Tag: Trauma

From VolteFace Magazine: MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can play a major role in helping people heal from the effects of trauma. "The results really are incredible and I’ve had...

From The Huffington Post: Adverse Childhood Experiences such as physical and emotional abuse, domestic violence, and homelessness often occur in the context of Adverse Community...

From The Independent: Debts accumulated during university years are so high that students are suffering from mental health problems. A recent survey found that three-quarters...

From The Atlantic: Like other addictions, workaholism may be a response to trauma. Overworking is the way that some trauma survivors cope with hypervigilance, grief, and...

From The Huffington Post UK: The diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder frequently serves to invalidate the trauma of women who have experienced abuse. "‘BPD’ is so...

From Business Insider: Depression may be an adaptation that serves a valuable purpose, not a disease or disorder. "The basic concept is that what we think...

Will ‘Split’ lead directly to someone dying or being beaten up? No, probably not. But, is it a pretty outrageous piece of evidence illustrating cultural trends that regularly represent people with psychiatric diagnoses as frightening and volatile? Absolutely.

Obstacles to accessibility are increasing in mental health settings, as well as settings designed to be alternatives to psychiatry, which ideally should be accessible to people with disabilities — including disabling allergies.

As a child of the 80s, I had a childhood dream of growing up to be Princess Leia, and — of course — marrying Han Solo. What I did not dream of was fighting an empire that seems only to grow over time, and with no Harrison Ford by my side to make it all better. The death of Carrie Fisher is heartbreaking; the news coverage of her life and suffering is a tragedy.

Abbie Hausermann, MSW, LICSW, discusses why ecotherapy works for former service members. “The aim of these ecotherapy programs and services is to connect veterans...

A new study, published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, investigates the presence of posttraumatic stress symptomatology in children involved in motor vehicle collisions...

A new article, published in The Arts in Psychotherapy, describes the ways art therapy and mindfulness have benefitted refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong.

Researchers found that Transcendental Meditation could significantly decrease anxiety and depression, among others symptoms.

Mourning is the biological process that allows us to relinquish and deactivate the brain mappings that result from trauma. By facing the pain, we can truly put it behind us, where it no longer rules us. In so doing, one writes a new play that is infused with authenticity and love.

Chelsea Roff is the Founder and Director of Eat Breathe Thrive (EBT), a non-profit with an inspired mission to bring yoga, mindfulness, and community support to people struggling with negative body image and disordered eating. I reached out to Chelsea to learn more about her life and organization, which she writes, “…is like AA for people with food and body image issues, plus yoga and meditation.” Chelsea shared her journey from life as a patient to yogi, author, and innovative community organizer. With her permission, you can find this interview below.

This narrative of who matters in society and how we convince everyone that certain people don't count (including, sometimes, those people themselves) should be a familiar one to all of us who've been touched by the psychiatric system in some way. But we don't talk nearly enough about how one interlocks with the other. For example, how do these attitudes about girls and women and their bodies serve as a sort of preparatory 'class' for the systems that will bind them just a little further down the road?

In the mainstream, psychological difficulties are seen as “symptoms” of an “illness” or “mental disorder” and based on this the focus is put on suppressing them, either by using drugs, or shock, or by psychological interventions that also aim to “eliminate the problem.” Unfortunately, this mainstream approach often works poorly, and too often its main effect is to aggravate the problem, or to cause “collateral damage” as critically important parts of the person are suppressed along with the supposed “symptoms.” But if we want to replace the mainstream approach, we need a coherent alternative view.

When I looked through my mountains of medical records, I saw that the providers who listed my race as black applied diagnoses like major depressive disorder and PTSD. The providers who saw me as white preferred diagnoses of panic disorder and borderline personality disorder. Of course, my experiences are just anecdotal. But if racial bias due to subjective experiences of practitioners can play such a large role in mental health diagnostics, how is this even considered a scientific discipline?

Here I was, 15 years old and already in a long-term treatment facility. I was, on paper: crazy! This entire time, all the adults in my life had been speaking for me. I never felt like I was any of the things they said, but I went along with it. What else could I have done? Every time I rebelled, it only confirmed to my mother what she thought of me.

Naas Siddiqui, a psychiatric survivor and therapist in training who founded the Spiritual Emergence and other Unusual Experiences student group, descended into altered states after withdrawing from psychiatric medications.

For The New Yorker, David Kushner writes about post-traumatic growth, the sense of deepened meaning that many trauma survivors experience. “The existence of post-traumatic...

In the New Yorker, Maria Konnikova delves into the research on why some people are able to adapt and overcome adversity, trauma, and poverty...

In a featured article for Psychiatric Services, psychiatrists from Dartmouth raise the alarm on the increasing numbers of children prescribed dangerous antipsychotic drugs. Despite the fact that data on the safety of long-term use of these drugs in this vulnerable population “do not exist,” the rate of children and adolescents being prescribed antipsychotic drugs have continued to increase over the past fifteen years.

“Therapists and other people who help victims of trauma can become traumatized themselves.” Aaron Reuben writes in The Atlantic. “Hearing stories of suffering, in other words, can generate more suffering.”

Joan Cook, professor of Psychology at Yale, writes than in her work with military veterans she realized that her psychotherapy techniques mattered much less than her training had indicated. Instead, what mattered was “the bond forged over years of therapy,” known as “the therapeutic alliance.”