Dialogical Practice

Everyone in the world is either touched by their own mental health issues or have had a family member affected. What if they directed their buying power to an organization that would use the profits to fund exciting mental health & recovery projects both in the developing world and in their own countries; projects that would be ethical, non-coercive, personal recovery-based, and were aimed at creating recovery communities? What if they could buy products, crafts, services, art, music, books from people who had experienced mental health issues, enabling them to set up their own businesses or buy from social co-operatives that enabled distressed people to work and earn a living wage?

Kev Harding argues against conceptualizations of therapy as a ‘cure’ to an ‘illness’ and instead offers alternative approaches.

Brief psychodynamic and psychosocial interventions help maintain reduced depressive symptoms

Researcher examines the impact of client feedback and progress assessment on improvement in outcomes.

Confronting existential anxiety through “Basal Exposure Therapy” shows promising results in people withdrawing from psychotropic drugs.

A year after my twin’s death, I stood in a supermarket and felt my body disintegrating into a thousand pieces. My soul knew it needed the right teacher and helper. Fortunately, I found Open Dialogue. It helped me expose the real childhood trauma, and gradually rebuild my shattered, grief-stricken psyche.

Pilot study finds school-based humanistic counseling reduces emotional symptoms in students.

Vermont Governor Shumlin recently suggested a change to state law that would accelerate the process under which a person could be forced to take antipsychotic drugs against her will. The House Human Services Committee reviewed this proposal and I was asked to testify. What follows are my comments.

Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of hearing voices

Knowing the client’s history can help foster genuine empathic responding, a key component to child-centered play therapy.

Study finds frequency of social interactions predicts long-term remission in first-episode psychosis.

For the last three years, I have been working with people, labeled "hoarders," who have become overwhelmed by their possessions in their homes. This has been some of the most interesting, challenging and thought-provoking work I have ever done. It is also an area that, I think, highlights all of the issues that challenge us in helping people who feel overwhelmed, for whatever reason.

Qualitative research examines the experiences of psychoanalytic therapists in their work with patients whose symptoms either failed to improve or worsened.

NPR reports how loneliness can change our bodies and affect our physical and mental health. "There are things we can do to get out of a depressed or lonely state, but they're not easy," they report. "Part of the reason is because these negative psychological states develop some kind of molecular momentum."

Researchers develop an initial framework for understanding metatherapeutic communication practices that may inform future integration of collaboration in psychotherapy.

Individuals with long-term mental health conditions identify pets as valuable supports in their daily lives.

From The Conversation: Many researchers are beginning to acknowledge that the concept of "schizophrenia" as a discrete, hopeless, and deteriorating brain disease does not exist. In...

Searching for a Rose Garden: Challenging Psychiatry, Fostering Mad Studies is a timely and unique collection of essays that should be of interest to anyone with personal experience with, or research interests in, mental difference, psychiatrization and its resistance.

Research finds that hearing negative voices explains how childhood adversity is related to distress.

Anthropologists study Parachute NYC to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing peer support and Open Dialogue practices.

From Nautilus: The traditional notion of emotional intelligence is based on two assumptions: that it is possible to detect others' emotions accurately, and that emotions...

Study in Brazil demonstrates how the exploration of contextual determinants of distress in mental health care can inform therapeutic change.

In an article for Psychiatric Services, psychiatrist Christopher Gordon and his colleagues report on the results of a one-year feasibility study attempting to implement...

Following an extensive systematic review of treatments for major depression, the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued a recommendation to clinicians suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a first-line treatment for major depressive disorder along with second-generation antidepressants. The results of the review revealed that CBT and antidepressants have similar levels of effectiveness but that antidepressants present serious side-effects and higher relapse rates.

The Society for International Psychology, Division 52 of the American Psychological Association, will host a webinar entitled “The Humanistic, Vigorous and Universal Approach of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.”