Description: Have you heard of E.M.D.R. therapy? It stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. This is an unfair oversimplification, but it involves a patient thinking of a past traumatic event while guided by a therapist to engage in some form of bilateral stimulation such as following the therapist’s finger moving from side to… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Abnormal Psychology
Can We Treat Depression with De-Magicked Mushrooms?
Description: It is not a big secret so you have likely heard or read references to findings that antidepressant medications do not work for somewhere around 30% of those to whom they are prescribed and that most of those for whom they DO work will find at some point that they no longer work, and… Read more »
Which Treatment is Best for Self-Harming and Suicidal Teens?
Description: Perhaps you have heard about the alarming increases that are being observed in rates of self-harming behavior and suicidal thoughts and actions among teenagers. These stats are often discussed in relation to the question of whether they might be linked to recent generational jumps in use of social media and the attendant shifts in… Read more »
MRI’s and Replication in Psychological Research
Description: What does the brain of someone diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder look like? How about the brain of someone recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? How about the brain of a depressed person … a happy person … an introvert … a risk-taker ….? The list could go on and on. For a number of years… Read more »
Forest Bathing: Follow the Data or the Money?
Description: I am willing to bet that you have already heard something about the practice of if not the term being used for forest bathing. No, it does not involve getting wet in the woods (unless perhaps it is raining). The term comes out of Japan (shinrin yoku = forest bathing) where the practice of… Read more »
We Need Citizen Therapy, But Why?
Description: We are hearing from several directions that there are not enough therapists to go around these days. Even discounting the impact of the Covid pandemic (if we can), the successful reduction of stigma associated with admitting that help is needed and increasing levels of burnout and retirement among support and therapy providers, and we… Read more »
Mental Health Thermometers
Description: You drop into your doctor’s office and tell them you are not feeling well. Assuming COVID is not the issue (which would likely be picked up at the front desk of the clinic using screening questions) what is one of the first things the doctor will likely do? Take you temperature, right? (Or ask… Read more »
Leader Personality and War: Any Help?
Description: A few years back there was a bit of speculation in the press and around and about regarding the mental state and personality of the then president of the United States, Donald Trump. At the time there was discussion of what is referred to as the Goldwater rule which is part of section 7… Read more »
CBT Works But Is Its Theory Wrong?
Description: You know what Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is, don’t you? It is, perhaps the most widely used approach to therapy taken by psychologists treating clients with depression, anxiety and many other symptoms of mental illness or the lack of wellbeing. I suspect you also know something of what CBT involves: The challenging of irrational,… Read more »
Is Microdosing (With Hallucinogens) Effective or is it a Placebo Effect?
Description: Here is a “design a study” challenge. You may have run across discussions of recent research looking at the therapeutic use of drugs that are or were considered recreational and illegal, e.g., LSD, Ecstasy, or Psilocybin (magic mushrooms). What you may not have run across yet are discussion of more recent research looking at… Read more »
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