More on conference... · 60 days ago
On April 18th, I attended the First Annual Undergraduate Psychology Conference. I came for the Welcoming Remarks, the Employer Panel, and the Keynote address by Dr. Scioli.
William Gunn, President , NHPA opened with some interesting remarks. The fundamental crux of his advice was that as upcoming members of the psychological community it is critical that we not pigeonhole ourselves into what we perceive as our life path, but to follow our experiences where they lead us. In other words, most undergrads enter into the field thinking that they are doing so in order to help/counsel people and to start a private practice. However, time, learning and experience lead towards unforeseen experiences which may lead in radically different directions, statistical analysis for advertising companies, for example. I found this information positive advice for undergrads based on my own life experience. I entered college as an English major, spent 10 years as a plastics chemist, 2 years as a sheep farmer in New Zealand, and 2 years as a social worker. It has been a winding, unpredictable path, but it has zeroed me in on my passion. instead of fighting the current and ending up unhappy in a job I thought I would love, I went with the flow and am happy and feel that I have direction.
The Employer Panel was a bit tedious. The majority of the speakers were not from a psychological background, but an employment one and as such could only speak to job numbers and salaries. Though the fact that mental health jobs are showing an increase in the next five years is encouraging, I was hoping to hear more about how to find the right fit job, getting into doing what you love. I sympathize with the students who are looking at salary in that they have spent the last four years working towards getting a good job, but I felt the conference, given its psychological nature, would be encouraging job promotion based on life satisfaction over dollars.
Dr. Scioli’s lecture was very engaging. I have always admired his ability to bridge the gap between psychoanalytic “philosophical” psychology and hard science research psychology.
Two main elements I found intellectually engaging were:
1)He described his aversion to medicalizing Hope, ie- creating a “hope boosting” pill, by stating that though a drug would alleviate the anxiety related to hopelessness or an inability to be hopeful it wouldn’t create learning. He posits that we need to be challenged and overcome that challenge in order to learn and grow. Similar to myth, we must face obstacles with which we are tested and prove ourselves and in doing so, truly heal. It was an interesting way to frame the anti-medicalization argument of mental healthcare.
2) The idea that contemporary therapy techniques are left brain, logic focused. Behavioral, Cognitive, and Dialectic treatments only address one hemisphere of our brain. He argues that we should utilize movie, music, art, and creativity in conjunction with the left brain treatments to achieve a left/right brain healing- in otherwords a more emotionally wholistic approach to mental health.
As I found with his Personality Theory class, he always leaves you with something to ponder.
Overall, I thought the conference was a nice first shot. Were I to offer advice for the future conferences, I think I would like more Q&A time with people from the broad spectrum of psychology talking about their experiences with what they do and why they do it. I know kids are thinking about the practicality of work, but it is more important in my estimation for them to see that its better to make less and love what you do more than to do whatever it takes to get the “big bucks”.
Psych Conference · 76 days ago
Professor Scioli’s lecture at the Psych conference today raised some interesting points on his theory of Hope as well as some deeper issues relating to our approach to psychology.
The two concepts which stuck out to me were:
1) He described his aversion to medicalizing Hope, ie- creating a “hope boosting” pill, by stating that though a drug would alleviate the anxiety related to hopelessness or an inability to be hopeful it wouldn’t create learning. He posits that we need to be challenged and overcome that challenge in order to learn and grow. Similar to myth, we must face obstacles with which we are tested and prove ourselves and in doing so, truly heal. It was an interesting way to frame the anti-medicalization argument of mental healthcare.
2) The idea that contemporary therapy techniques are left brain, logic focused. Behavioral, Cognitive, and Dialectic treatments only address one hemisphere of our brain. He argues that we should utilize movie, music, art, and creativity in conjunction with the left brain treatments to achieve a left/right brain healing- in otherwords a more emotionally wholistic approach to mental health.
Even though both of these concepts were presented in the context of Hope Psychology, I think they have some real valid applications to the broader field of therapy and look forward to reading and applying some of his theories from his forthcoming book.
Drugs are Bad, M'kay. · 86 days ago
In class this week we discussed the prevalence of drug usage as it relates to tx of mental illness. For me, the issue is an American cultural issue:
Tx costs money and insurance companies will only shell out the cash for something that they see as scientific. You will only be reimbursed for your tx if it is medicalized, ie-given a pill. Art, movement , and in some cases, talk therapy are seen as philosophy or mumbo-jumbo, but not as valid solutions to mental health issues. Medicalization has clear definitions and treatments:this disease meets this criteria and is resolved with this medication. It is quantifiable and therefore can be converted into legalese so that an insurance policy can be produced and who pays what when is (theoretically) clarified. ADD/ADHD is best treated as an alternative attention style which can be modified via cognitive-behavioral therapy to adapt to a traditional classroom, but that takes time and is hard to convert into a billing template. Ritalin, on the other hand, is immediate and thus quantifiable for an insurance matrix. That is all well and fine until one looks at the issue of attribution: Is it me or the drug that has got my disorder/illness/etc. under control. The sad fact is that typically, the drug is what is held responsible for providing “normalcy” which in turn leads to a lifetime of dependence. One would think that education, behavioral management, and coping skills where an individual is able to operate independent of external help (ie- drugs) would be the ideal, however it is not. And until we deal with insurance and drug companies and the medicalization of our cognition, we will be a nation of perpetual drug addicts never taking real control of our lives. If you have doubts or think this is paranoid conspiracy theory, please go turn on your television and count how many commercials are advertising drugs for problems you didn’t know you may have…until now.Social Experiments · 92 days ago
Our in class writing assignment was about whether or not we would help a schizophrenic-appearing homeless person in distress on the street. This question reminded me of my late teens when I lived in Boston and my friend Matt and I would ride the Green Line. We would sit next to strangers on the train and mumble to ourselves, break out in maniacal laughter (as a theater major, Matt was really good at this), or get into heated arguments with the subway maps over every door. The idea was to see how far we could push it before anyone would react.
Inevitably, the tourists in downtown between Haymarket and Kenmore Square would be freaked out and would move away from us into another car. As we headed past B.U., the locals would begin to exponentially outnumber the tourists and we became irrelevant; you could stare someone in the eye and begin muttering anything and they would yawn and begin reading the paper. Its like looking at something in the dark- if you stare intently and don’t blink your eyes, within a few seconds an object in front of your face will disappear in an instant, the homeless psychopaths become invisible.
So would you move to another car or look away….or possibly even lend a helping hand?
Is D.I.D. Real? · 98 days ago
The question came up in class this week as to whether D.I.D. was real or faked. As always, I believe in the middle ground: Yes, a number of folks who claim to have the disorder are, whether consciously or not, acting out a disorder as either a coping mechanism or for the attention it receives. However, I also believe that there are legitimate cases where ones personality fractures.
We all have different personas that manifest themselves to fit any given situation. One behaves in a manner in church that maybe surprising to those who are your drinking buddies or your Kindergarten student’s parents may be surprised that you’re a pothead. Point being that we all have persona shifts that are situationally appropriate. What happens to that normal persona migration, which typically gravitates around a core persona, when trauma is introduced? What about extreme and repeated trauma? It seems rational that under extreme circumstance one would adopt a more extreme persona to fit a situationally appropriate model. If you create a new persona and it is rewarded by reduction of stress as the trauma is being deflected from one persona and experienced by a new one (eg- Anna is not here right now, it is “Amy” who is being sexually abused), then it falls to reason that ones psyche would try again. Thus you achieve a series of personalities all being custom created to deal with life’s stressors while cocooning the core self away from harm.
Given that line of thinking I believe that yes, D.I.D. is real.
-Dan Graham
Munchausen By Proxy · 106 days ago
I knew a woman who had Munchausen by Proxy. It was a really difficult to converse with her because she would discuss her son’s illness in front of him as though he were not there. She would get this manic gleam in her eye as she would describe the various medications he was on and how she was changing his “cocktail” because she thought certain drugs weren’t working while others were. She would seemingly arbitrarily alter his medication on the premise that the drugs weren’t working when, in fact, they were. What she would do was stop giving him the medication that worked, let his behavior escalate to dangerous levels, then get him on less effective medication until that was “no longer working”. By switching his meds regularly, she ensured that he would never achieve stability so that she could continue to get the attention of others lseeing her as a supermom taking care of her sick boy. Eventually the boy was put into a group home having become violent in his episodes. There, the staff was able to get him on one regular medication regime which proved successful. When the boy was returned home and descended into his old patterns of behavior, his psychiatrist realized what was happening and was able to have the child removed from the mother’s care. In the end this boy was helped, but there are so many others out there who are suffering abuse under the hands of their parents in a way that is hard for the rest of us to recognize. Its a two fold problem: we want to help a sick child and we cannot imagine a parent making their own child intentionally ill. Its difficult to question a parent of a sick child as to their possible role in exacerbating the child’s illness, but its even worse to be complicit in abusing that child. Face the awkwardness and ask the hard questions.
-Dan Graham
I Wear My Sunglasses At Night.... · 115 days ago
Sorry for the 80’s cheeze in the title, I’m feeling retro… I digress.
I was thinking about the case study of the woman who had been raped in the elevator while I was driving home from class today. I wondered about the secondary aspects of trauma which inadvertantly feed the anxiety of a PTSD sufferer. Mostly I was thinking of the sunglasses which became her filter for the world. She became as the Black Night in medieval mythology: Armor clad and prepped for battle, vision distorted by her protective headgear, wary and distrusting of all men that crossed her path. In the legends the Black Night becomes associated with the gallows tree, isolation, and lonely death; the armor eventually yielding the fragile flesh.
As the Knight, her sunglasses give her a sense of invisibility, protection from the perceived leers of men. Yet it also distorts her reality turning all light into dark filtered gray. I once had photo-gray lenses that would darken automatically as the light got brighter. I eventually got rid of them as they made every sunny day and blue sky gray;every fluffy white cloud darkened to the color of impending storm clouds-it was depressing. By wearing sunglasses all the time, the victim of the elevator case study makes everyday dark, and isolates herself from connecting with others. At what point will this foster depression which will start a positive feedback loop with her PTSD? When does the self-protection from trauma lead to self-imposed illness?
Put your sunglasses away and bask in the glow and warmth of the sun. (AAaah! that sounds sickeningly like the evil influence of my yoga hippie wife sneaking in there…)
-Dan
ADHD and Sleep · 120 days ago
I came across an interesting piece pertaining to ADHD and sleeping issues. What was found was that some children were being diagnosed with ADHD because their behaviors clearly fit the DSM criteria. However, it turned out after medication was prescribed that the root cause of their behavior was a result of enlarged tonsils. The tonsil issue created snoring and breathing difficulties which prevented the children from achieving a full nights sleep. If you have ever spent time with a nap ready 3 year old, you know that translates behaviorally into: hyper activity, attention difficult, impulsive behavior, etc. The painful irony to this is that the dx calls for a tx of stimulant medication to combat the under stimulated central nervous system associated with ADHD. The side affect of the tx is difficulty sleeping ( they are taking uppers after all) which, if that is the root cause of your behavior, then the problem exacerbates. Think on it as not sleeping well for three nights in a row and then trying to pull off a day of work and school subsisting on coffee- you can do it, but you’ll be pretty damned cranky.
In keeping in line with my regular ADHD soap-boxing, we need to re-evaluate how we approach ADHD. The meds work for an immediate cessation of frustrating behavior, but if we refocus on causality we may find a drug free solution.
-Dan
Feedback [2]
dx, tx, and the Unknown · 128 days ago
Looking at the lecture on Autism, its interesting to think that we currently diagnose and treat that which we don’t understand. We have a plethora of theories on the topic ranging the typical strata of mental illness from biological, to mental, to social. What intrigues me is that the DSM can provide a definition for an illness and treatment without knowing the cause.
This is a prevalent problem that obviously pushes beyond the Autism spectrum. If we don’t understand the root cause of a problem and are treating it, we maybe falling into the trap of ignoring a broader issue by believing that we have solved the problem when we are only band-aiding it. For example, you can diagnose someone bleeding by saying, “ah yes, you have a cut”. Then the tx, “Here is a band-aid”. Thus the problem is solved…except that the reason you are cut and bleeding is that you keep stabbing yourself with a knife. But, because we have presumably treated the problem (band-aid), we have ignored the root cause (stabbing yourself). If we could find the cause, treatment then becomes less of a stopgap solution and more of the removal of causal factor.
What I fear is that we focus so much on treatment, that we may be over attacking a problem which would be better solved removing the base cause thereby eliminating need for perpetual treatment. That is not to say that treatment isn’t necessary, but that we can work on environmental causes, ( eg- chemical factors, social issues) and some genetic factors (gene therapy, stem cell research) in order to minimize the prevalence of new cases.
-Dan Graham
Feedback [2]
Children and Depression · 133 days ago
I was really struck in class this week by the prospect of kids suffering from depression. Its not that I haven’t seen kids with depression, but its that I have never had to really think of it as something real, beyond typical childhood angst. It just seems unfortunate that at the time of life where everything should be new and exciting that kids could feel pervasive sadness.
I guess depression in general is really a weird concept. I have said, “man, I feel depressed” before, but really meant either a little sad, frustrated, or a bit of both. Then I just think about all the really cool stuff about the universe like earthworms, and storm clouds, and watching ice freeze and then its all good. But to live in the darkness and be blind to the wonder that surrounds us… its just inconceivable.
-Dan Graham