Description: Ok, here is a challenging question. Imagine you are a parent, and your child is 4 years old, and you need some butter for a recipe you are working on for a large family dinner, but you have several things in the oven and on the stove and you cannot leave (Covid inspired delivery… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Legal Ethical Issues
Sentience, Ethics, and Octopuses: Recent Thoughts
Description: What does sentient mean? Its dictionary definition typical says something like responsive to and conscious of sense impressions; aware; conscious. We (us humans) are sentient, though there was a time when we believe that infant humans were not (we DO think they ARE sentient now). A huge part of how we manage or are… 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 »
Would Addiction be More Treatable if it Was Not a Crime?
Description: Think about how you would answer this question. Why do we arrest people found in possession of personal use amounts of addictive drugs and often send them to jail? Is it because we think that the threat of arrest will be a deterrent to becoming addicted? How is that working out for us? What… Read more »
MDMA and Relationship Work?
Description: Imagine that a couple you know is having relationship difficulties that have been going on for a while. Imagine farther that you think that one if the things contributing to their difficulties is that seem to be having problems talking to one another about things that matter to them in their relationship (e.g., having… Read more »
The Psychology of Blame
Description: I do not know if you have been tracking it but my friends and family in and around Ottawa have drawn my attention to the protest/occupation on central Ottawa by the Truckers’ Convoy. The group is comprised of people opposed to the recent vaccination requirements for cross border passage by truckers and demanding an… Read more »
Is Our Attention Slipping or is it Being Stolen?
Description: Consider this shift over recent historical time (time that I have lived through so far). Time was that one of the most common bits of advice offered regarding how to live a more effective life or at least how to work more efficiently and profitably was to learn how to multi-task or to do… Read more »
Let’s Talk Talk Therapy!
Description: The Canadian cellular services company, Bell, launched the Let’s Talk campaign in 2010. It is focused on reducing/eliminating stigma associated with mental illness. Stigma, related to mental illness, is a social phenomenon involving beliefs about the nature of mental illness (e.g., that it is somehow the fault of the people who struggle with it)… Read more »
Neurofeedback: Breakthrough or Meh?
Description: Using even limited brain wave recording equipment such as externally applied recording electrodes rather than expensive brain scanning devices, it is possible to detect and describe patterns of brain wave activity and to distinguish between brain wave patterns associated with, say, a lack of attention (in ADHD) as compared to between brain wave patterns… Read more »
Psychologists and Prescribing Authority: Yes, No, or Maybe?
Description: Can Psychologists prescribe drugs? Mainly no, only in a few jurisdictions. Should Psychologists be given limited prescribing privileges? Now that is a rather hotly debated question. There ARE examples of situations where non-doctors have been granted limited prescription authority. Dentists, for example, can prescribe pain medications (good thing too!). So, what about psychologists? What… Read more »
Books for Success!
