http://www.americanmentalhealthfoundation.org/ American Mental Health Foundation blog en-us Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:48:45 -0500 Copyright 2006 americanmentalhealthfoundation.org http://www.americanmentalhealthfoundation.org/images/minicon.gif http://www.americanmentalhealthfoundation.org/ 16 16 Next to Normal is the bravest, hottest, and one of the most talked-about Broadway musicals in years. It is recently the subject of an American Theatre Wing "Working in the Theatre" seminar. We highly recommend this landmark musical as a way, along with the efforts of AMHF, to raise public awareness about bipolar disorder and other mental-health issues. ]]> Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:51:13 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) The New York Times weighs in with a thoughtful article on more than a child-rearing question: Are we doing right by the next generation when early signs of emotional distress are expressed? This is an issue of national concern. Even though AMHF is concentrating its efforts more toward "the other end" of the population spectrum, along with individuals with special needs, we believe the way our youngest is treated is an issue of national scope and concern. Certainly, a large concern of our long-time director, Dr. Stefan de Schill, was that American society as a whole suffers (and suffers is the word) from the overuse and abuse of medication when intensive forms of therapy, individual or group, would be more in order. ]]> Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:39:02 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) New York Times and The New Yorker, most anywhere. You loyal readers also know I recently blogged on the idea of death by mind control, as reflected in the words of an est group leader who spoke of a participant "willing his death." Whatever one may think of Erhard Sensitivity Training (which has been called a cult similar to L. Ron Hubbard's organization Scientology), the point really has to do with mind over body, mind over life itself.

"The Laughing Guru" by Raffi Khathchadourian, from the August 30, 2010, New Yorker, considers an experiment involving rats, the relationship between the immune system and the brain, particularly the largely uncharted limbic system, and whether, in the experiment, rats ended up willing their own deaths. "In other words," Khathchadourian writes, "their minds were killing them."

What about death by mind control? What about its opposite? Life by mind control.

The so-called laughing guru is Dr. Madan Lal Kataria. He hopes some day to build a Laughter University, founding it on his own work as well as that of William James, Norman Cousins (in Anatomy of an Illness, as Perceived by the Patient), and lesser-known scientists in the sometimes-amorphous field of psychoneuroimmunology.

Laughter is a funny thing as the article says. It has been a favorite subject of philosophers and psychologists, though it is rarely touched on by Judeo-Christian theologians. (There are many life lessons but not many yuks in the Bible.) Cousins asks, "If feelings of physical and mental distress damage the body's chemistry, then shouldn't positive ones rehabilitate it? 'Is it possible that love, hope, faith, laughter, confidence, and the will to live have therapeutic value?' Cousins goes on to ask further. 'Do chemical changes occur only on the downside?'" ]]> Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:44:50 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) AMERICA online magazine, here is an interesting profile of one of our upcoming authors:

"Ninety years ago this week Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women a right to vote that should have been inalienable. This week, Joanne Gavin continues apace in coauthoring her third book, Live Your Dreams: Change Your World, a powerful guide for women that offers scientific approaches from fields of business management, cognitive and executive psychology, stress management and preventative medicine. The book is set for 2011 publication by American Mental Health Foundation Books.

"Gavin is chair of the Department of Management in the Business School at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. (disclaimer: I am Gavin's colleague at Marist and serve on the AMHF Board.) Gavin is coauthoring her latest book with her authors of The Financial Times Guide To Executive Health, Second Edition. These include James Campbell Quick, stress expert and Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Cary Cooper, and Jonathan Quick, MD.

"'We are asking women to take stock of their physical, emotional, and spiritual health,' Gavin says. 'Although we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment this week, many women still need to fight to obtain access to equal opportunity in many settings.'

"'The stresses faced create a perfect storm of hurdles, frustrations, demands from others, as well as internal doubts. Women still bear the bulk of child care/household work, and have the additional pressure of careers and service in the community. Many women now have the double responsibility of taking care of children and aging parents.'

"'In the United States, women's lifespan traditionally have been longer than men's. 'Women's life expectancy is going down as women continue to assume the double responsibility of home and career," Gavin said, "and the gap between their lifespan and men's is narrowing.'

"In their upcoming book, Gavin and her coauthors offer cognitive therapy approaches as well as medical findings on stress management. The role of spirituality in certain situations is examined, as this is now considered one of the areas to be assessed in executive health. One situation where spirituality comes into play is when women face situations that cannot be changed, and here Gavin suggests the use of the traditional serenity prayer: 'Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'"

Gavin and her husband, David, have been married for thirty-six years. Gavin believes herself fortunate in having been a full-time mother, and after this experiencing a challenging and rewarding career. ]]> Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:20:02 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) est session, an est trainer named David Norris (among others on the scene), and the death of an est participant. How much stress is too much? How much of our own lives, including one's own death (excepting by suicide), could be consciously willed, as Norris suggested? Where does free will leave off and mind-control begin? Mental health and emotional well-being are the stated goals of our foundation. We call your attention to this unusual case not for judgment but for your thoughtful consideration. ]]> Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:50:05 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) bullying another adolescent so brutally as to cause her to hang herself. The entire article is worth reading. See

Article on Bullying by Joanna Weiss in the Boston Globe ]]> Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:04:28 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum)

Sleep studies have become an important medical field in both psychology and medicine and are discovering and organizing behavioral principles that promote good sleep.

CNN quotes Kristen L. Knutson, Assistant Professor and Sleep specialist at the University of Chicago Department of Medicine, who offers seven approaches to healthy sleep. These include:

*Stop sipping coffee and other drinks that contain caffeine by two in the afternoon

*Choose certain foods for evening meals which contain both protein and tryptophran

*Take hot baths earlier in the evening--not right before bedtime

The seven approaches are detailed in

CNN article on healthy sleep habits August 10, 2010 ]]> Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:41:29 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum)
The article points out that Lou Gehrig probably suffered more head injuries and concussions than realized when one takes into account his career as a football player at Columbia University.

This news is bound to rekindle debate on the appropriate intensity of contact sports, especially at young ages.

New York Times Article on Lou Gehrig's Disease ]]> Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:22:43 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) AMERICA, reports on President Obama's talk at the beginning of the month in Atlanta, Georgia at the convention of the Disabled Veterans of America.

After World War II, the country had built an impressive system of health care for Veteran's. They had excellent clinical psychology training opportunities available for clinical psychology. n fact, the use of psychological testing greatly increased after World War II in order to help provide intensive care and treatments for veterans.

In his address, President Obama reported the following, as noted by Karen Smith:

• I’ve charged Secretary Shinseki with building a 21st-century VA. That includes one of the largest percentage increases to the VA budget in the past 30 years.

• For about 200,000 Vietnam vets who may have been exposed to Agent Orange and who now suffer from three chronic diseases, we’re making it easier for you to get the health care and benefits you need. And or our Gulf War veterans, we’ve declared that nine infectious diseases are now presumed to be related to your service in Desert Storm.

• For our disabled veterans, we’ve eliminated co-pays for those of you who are catastrophically disabled.

• We’ve kept our promise on concurrent receipt by proposing legislation that would allow severely disabled retirees to receive your military retired pay and your VA disability benefits.

• We’ve dramatically increased funding for veterans health care across the board. That includes improving care for rural veterans and women veterans. For those half-million vets who had lost their eligibility—our Priority 8 veterans—we’re restoring your access to VA health care.

• The historic health care reform legislation that I signed into law does not—I repeat, does not—change your veterans benefits. The VA health care and benefits that you know and trust are safe, and that includes prosthetics for our disabled veterans.

• Thanks to advanced appropriations, the days of delayed funding for veterans medical care are over. And just as those delays were unacceptable, so too are long delays in the claims process.

• So we’re working hard to create a single lifetime electronic record that our troops and veterans can keep for life.

• We’re hiring thousands of new claims processors to break the backlog once and for all. And … we’re reforming the claims process itself, with new information technologies and paperless systems.

• As a result of the innovation competition that I announced last summer, our dedicated VA employees suggested more than 10,000 new ways to cut through the red tape and bureaucracy. And we’re already putting dozens of these innovative ideas into action. Additionally, we’re enabling more veterans to check the status of their claims on-line and from their cell phone.

• As a next step, we’re opening this competition to entrepreneurs and academics so the best minds in America can help us develop the best technologies to serve our vets, including those of you with multiple traumatic injuries.

• We’re making progress in ending homelessness among our veterans. Today, on any given night, there are about 20,000 fewer veterans on the streets. But we’re not going to be satisfied until every veteran who has fought for America has a home in America.

• Finally, we’re keeping faith with our newest veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re offering more of the support and counseling they need to transition back to civilian life. That includes funding the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which is already helping more than 300,000 veterans and family members pursue their dream of a college education.

• For veterans trying to find work in a very tough economy, we’re helping with job training and placement. I’ve directed the federal government to make it a priority to hire more veterans, including disabled veterans.

• For those coming home injured, we’re continuing to direct unprecedented support to our wounded warriors in uniform—more treatment centers, more case managers and delivering the absolute best care available. For those who can, we want to help them get back to where they want to be—with their units. And that includes service members with a disability, who still have so much to offer our military.

• We’re directing unprecedented resources to treating the signature wounds of today’s wars—Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I recently signed into law the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act. It not only improves treatment for T-B-I and P-T-S-D, it gives new support to many of the caregivers who put their lives on hold to care for their loved one." ]]> Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:25:38 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) The New Yorker or have followed the lives of the protagonists in the New York literary scene, Daphne Merkin's...er...unique...memoir of therapists in her life will come as no surprise because of the...unique...nature of some of the past experiences she has written about.

Not a consumer's guide to therapy, this article offers a critical eye on psychoanalytic therapy as it is practiced in mid-town Manhattan. As I read I was tallying up the fees paid by Merkin over seven years, and it easily goes into seven figures. Fortunately she comes from an extremely wealthy family and can afford it.

The article is fascinating reading, and the last paragraph is especially good...so be patient and take your time in getting to the end.

It will also appear Sunday in the New York Times Magazine. ]]> Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:41:14 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) American Psychological Association will hold its 118th annual convention this month in San Diego, California, from August 12th through 15th. This professional group has more than 100,000 members and convention attendance usually is more than 10,000 psychologists.

There are wealth of activities for both attendees and the public, including pre-convention workshops, discussions, presentations of research. exhibits by over 100 researchers, and social and networking opportunities.

There is an online program that can be accessed through the convention site: APA 2010 Convention Website

As in other years, there will be coverage by national media of the convention.

Most importantly for those following our bog and website, AMHF Books will be represented by the exhibit of Dr. Raymond B. Flannery Jr.'s The Violent Person. ]]> Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:08:38 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum)
Errol Louis, columnist for the New York Daily News, writes on how to "Take Aim at the Roots of Violence." He writes:

"Churches have much of what's needed to save the kids who can be saved. They have credibility, volunteers, real estate in he right communities and moral commitment.

"What they don't have, in too many cases, is money to bolster their ministries with paid staff, job training, coordination with law enforcement and other necessities."

Louis suggests ways to obtain funding for these ventures.

The movement of Community Psychology is one that attempts to use internal resources to revitalize communities, and this is one area that can be considered in virtually every community. ]]> Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:26:22 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) Football star and bipolar disorder. ]]> Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:15:02 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) AMHF Books, the book-publishing arm of The American Mental Health Foundation, I along with our board sought two things. (1) To disseminate our knowledge in a way that also would preserve the lifework of the late Stefan de Schill. This would include books written in the spirit of Dr. de Schill's work but not necessarily directly derived from it. De Schill was one of the premier proponents of group therapy, a Freudian, and a humanist. He very much, and specifically, told me on more than one occasion that he had wanted his book Crucial Choices, Crucial Changes to be published by one of Erich Fromm's publishers. (2) To issue out-of-print classics that deserve to be in print, which reflect the mission and spirit of AMHF.

In publishing two posthumous books and reissuing two classics by Fromm, we seek to accomplish both simultaneously. These books are featured elsewhere on our website, so in this forum I will not belabor their significance for AMHF Books. I would like to talk a bit about my reaction to these works in preparing them for publication.

Although much of Beyond Freud and The Pathology of Normalcy date to the 1950s through the 1970s, they are timeless books. The world was a very different place, polarized during the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Nuclear holocaust was looming. We lived in a far more secularized world since the free expression of theology and spirituality, and belief of the soul was restricted amid large swaths of the population. Yet, if one were to substitute, for example, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda for Soviet Union, or consider the rampant materialism and greed that have characterized our recent generations, all the threats to personal freedom (what Fromm calls engaged "Being" as opposed to mere "Having") are startlingly similar. Likewise, if one were to substitute "political extremism" for "McCarthyism," the reader finds him- or herself smack in 21st-century America. Fromm's warnings about making material things our god ring as true today as ever; and for this reason, his work is more compelling than ever.

The Revolution of Hope and The Heart of Man were each published in the late 1960s. Revolution appeared in a second edition following the unsuccessful presidential candidacy of Eugene McCarthy. AMHF Books is issuing this revised edition with its subtle changes.

Timeless is an overused word. But at the risk of sounding less-than-original, I have to say working among the words of Erich Fromm, so in the spirit of Dr. de Schill's humanistic approach to psychotherapy, so sensible and current...well, it has been an inspiring experience well beyond almost anything, among 1,200 books, I have edited in my former 30-plus years as a publisher's editor.

You assuredly will be amazed by these four books by Fromm, scheduled for issue by AMHF Books in November 2010. We are taking advertising in New York Review of Books to let the literary world know about this important publishing event.

Relevance, no doubt, is another overused relic of a word from the 1960s vocabulary. In fact, Fromm's visionary humanism is more "relevant" and necessary to our survival and flourishing, as a humane, mentally stable, and healthy society, than ever. Thank you for reading this. I hope you will permit yourselves to be inspired! ]]> Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:12:17 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) New York Times continues on the subject of Bullying through the Life Cycle. ]]> Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:27:17 EST elomke@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Evander Lomke) Welcome, Dr. Reed! ]]> Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:58:31 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) Journal of Counseling and Development, the academic journal of the American Counseling Association.

The authors (Gill, Minton, and Myers) that a woman's spirituality or religious commitment accounted for a good portion of their resilience and wellness.

There are implications for training programs in psychology, social work, and religion, as mental health workers need to know about these person's religious and spiritual beliefs in order to help them.

The authors concluded: "In the meantime, the results of this study may be used as a foundation for helping low-income, rural women experience greater wellness through strength-based interventions focused on their spiritual and religious beliefs and behaviors."

There is a great deal of interesting and helpful material on the website here:

American Counseling Association Website ]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:21:05 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) We are happy that she will be providing us ideas. ]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:05:30 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum)
Some possibilities:

*Siblings bullying each other
*Parents bullying teachers
*Cliques that bully other cliques
*Boys that bully girls
*Bullying in college situations
*Marital bullying (a sign or precursor of abuse?)
*Political bullying

In fact, the concept may include many situations where one person is coerced, taunted, embarrassed by someone who at first appears to have some kind of edge, physically, emotionally, or through some position in a group or organiziation.

What do you think? ]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:56:20 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum) Traversing the heroic journey," which appeared in the March 2010 issue of Counseling Today, published by the American Counseling Association

Here are some of his ideas:

"One of our primary tasks as child counselors is to provide an emotionally safe and protective space within a basic nondirective structure so that healing can occur. Psychic healing and maturation occur when a solid connection is maintained between the unconscious (Self) and the conscious (Ego)...this takes place when the child's ego can cope with pain and enjoyment appropriately.

"For example, by crying when hurt, by using words and appropriate verbalizations when angry, by relying for help and by taking pleasure and experiencing warm feelings, laughter, and joy. For healthy emotional development, the ego needs to look at difficult experiences, feel the associated hurting, understand the condition, and then let go.

Jungian play therapy can be conducted individually or there can be a family play therapy session with the child's family.

A good book on this topic is Written Paths to Healing: Education and Jungian Child Counseling, written in 1992 by John Allan and Judi Bertoia.

Book on Jungian Child Counseling ]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:33:28 EST wvornum@americanmentalhealthfoundation.org (Dr. William Van Ornum)