Dr. Joyce Brothers, who paved the way for television figures as diverse as Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer and Dr. Drew Pinsky, and was essential in making the mass-cultural discussion of deep-seated and uncomfortable emotions in the U.S. a more open forum, died yesterday.

As my friend notes in the Los Angeles Times obituary—which quotes him from the Bergen Record (several years before):

"'She was the first to open up the public airwaves to private feelings. There was no one like that,' Ron Simon, curator of the Paley Center for Media in New York, said in 2006 in the Bergen County, N.J, Record. 'Now, so many programs deal with these intimate matters.'"

Newly minted pastor Ed Stetzer, writing in CNN.beliefnet, writes of his dealings with a man in his congregation. This person would often disappear for days at a time, and later Stetzer would hear that the fellow had spent hours praying the psalms. Later the man killed himself, leading Stetzer to reflect of aproaches churches could use to better engage parishioners with mental illness.

This led Spetzer to reflect on the kinds of practices that would lead to better acceptance of persons with mental illness. One of these is to view the church community as a refuge, as a place of welcome or safety. It is intriguing that the meaning of the word "asylum"—which not has such a negative connotation—means safe place or sanctuary.

Here are some worthwhile books that can be ordered from the American Counseling Association (ANA):

1. Hays, D. G. (2013). Assessment in Counseling: A Guide to the Use of Psychological Assessment Procedures. Fifth Edition.

This is a bestselling text, and the latest version includes updates and changes in assessment procedures. Test selection, interpretation of findings, and communication of these to others in a professional manner are covered. More than 100 tests are described.

The issue of assessment may be particularly important for those seeking masters-level licensing in counseling fields—some disorder, e.g., schizophrenia and major depression, among others, must be seen under supervision.

Once known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is the subject of film number eighteen of twenty-one in the AMHF series on psychiatry in Hollywood.

The Three Faces of Eve covers a most controversial disorder—often outright debunked as the current (as of this writing) DSM-4 had made significant changes to the diagnosis. Characterized by two or more distinct personalities within an individual, DID involves trauma and memory. Its diagnosis overlaps borderline personality, complex PTSD, difficult-to-classify ichtal states, and undoubtedly others. Untreated, it is said DID could lead to self-harm and attempted suicides.

Notable is that Joanne Woodward won the Best Actress Oscar for this complicated three-part role.

The plot, modified from Wikipedia, follows.

Do you find the concept of a dreaming phrenologist at all funny? I didn't think so. Once upon a time, psychoanalysis was viewed as nothing but a shabby cousin of phrenology. Freud and his followers changed all this, even though the tired gags of the usually brilliant Woody Allen might leave one to believe otherwise.

Of the twenty-one films in the AMHF series, this, number seventeen "on the couch" for analysis, is the only comedy (really a satire—see below) besides Don Juan De Marco and the romantic comedy Miracle on 34th Street. But it is not an easy-to-understand comedy. It is an offbeat look at the breakthroughs of Sigmund Freud.

"Supposedly focusing on the life of Sigmund Freud (Burt Cort) by means of a fictional secret diary, the great neurologist is portrayed as being too nauseated by blood and physical anatomy to make it through medical school. Because he misunderstands what practicing medicine is all about, Freud accidentally starts psychoanalyzing his patients. His Ultimate Patient (Dick Shawn) provides him with the theories that would make him famous.

Have you ever felt that you were in hell? As the word pandemonium derives from John Milton's Satan and his crew in Paradise Lost—in The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis refers to the environment/condition as "The Kingdom of Noise" ("the mind is its own place, and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven" as Milton also says)—so bedlam has its origin in the UK: Saint Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, London.

This film, number twelve of the twenty-one under review in the AMHF series, is equal parts horror movie and social indictment. As such regarding the latter, it has elements in common with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Snake Pit, and to an extent Charly; regarding the former, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The time is 1761: the age of the Enlightenment. After an acquaintance, Lord Mortimer, dies in an attempt to escape from the asylum, apothecary general Master George Sims (Boris Karloff, a fictionalized version of an infamous head physician at Bethlem, John Monro) appeases Mortimer by having his so-called loonies put on a show for him. Mortified by the treatment of the patients, Mortimer's associate Nell Bowen seeks the help of Whig politician John Wilkes to reform the asylum.

"Where's the rest of me?" Ronald Reagan implores, having had legs amputated. Former President Reagan even used this famous line as the title of a 1960s memoir. Goethe essentially asks the same question in his 1773-74 Goetz von Berlichingen; or, the Man with the Iron Hand. Are we our legs? Our arms? Our faces? Even our cerebral cortex? What price to learn?

I feel unusually close to The Snake Pit, personally, if not intimately and daily, working with one of the writers, Millen Brand, during my early days in book publishing. This, the tenth film out of twenty-one in the AMHF series, required significant research from the filmmakers in adapting an autobiographical novel by Jane Ward.

The Snake Pit, which won an Academy Award and was nominated in a number of categories, was released at that special period, the postwar era, when interest in the social dimension of hellish-personal mental anguish peaked: what Fromm, in another context, characterized as a striving for "the sane society."

Specific to AMHF, the movie was released the year Dr. Stefan de Schill accepted the position of director of research. This is a second reason I feel close to the film.

Of the twenty-one films for discussion on this Web site, here is number six, which stars Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher in signature roles.

Thus is the plot, in slightly condensed form, from Wikipedia:

In 1963, Randle Patrick "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson)—a recidivist anti-authoritarian criminal serving a sentence on an Oregon-prison farm for statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old girl—is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Although he does not exhibit overt signs of mental illness, he hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the remainder of his sentence in a more relaxed hospital environment.

Word from ABILITIES FIRST in Poughkeepsie, NY

October 5, 2012, Poughkeepsie, NY—As Dr. Lori Crispi’s term on the board of Abilities First, Inc., a Dutchess County based nonprofit that serves children and adults with disabilities, was coming to an end, she felt that she couldn’t just walk away. “I enjoyed being part of the organization so much, especially the work I did on a committee that allowed me to be around the adults with disabilities that the organization serves. It just didn’t feel right walking away, I wanted to do more.”

One of the areas of the organization in need of support had just the opportunity for Crispi, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Marist College. Abilities First’s Work Training Center (WTC) is a vocational program where adults are able to do paid work for private businesses with the assistance and support of Abilities First staff who are trained in working with adults with disabilities. Until 2009 the WTC was able to offer an adult education program through Dutchess County BOCES, who provided the staffing until funds for the program were no longer available. The participants at the Work Training Center were not happy. “For the past three years not a week goes by that one of our participants doesn’t ask me when the program is coming back,” says Charlie Bender, Director of WTC, “these are adults with disabilities that were school aged at a time when educational opportunities for them were limited or not available at all. Many of them have the capacity to learn but have never been given the opportunity.”

Previously I've written about Recovery International, founded by psychiatrist Abraham Low in the 1940s in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Low initiated a revolutionary brand of treatment that we now call cognitive therapy: by changing one's thoughts, one could change troublesome feelings and through practice attain better mental health. Dr. Low used the word apprenticeship to denote the long-learning period needed to put his ideas into practice.

One of his most beloved books is Manage Your Fears, Manage Your Anger. This is a compendium of lectures he gave during the last two years of his life, recorded on tape and then transcribed. By reading them, one obtains not only an excellent overview of the Recovery method, but a glimpse into Dr. Low's compassionate but directive style.

Following are passages that give a glimpse at Dr. Low's personality and style.

Since the Supplement to the U.S. Surgeon General's Report Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity—A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, several events have occurred. These, say Lonnie R. Snowden, have established a national commitment to understanding African American-White American treatment disparities, their consequences, and opportunities for their reduction.

Snowden's article, "Health and Mental Health Policies' Role in Better Understanding and closing African-American-White American Disparities in Treatment Access and Quality of Care" appeared in the October 2012 Special Edition of American Psychologist.

Although the therapeutic dimension of sports on the highest level, which is usually the professional, is well accepted, players are often assessed—or worse, judged—by club executives and fans alike based on issues or "characteristics" of mental health. This can be unfortunate.

As the Major League Baseball Cy Young (for pitchers) and Most Valuable Player Awards have been announced for 2012, it is interesting to consider, as this fascinating article does—which was brought to my attention by National Review Online "Right Field"—two recent award-winners and their mental-health travails. The players are pitcher Zack Greinke and outfielder Josh Hamilton. Greinke is diagnosed with SAD, or social anxiety disorder; Hamilton has had issues with substance abuse.

Ballplayers in American society are placed on a pedestal. However, once stigmatized by diagnoses the public, and even their peers and immediate superiors, are fed by print and electronic media, such players have even more to prove.

It is unfortunate players need "to prove" anything but their abilities.

Maybe it is all this simple: Society needs to lighten up and to cast a more compassionate eye on the frailties of its heroes.

Steven R, Lopez, Concepcion Barrio and colleagues address an important cultural topic in the October 2012 edition of American Psychologist: From Documenting to Eliminating Disparities in Mental Health Care for Latinos.

The U.S. Surgeon General's report from 2012—Mental Health: Culture, Race and Ethnicity—A Supplement to Mental Health: Report of the Surgeon General—documents significant disparities in mental-health care for African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans. One finding indicated that immigrants of Mexican origin with mental disorders were less likely to access mental health services than U.S.-born Mexican Americans or the population overall.

"Asian Mental Health" is a timely and important article by Stanley Sue and his colleagues, just published in the October 2012 edition of American Psychologist. This is one of three articles recently written that address mental health disparities occurring in cultural groups.

Ten years ago the U.S. Surgeon General wrote a report Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Report of the Surgeon General. This report addressed areas of need regarding mental health among Asian Americans. The report noted Asian subgroup differences in Asian subgroups. For example, there was a higher prevalence of PTSD among Southeast Asian refugees. Interestingly, some studies showed overall lower prevalence of Asian-Americans compared to other groups.

American Mental Health Foundation
Annual Report November 1, 2011, to October 31, 2012

This is the second Annual Report on The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), a research organization founded in 1924, incorporated in New York State December 31, 1954. (Click here for the first annual report, November 2011.)

Vision Statement: on the homepage of the Web site as well as on all forms of outreach to the public: Building a More Compassionate Society.

Mission: The Mission Statement since 1924 is unchanged—"The object of this Association is to promote, advance, promulgate, perform or carry out, enter into, cultivate, establish and organize scientific research and studies in the field of mental health, psychology, psychoanalysis and related domains; and to organize work groups and seminars for staff members to engage in other educational work."

To this, in 2012 is added: Given the dearth of analysis in the area of predictive psychiatric behavior among youth, The American Mental Health Foundation has established as its principle research and programming goal over the next three years the support of important and necessary studies in the area of early detection of schizophrenia and other later-life psychoses, publishing these findings (in 2015) under the imprint of American Mental Health Foundation Books.

One of the goals of AMHF is to keep in everyone's awareness those therapeutic approaches that are important either for their historical value or for practical techniques still helpful. Of course, we seek to encourage the latest empirical studies and cognitive therapies, such as the study on prevention of psychosis we are funding at Astor Services for Children. Evander Lomke and I will be making a presentation on this evolution of AMHF sponsorship at the New England Teachers of Psychology/New England Psychological Association in Worcester, Mass., on Friday, October 12, 2012, into Saturday, October 13.

The Adlerian approach—developed by Alfred Adler over one hundred years ago—continues to be worthy of our examination and study for rich approaches it may offer. Susan Belangee writes about this in the July 2012 edition of Counseling Today, the magazine of the American Counseling Association. The title of her article is "Individual Psychology: Relevant Techniques for Today's Counselor."

Belangee presented a workshop on Adler at the 2011 American Counseling Association Annual Conference in New Orleans. She found that many of the participants shared a belief in some of the tenets of Adlerian psychology, including the importance of personality traits, sibling relationships, early memories, and the use of a strength-based counseling model. She writes as follows...

A miserable marriage is certainly a mental health issue. Hollywood has profiled many of these "stuck" relationships—from those who have made lifetime vows to those with other but important commitments. Witness the continuum from Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? to "The Brady Bunch."

Now, we have Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep—at a time when many stars like them are entering their twilight years—provide us with a refreshing and funny look at how a 31-year-old marriage can be saved from dying embers and set ablaze once again.

The AMHF grant to Astor Services for Children—to identify and evaluate interventions that help adolescents at risk for suicide and psychosis, and to create scientifically supported guidelines—supports the exact kind of empirical investigation recommended by American Psychological Association President Suzanne Bennett Johnson.

Susannah Wood, Arie Greenleaf, and Lisa Thompson-Gillespie, in the August 2012 issue of Counseling Today (a publication of the American Counseling Association), cite Military Officer magazine: there are two-million children in United States military families today. Studies conducted by the National Military Family Association offers this information: students from military households encounter many challenges but they also possess many strengths; there are complex transitions including parental military deployment and parental combat and death; and, trauma and parental reintegration into civilian life may ensue after enlistment ends. These authors see an important role for the school counselor, but their observations are relevant to all mental health professionals.