published the results of three surveys showing that mental health services in the UK are overstretched, that people are not being assessed quickly enough and many people needing treatment are not getting access to services at all.

Now services that support mental health sufferers are being cut back further by local councils and health bodies in many parts of the country.

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Home Affairs spokesperson, proposed an emergency motion highlighting the impact of cuts to mental health services.

He declared: “Mental health problems are common and rising but people who need support are being left stranded by a severely overstretched system. People who have mental health problems should have easy access to professional support and treatment.

"Huge Government cuts to funding for local services mean that people have to fight to get access to services – the opposite of how mental health support should work. It’s crucial that the Government properly funds mental health services and treats mental health issues as seriously as other health problems.”

During the Greens' conference, new party leader Ms Natalie Bennett signed the party up to the 'Time To Change' campaign, which is raising awareness of mental health problems in order to tackle discrimination in society.

Ms Bennett explained: “Many people experience mental health difficulties at some point in their lives, with numbers increasing due to widening inequality and economic uncertainty in recent years.
"Despite this, mental health is something that we are not very good at talking about as a society. The Green Party is signing the Time to Change pledge to help create a positive shift in public attitudes towards mental health issues, to promote wellbeing, and to eradicate discrimination and stigma.

"Through working with 'Time to Change' we hope to be an example of best practice as an organisation that supports its staff and members’ mental health,” the Green leader concluded.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:02:00 +0000

Big Pharma Criminality no Longer a Conspiracy Theory: Bribery, Fraud, Price Fixing now a matter of public record

By Mike Adams

Those of us who have long been describing the pharmaceutical industry as a "criminal racket" over the last few years have been wholly vindicated by recent news.

Drug and vaccine manufacturer Merck was caught red-handed by two of its own scientists faking vaccine efficacy data by spiking blood samples with animal antibodies.

GlaxoSmithKline has just been fined a whopping $3 billion for bribing doctors, lying to the FDA, hiding clinical trial data and fraudulent marketing. Pfizer, meanwhile has been sued by the nation's pharmacy retailers for what is alleged as an "overarching anticompetitive scheme" to keep generic cholesterol drugs off the market and thereby boost its own profits.

The picture that's emerging is one of a criminal drug industry that has turned to mafia tactics in the absence of any real science that would prove their products to be safe or effective. The emergence of this extraordinary evidence of bribery, scientific fraud, lying to regulators and monopolistic practices that harm consumers is also making all those doctors and "skeptics" who defended Big Pharma and vaccines eat their words.

To defend Big Pharma today is to defend a cabal of criminal corporations that have proven they will do anything -- absolutely anything -- to keep their profits rolling in.

It makes no difference who they have to bribe, what studies they have to falsify, or who has to be threatened into silence. They will stop at nothing to expand their profit base, even if it means harming (or killing) countless innocents.

Let's take a look at recent revelations:

GlaxoSmithKline pleads guilty to bribery, fraud and other crimes

It what is now the largest criminal fraud settlement ever to come out of the pharmaceutical industry, GlaxoSmithKline has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1 billion in criminal fines and $2 billion in civil fines following a nine-year federal investigation into its activities.

According to U.S. federal investigators, GlaxoSmithKline

(http://www.naturalnews.com/036416_GlaxoSmithKline_fraud_criminal_char...):

• Routinely bribed doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs
• Fabricated drug safety data and lied to the FDA
• Defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of billions
• Deceived regulators about the effectiveness of its drugs
• Relied on its deceptive practices to earn billions of dollars selling potentially dangerous drugs to unsuspecting consumers and medical patients

And this is just the part they got caught doing. GSK doesn't even deny any of this. The company simply paid the $3 billion fine, apologized to its customers, and continued conducting business as usual.

By the way, in addition to bribing physicians, GSK has plenty of money to spread around bribing celebrities and others who pimps its products. The company reportedly paid $275,000 to the celebrity doctor known as "Dr. Drew," who promoted Glaxo's mind-altering antidepressant drug Wellbutrin (http://naturalsociety.com/top-radio-doctor-paid-by-glaxosmithkline-to...).

As the Wall Street Journal reports:

In June 1999, popular radio personality Dr. Drew Pinsky used the airwaves to extol the virtues of GlaxoSmithKline PLC's antidepressant Wellbutrin, telling listeners he prescribes it and other medications to depressed patients because it "may enhance or at least not suppress sexual arousal" as much as other antidepressants do. But one thing listeners didn't know was that, two months before the program aired, Dr. Pinsky -- who gained fame as "Dr. Drew" during years co-hosting a popular radio sex-advice show "Loveline" -- received the second of two payments from Glaxo totaling $275,000 for "services for Wellbutrin."

(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230393340457750503200685...)

Merck falsified vaccine data, spiked blood samples and more, say former employees

According to former Merck virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, the company: (http://www.naturalnews.com/036328_Merck_mumps_vaccine_False_Claims_Ac...)

• "Falsified test data to fabricate a vaccine efficacy rate of 95 percent or higher."

• Spiked the blood test with animal antibodies in order to artificially inflate the appearance of immune system antibodies.

• Pressured the two virologists to "participate in the fraud and subsequent cover-up."

• Used the falsified trial results to swindle the U.S. government out of "hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization."

• Intimidated the scientists, threatening them with going to jail unless they stayed silent.

This is all documented in a 2010 False Claims Act which NaturalNews has acquired and posted here:http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents/Merck-False-Claims-Act.p...

Millions of children put at risk by Merck

In that document the two virologists say they, "witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine's efficacy findings."

They also claim that because of the faked vaccine results, "the United States has over the last decade paid Merck hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization... The United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck's fraud."

They go on to point out that children are the real victims, however:

"But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection. ...The failure in Merck's vaccine has allowed this disease to linger with significant outbreaks continuing to occur."

Merck's mumps viral strain is 45 years old!

According to the complaint, Merck has been using the same mumps strain -- weakened from generations of being "passaged" -- for the last 45 years! The complaint reads:

"For more than thirty years, Merck has had an exclusive license from the FDA to manufacture and sell a mumps vaccine in the U.S. The FDA first approved the vaccine in 1967. It was developed by Dr. Maurice Hilleman, at Merck's West Point research facility, from the mumps virus that infected his five year-old daughter Jeryl Lynn. Merck continues to use this 'Jeryl Lynn' strain of the virus for its vaccine today."

A complete medical farce

This information appears to show Merck's mumps vaccine to be a complete medical farce. Those who blindly backed Merck's vaccines -- the science bloggers, "skeptics," doctors, CDC and even the FDA -- have been shown to be utter fools who have now destroyed their reputations by siding with an industry now known to be dominated by scientific fraud and unbounded criminality.

That's the really hilarious part in all this: After decades of doctors, scientists and government authorities blindly and brainlessly repeating the mantra of "95% effectiveness," it all turns out to be total quackery hogwash. Utterly fabricated. Quackety-quack quack. And all those hundreds of millions of Americans who lined up to be injected with MMR vaccines were all repeatedly and utterly conned into potentially harming themselves while receiving no medical benefit.

Intelligent, informed NaturalNews readers, home school parents, and "awakened" people who said "No!" to vaccines are now emerging as the victors in all this. By refusing to be injected with Merck's vaccines, they avoided being assaulted with a fraudulent cocktail of adjuvant chemicals and all-but-useless mumps strains over four decades old. They protected their time, money and health. Those who refuse to be physically violated by vaccines are, once again, turning out to be the smartest people in society. No wonder they also tend to be healthier than the clueless fools who line up to get vaccinated every year.

Merck fraudulently misrepresented the efficacy of its vaccine and contributed to the spread of infectious disease, says lawsuit

The faked vaccine efficacy numbers aren't the only troubles Merck is now facing. Shortly after the above False Claims Act was made public, Chatom Primary Care filed suit against Merck. That document is available from NaturalNews at:http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents/Chatom-Lawsuit-Merck-Mum...

It alleges that:

• [Merck engaged in] ...a decade-long scheme to falsify and misrepresent the true efficacy of its vaccine.

• Merck fraudulently represented and continues to falsely represent in its labeling and elsewhere that its Mumps Vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent of higher.

• Merck knows and has taken affirmative steps to conceal -- by using improper testing techniques and falsifying test data -- that its Mumps Vaccine is, and has been since at least 1999, far less than 95 percent effective.

• Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck's desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study's findings.

• Merck also engaged in "incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results... destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator... threatened a virologist in Merck's vaccine division with jail if he reported the fraud to the FDA."

• "Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck's desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study's findings. [Then] Merck designed even more scientifically flawed methodology, this time incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results, but it too failed to achieve Merck's fabricated efficacy rate. Confronted with two failed methodologies, Merck then falsified the test data to guarantee the results it desired. Having achieved the desired, albeit falsified, efficacy threshold, Merck submitted these fraudulent results to the FDA and European Medicines Agency."

• "Merck took steps to cover up the tracks of its fraudulent testing by destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator... Merck also attempted to buy the silence and cooperation of its staff by offering them financial incentives to follow the direction of Merck personnel overseeing the fraudulent testing process. Merck also threatened... Stephen Krahling, a virologist in Merck's vaccine division from 1999 to 2001, with jail if he reported fraud to the FDA."

• "Merck continued to conceal what it knew about the diminished efficacy of its Mumps Vaccine even after significant mumps outbreaks in 2006 and 2009."

Obama administration has zero interest in actual justice

Another interesting note in all this is that under President Obama, the U.S. Dept. of Justice showed no interest whatsoever in investigating Merck over the False Claims Act filed by two of its former virologists. Despite the convincing evidence of fraud described in detail by insider whistleblowers, the Obama Department of Justice, led by gun-running Attorney General Eric Holder who is already facing serious questions over Operation Fast and Furious, simply chose to ignore the False Claims Act complaint.

When evidence of criminal fraud was brought before the U.S. Department of Justice, in other words, the DoJ looked the other way with a wink and a nod to the medical crimes taking place right under their noses. Who cares if tens of millions of children are being injected year after year with a fraudulent mumps vaccine? There's money to be made, after all, and exploiting the bodies of little children for profit is just business as usual in a fascist nation dominated by corporate interests.

Pfizer sued by retailers over anticompetitive scheme

Adding to all this, Pfizer has now been sued by five U.S. retailers (pharmacies) who accuse the company of monopolistic market practices. According to the lawsuit, Pfizer conspired to prevent generic versions of its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor from entering the market. This was done to protect billions in profits while making sure patients did not have access to more affordable cholesterol drugs. Pfizer sells nearly $10 billion worth of Lipitor each year.

According to the Reuters report on this lawsuit, Pfizer is being accused of (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/05/us-pfizer-walgreen-lipitor-...):

• Obtaining a fraudulent patent
• Engaging in sham litigation
• Entering a price-fixing agreement to delay cheaper generics
• Entering arrangements with pharmacy benefit managers to force retailers to buy more Lipitor (chemical name is atorvastatin calcium)

No arrests or prosecution of Big Pharma executives

One of the most astonishing realizations in all this is that given all the criminal fraud, bribery, misrepresentation, lying to the FDA, price fixing and other crimes that are going on in the pharmaceutical industry, you'd think somebody somewhere might be arrested and charged with a crime, right?

Nope.

To date, not a single pharmaceutical CEO, marketing employee or drug rep has been charged with anything related to all this fraud. In America, drug company employees are "above the law" just like top mafia bosses of a bygone era.

How insane is this, exactly? Consider this:

Imagine if YOU, an individual, went around town bribing doctors, falsifying data, selling a fraudulent product to the government, lying to regulators, engaging in anti-trade price-fixing and threatening your employees into silence. What would happen to you?

You'd probably wind up rotting in prison, the subject of an FBI investigation and a DoJ prosecution.

So why is it okay for a multi-billion-dollar corporation to carry out these same crimes and get away with it? Why are the CEOs of top drug companies given a free pass to commit felony crimes and endless fraud?

I'll tell you why, and you're not gonna like the answer: Because America has become a nation run by crooks for the benefit of crooks. It's one big country club, and as comedian George Carlin used to say, "YOU ain't in it!"

If Big Pharma would falsify data on vaccines, what else would the industry do?

I hope you're getting the bigger picture in all this, friends. If these drug companies routinely bribe doctors, falsify data, defraud the government and commit felony crimes without remorse, what else would they be willing to do for profit?

Would they:

• Falsify efficacy data on other prescription drugs?
• Exploit children for deadly vaccine trials?
• Invent fictitious diseases to sell more drugs?
• Unleash bioweapons to cause a profitable pandemic?
• Conspire with the CDC to spread fear to promote vaccinations?
• Silence whistleblowers who try to go public with the truth?
• Give people cancer via stealth viruses in vaccines?
• Destroy the careers of medical scientists who question Big Pharma?
• Force a medical monopoly on the entire U.S. population via socialist health care legislation?

But of course they would. In fact, the industry is doing all those things right now. And if you don't believe me, just remember that five years ago, no one believed me when I said drug companies were engaged in criminal conspiracies to defraud the nation -- something that has now been proven over a nine-year investigation.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:56:00 +0000

Childhood bullying led to range of psychiatric disorders in adulthood

Copeland WE. JAMA Psychiatry. 2013;doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.504.

February 20, 2013

Both bullies and bullying victims during childhood and adolescence were at an increased risk, sometimes dramatically, for psychiatric disorders in young adulthood, according to recent study results.
“For clinicians working with children, this means that asking, ‘How are you getting on with your peers?’ should be part of every assessment, just as it is to ask, ‘How are you getting along with you parents?’ For those working with adults, this means asking about whether bullying was an issue growing up. If a clinician wants to understand why a client is struggling emotionally, then they need to take bullying and assessment of bullying seriously.”

William E. Copeland

Copeland and colleagues examined the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among 1,420 young adults aged 19 to 26 years who had been victims of bullying and/or bullied peers during childhood and adolescence. Participants were assessed for bullying when they were aged 9 to 16 years, and were classified as bullies only, victims only, or bullies and victims — referred to as “bullies/victims.” Psychiatric disorders in young adulthood, which ranged from antisocial behavior to suicidality, were assessed via structured interviews and based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria.
Results indicated that victims of bullying were more likely to have bullied others (OR=2.9; 95% CI, 2.0-4.1). Copeland and colleagues found that both victims and bullies/victims had elevated rates of young adult psychiatric disorders, and both groups also had elevated rates of childhood psychiatric disorders and family hardships. Therefore, the researchers controlled for childhood factors, finding that victims still had a higher prevalence of agoraphobia (OR=4.6; 95% CI, 1.7-12.5), generalized anxiety (OR=2.7; 95% CI, 1.1-6.3) and panic disorder (OR=3.1; 95% CI, 1.5-6.5).
Compared with those who were not involved in bullying, bullies/victims were more likely in young adulthood to have depression (OR=4.8; 95% CI, 1.2-19.4) and panic disorder (OR=14.5; 95% CI, 5.7-36.6); female bullies/victims were more likely to have agoraphobia (OR=26.7; 95% CI, 4.3-52.5); and male bullies/victims were more likely to exhibit suicidal behavior (OR=18.5; 95% CI, 6.2-55.1). Bullies were at an increased risk for antisocial personality disorder only (OR=4.1; 95% CI, 1.1-15.8).
According to Copeland and colleagues, there may be a number of reasons peer victimization may lead to emotional disorders and suicidality, including changes to physiological or cognitive responses to stress and threatening situations, or even gene–environment interaction. However, effective preventive strategies are needed to mitigate those long-term effects of bullying and to create safer environments for children and adolescents.
“Bullying can be easily assessed and monitored by health professionals and school personnel, and effective interventions that reduce victimization are available,” they wrote. “Such interventions are likely to reduce human suffering and long-term health costs and provide a safer environment for children to grow up in.”
Disclosure: Copeland reports no relevant financial disclosures.

Perspective

Robert J. Hilt

Although bullying is increasingly viewed as a childhood experience with long-term negative consequences, research supporting this association has been slow to develop. The article by Copeland et al is a significant addition to our knowledge base about bullying consequences due to its prospective, population-based design and breadth of data available to control for confounding variables. Essentially, this new analysis of the Great Smoky Mountain dataset shows that being both a victim and perpetrator of bullying is strongly associated with multiple adult mental health disorders, and being a victim of bullying without also being a perpetrator was significantly but less strongly associated with adult mental health disorders. Being a bully without also being a victim was strongly associated with antisocial personality disorder as an adult but not other mental health disorders. The importance of this study was that after controlling for other confounding variables, including childhood psychiatric disorders and family hardships, the observed negative outcomes of bullying remained.

Robert J. Hilt, MD
Psychiatric Annals Editorial Board member
Seattle Children’s Hospital

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:43:00 +0000

3 Surefire Ways to Change Your Energy

How would you define energy? Is it the caffeinated overdrive feeling that gets you through the day or the electrical current charging your laptop? Contemporary thought leader and "Super Soul Sunday" guest Panache Desai offers new ways to bring yourself back.

Whether you are currently in the midst of a challenging crisis or are perpetually plateaued, you have the ability to shift whatever is going down by amping up or expanding your energy. If you are content with everything in your life, then you have nothing to worry about. Keep doing what you're doing. However, if you are ready to start playing with possibility, these three surefire solutions will change your energy and transform the way you experience yourself and your life.

1. Go with the FlowAfter sleeping through the alarm clock, your children missed the bus, so you drove them to school. While running into the office late for a meeting with your boss, you realize you left the lunch boxes on the kitchen counter. You could spend the entire day at work blaming yourself for being a bad mother or you can learn how to go with the flow.

Your emotions are energy in motion, naturally wanting to move through your body. The optimal state is flow. Anytime you judge your feelings as bad or wrong—anger, embarrassment, sadness or fear—that judgment inhibits the flow of energy. If you shut down the emotions you deem as negative, over time you turn off your energetic flow, which creates heaviness and stagnation inside your body. How do you get in the flow? Self-acceptance opens you up, allowing emotional energy to move. Get into the habit of feeling and loving every emotion as it arises until it subsides. So when you begin to beat yourself up for getting angry—or having any other negative emotion—stop, slow down and breathe until the intensity of the feeling diminishes. The conscious recognition of your breath anchors you in present-moment awareness and opens the flow of energy.

2. Be in the Company of the TruthThe people in your life can have a significant impact on your energy, some for the worse—the complainer sister, the creepy co-worker, that ex-boyfriend with the road rage. Whenever you spend time with any of these folks, you feel depressed, exhausted and drained. But a midweek phone call from your best friend, a date night with your husband or a long walk with the dog makes everything feel right with the world again.

Vibrational energy can be tangibly felt, and people are just like tuning forks. A tuning fork creates a sound wave that vibrates a pure tone at a single frequency. If you have two tuning forks and strike one, the vibration will carry to the other, and both will vibrate at the same tone. When you are in proximity to someone with a higher vibrational resonance, your energy will accelerate. The more time you spend with people who prefer to complain or judge or engage in power struggles, the more likely it is that you will vibrate at the level of judgment and criticism. Your energy will decelerate, and you will feel exhausted, stressed and drained.

What are you getting out of spending time with people who drag you down? What's the real reason you choose to have lunch with Debbie Downer? Perhaps she makes you feel better about yourself because she seems worse off than you. It's time to take responsibility for the individuals you want to spend time with and how you want to show up in the world. By being with openhearted and truly authentic people, you become a catalyst for your own transformation.

3. Accept Everything (for 3 Minutes) When you connect to a place of stillness, you access a state of allowing for that precious pause—you leave the hamster wheel of doing. However, this is not a pass to sit on your sofa and snooze the day away. This is an invitation to allow energy to flow that may have gotten inadvertently stuck. Your goal is three minutes of absolute relaxation and profound acceptance every day. You can do this before you get out of bed each morning, in the shower or out in the hallway after a stressful situation. Start by saying to yourself, "I accept..." Then, fill in the blank with whatever is going on in your life in that moment. By making this a daily practice, you take yourself out of self-judgment, begin to recognize the sacredness of yourself and restore your true nature.

Spiritual teacher Panache Desai travels the globe providing experiential programs and inspired-living workshops as well as producing a monthly live webcast series empowering people to free themselves from pain, suffering, sadness and self-limiting beliefs. To learn more, visit PanacheDesai.com.
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Panache-Desai-3-Surefire-Ways-to-Change-Your-Energy/2#ixzz2Los6BWEt

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 09:40:00 +0000

Are psych drugs to blame for high rates of teen suicide?

Sunday, February 24, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039222_psych_drugs_suicide_teenagers.html#ixzz2Lo9kwTdQ

(NaturalNews) A new study has provided a sobering, if not shameful, statistic that ought to be a wake-up call for lawmakers and public health policymakers all around the country: one in 25 teenagers in the United States attempts to commit suicide, a fact that is increasingly being blamed on psychotropic drugs which are being prescribed by the truckloads.

The study, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Psychiatry, doesn't give a precise reason for why so many of our teenagers are trying to take their own lives but, according to Heidi Stevenson at Gaia Health, the study "does give a telling clue - and that clue leads directly to the doorstep of modern psychiatry."

For one thing, she notes, the study reads like a "marketing tool for the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV," which is the psychiatric field's diagnostic bible:

The vast majority of adolescents with these behaviors meet lifetime criteria for at least one DSM-IV mental disorder assessed in the survey. ... The most consistently significant associations of these disorders are with suicide ideation, although a number of disorders are also predictors of plans and both planned and unplanned attempts among ideators.

It's not like those with suicidal tendencies aren't being treated

Stevenson says that while the authors of the study are adept at assigning teens with psych diagnoses, they don't point out that the standard of treatment for those teens, regardless of the diagnosis, is virtually the same: psychotropic medications.

In addition, she says, the authors don't adequately address another important issue, which is that the drugs are known to cause suicides and thoughts of suicides. In fact, Stevenson says, "they don't even consider it" as a contributing factor.

The authors are clear; however, on one point - that suicide isn't a problem due to a lack of psychological treatment. But they don't say that suicides could be a problem as a direct result of being treated with psychotropic medications.

"Virtually everyone they see gets slapped with a label from the DSM, the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, the so-called bible of psychiatry because it's the list of disorders that psychiatrists use to label people and get payment from insurance companies," writes Stevenson.

The study says after teens are labeled with a diagnosis, they are generally prescribed at least one medication but often more than one. If the patients return stating the drugs did not help then psychiatrists tend to simply ramp up the dosage or add even more drugs. Occasionally, medications that are ineffective are discontinued but not very often.

The study was based on the NCS-A - National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement - survey of 10,148 adolescents aged 13-17. Of those, researchers found 6,483 parent-adolescent pairs from whom they were able to obtain interviews.

In the end, researchers found that four percent of teens attempt to kill themselves; that broke down to one in 25 teens, or at least one teen in every classroom.

"For all their ability to slap labels on people, their ability to help is clearly lacking," Stevenson observes, noting that the study's authors admit:

[I]t is noteworthy that suicidal adolescents typically enter treatment before rather than after the onset of suicidal behaviors. ... It is clear, though, that treatment does not always succeed in this way because the adolescents in the NCS-A who received treatment prior to their first attempt went on to make an attempt anyway.

Mass murderers also linked to psychotropic drug use

What's more noteworthy is the fact that the authors found that 55-77 percent of teens who attempted suicide had already been labeled with a diagnosis and were under treatment. The study essentially demonstrates that psychiatrists are fundamentally flawed when it comes to suicide prevention because, Stevenson writes, "there was nothing to indicate that diagnosis and treatment managed to prevent any suicides."

If that percentage of teens are attempting suicide after treatment has begun, "then it's likely the treatment itself is fueling this epidemic," she says.

Such drugs are being blamed for contributing to, if not causing outright, a spate of mass murders over the past few years in places like Fort Hood, Texas, Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn.

According to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, at least 14 recent shootings at schools have been committed by someone taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs. The results are telling: 58 killed, 109 wounded. In other school shootings, "information about their drug use was never made public - neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs," CCHRI said.

Sources:

http://gaia-health.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1555602

http://www.naturalnews.com/027425_drug_drugs_shooting.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039222_psych_drugs_suicide_teenagers.html#ixzz2Lo9IyDYo

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:11:00 +0000

When You Don’t Love Your Body Or Yourself

By Margarita Tartakovsky, MS

{via etsy by Tamara Lee}

When I published my post on self-love on Thursday, one reader mentioned that she wished she could believe my words. That we are love, always.

I can relate to this wishing. I’ve been in a similar space oh-so many times. For years my self-worth was wrapped around my weight, and my accomplishments.
One mistake would undo my sense of self. You’re so stupid. Only you’d make that mistake. What’s wrong with you?

In my own eyes, I was only deserving of love and care if I earned it. Those were the stories my mind would spin. Over and over. A merry-go-round of insults, shoulds and disappointments.

My self-care was virtually non-existent. I wasn’t even familiar with the term.
But here’s an important fact: You don’t have to love or even like yourself fully to treat yourself well, or at the very least, to tend to your needs.
It’s like what Therese Borchard told me about exercise for a piece I’m writing on self-care and depression. She stressed the importance of regular movement, which has antidepressant properties. She said: “I think sometimes we have to lead with the body, and the mind will follow.”
When it comes to self-care and self-love, I think sometimes we have to lead with the body, too — with action, that is — and then our minds will catch up.
We can lead with nourishing activities, and then the broken relationship with ourselves can start to heal.
Roberto Olivardia told me something similar about ADHD and motivation: “If we believe that we have to ‘feel like doing something’ in order to do it, we might not get anything done. If we simply just begin a task, we can become more motivated as the task is in action.”
In other words, we don’t need to feel stacks of self-acceptance to fulfill our needs. Of course, it’s great if we have that, and it’s something important to work on. But in the meantime, we can focus on action. And, again, our minds will follow.
We can build our lives around self-care. And we can keep practicing and practicing. We can simply start, without feeling particularly motivated. We can take a first step, and then a second.
And, before we know it, we might even have a self-care routine. Because self-care, while tough at first, feels good. It boosts our mood, feeds our soul and re-energizes us. It replenishes an otherwise empty well.
Here are some ideas to start tending to your needs and being kinder, regardless of how you feel about your body or yourself.
– Instead of beating yourself up, cope with failure constructively.
– Be mindful of the moment. As Christina Rosalie said in our self-love series:

Remembering to breathe, and bringing awareness to the moment at hand and really deeply observing: my strong legs, my steady heart beating, my clear eyes that are able to take in the pale sky and the snow melt falling from the gutters, the latte in my hands, or my pen.
When I do this, it gives me context and space to shift focus again back out into the world, and towards whatever I am doing in a way that offers more perspective.

– Consider how you’d treat a close friend — and treat yourself that way.
– Capture the bits of your day that bring you joy.
– Play more.
– Think of your favorite way to move, and start there.
– Create one thing.
– Marvel at the miracle of life.
– Take care of your basic needs.
– Start a soothing bedtime routine.
– Set one boundary, and think of how you’ll preserve it.
– Avoid weighing yourself, and toss the scale. (It feels pretty darn amazing and liberating.)
– Take a minute to visualize your sanctuary. This excerpt comes from the book Five Good Minutes: 100 Morning Practices to Help You Stay Calm & Focused All Day Long.

Sitting or lying down, place your hand on your abdomen and inhale and exhale, deeply and slowly. Visualize a meadow with a small creek running through it. You are wading in a babbling brook, and you can hear the wind and the birds overhead. The current tugs gently at your ankles. Recognize the rhythm of your breathing. As you inhale, say the word ‘warm’ aloud. Imagine the warmth of the sun and water around your body. As you exhale, say the word ‘heavy’ to yourself. Allow yourself to reach a comfortable and soothing place from within.

– Spend time getting to know yourself better.
– See a therapist. They can help you heal your body image issues and build a healthier relationship with yourself.
What’s one step you’ll take today to tend to your needs? What stands in the way of your self-acceptance or self-care? What brings you joy?

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:05:00 +0000

7 Tips to Avoid Personalizing Rejection

By Alice Boyes, PhD

Your boss calls you in to her office to complain about something you overlooked in a project you just completed. You’re off the project. It feels like all of the hard work and effort evaporated with just that one problem.

Or your professor asks to speak to you after class for a moment. He suggests that maybe you’re not really cut out for the major you’ve chosen in college, and hints that maybe another major would suit you better.

Your boyfriend calls and says that you and he need to talk. He’s breaking up with you, after what you thought were two pretty good years together. Sure, you fought from time to time, but what couple doesn’t argue?

We all have times when we find it difficult to avoid making too much of our mistakes and perceived failures. But how do you not take rejection personally? How do you not feel like your world is crashing down around you?

Below are seven ways to avoid personalizing errors and rejection.

Not taking rejection personally is a skill you can learn, just like any other coping skill. These tips can help get you started.

Don’t catastrophize criticism. If you get a rejection, it doesn’t mean you’re never going to be successful. If you get negative feedback on a piece of work, it doesn’t mean you have no capacity to become better at it or that you’re not talented.If you find yourself personalizing rejection or negative feedback, ask yourself whether you’re catastrophizing — blowing it up into far bigger of a deal than it is.

Be gentler to yourself about your imperfections, mistakes, and times when you’re not as good at something as you’d like to be. If you can learn to be nicer to yourself about your imperfections, you won’t automatically jump to feeling attacked when other people make comments.

Frame taking rejection well as a positive goal. For example, frame refusing to personalize at work as part of being professional and robust. Recognize that demonstrating your ability to accept negative feedback likely will bring you accurate feedback. When people worry about hurting your feelings, they are more likely to provide confusing feedback.

Learn to label your emotions accurately. Emotions drive thoughts as much as thoughts drive emotions.
What emotions trigger personalizing for you? Some common ones include anxiety, embarrassment, disappointment and anger.If you can label your emotional reactions accurately, you can then focus on doing some appropriate self-care to deal with that emotion. Once the emotion subsides, so will the personalizing.
Often, appropriate self-care for emotions just involves accepting that you’re having the emotion and patiently waiting for it to pass. The things people do to try to “get rid of” their emotions usually end up causing more harm than good.

Put yourself in situations in which rejection is likely but doesn’t have any major negative consequences. Doing things such as making requests when you expect you might be told “no” will help you learn that rejection often isn’t personal. Learning through doing behavioral experiments is the best way to change thoughts.

Don’t be overly eager to please because you’re afraid of being disliked. People who personalize often have attachment anxiety. If you act overly eager to please, you’ll just end up believing that it’s the only way to be accepted. Be warm but have good boundaries.

Believe in your capacity to become someone who doesn’t excessively personalize things. I see a lot of people who seem to have accepted that they’re doomed to a lifetime of being the way they’ve always been. You can change your cognitive style.

noreply@blogger.com (Cynthia Curry) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:02:00 +0000

Therapy Is Not For Wimps

By Gerti Schoen, MA, LP
Most people who seek psychotherapy believe that they are weak, that their life force has been shaken to the core, that they can’t face the world and its challenges.

But it’s quite the opposite. Daring to look at oneself and one’s imperfections really is an act of heroism.

Most of us don’t like to admit that we often are in need: we crave to be in a loving relationship, grow roots and find stability in a community, want the security of having a financial cushion and so on.

So much of our self exploration focuses on our needs and how we can avoid the pitfalls of never saying no to anyone.

And not just that. Sometimes we are weak. When our child is in pain and we can’t help, we feel each pang of that pain with them. When we are exhausted and run down, we don’t have it in us to stand up to whoever we feel treats us unfairly.

Defeat cannot always be averted. All there is to do is to admit that we have failed. There is no way to pretend otherwise. We need to be able to face the truth of our human existence.

Admitting to feeling vulnerable and confused automatically takes the aggression out of a fight. Saying calmly “that really hurt me” or “I just don’t have it in me” deflects anger and opens the door for dialogue and cooperation.

It avoids defensiveness and the typical downward spiral of self righteousness and stonewalling.

Seeing our weaknesses enables us to move past them, because we first have to become aware of our limitations before we can try to do something about it.

Knowing that we are vulnerable makes compassion with others possible. Everyone appreciates compassion, kindness and gentleness.

Every feeling is temporary. All things must pass, as George Harrison said. And there will be an end to feeling weak and incapacitated too.

It’s all part of the human experience. The sooner we can accept that, the easier we will move past it.

photo credit: CarbonNYC