Markham's Behavioral Health

New Markham's Behavioral Health blog platform.

2019-05-11T19:41:00.000-04:00

Future posts will be on Markham's Behavioral Health on Typepad.com.

https://behavioralhealth.typepad.com/

How the media spreads false information

2019-05-04T09:10:00.003-04:00

Editor's note:

False information is toxic in the societal consciousness. False information distorts community norms and atittudes contributing to societal dysfunction. The computer meme is "garbage in, garbage out."

Just as we are aware of the idea of "caveat emptor", let the buyer beware, in our economic interactions, we should be aware of media distortions and strive to be "media literate" so we can develop immunity to toxic misinformation.

Articles worth reading - Most Of What We Think of As “Love” is Bullshit

2019-04-28T14:07:00.000-04:00

As a marriage counselor, I hear people say all the time that they love somebody or somebody told them that they loved them and when I ask "How do you define love?" most people seem irritated, annoyed, put on the spot, and defensive.

What is "love" and what isn't "love." This is an important question that haunts us our whole lives. "Most Of What We Think Of As "Love" is Bullshit" is an important article which gives a lot of ideas for thought and reflection.

Access it by clicking here.

Articles worth reading - "Where Our New World Begins; Politics, power, and the Green New Deal"

2019-04-27T12:07:00.001-04:00

For the article in the May 2019 issue of Harper's click here.

Gambling is a state sponsored addiction especially with state run lotteries

2019-04-25T12:28:00.001-04:00

Gambling addiction is a big deal to the person suffering from it and the person's family and community.

Gambling addicition is a government sponsored and encouraged addiction. All but six states run lotteries (Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah).

About 95% of problem gamblers play state sponsored lotteries.

10 - 15% of people buy 80% of lottery tickets.

Lotteries brought in $17.7 billion in 2015.

For more click here.

To learn where to get help with a gambling problem click here.

Dependence on AI - Be careful!

2019-04-20T13:28:00.001-04:00

How does the U.S. economy stack up compared to other countries over history?

2019-04-20T12:00:00.002-04:00

The optimal functioning of Democracy depends on educated, well informed citizens. Most Americans are woefully ignorant or they could not have elected as incompetent a chief executive as Donald J. Trump in 2016. One of the goals of this blog is to provide information so that people are better informed of the world around them and can make better decisions about things that affect their own and the mutual welfare of humanity.

Peer psychotherapist support meeting feedback

2019-04-18T19:07:00.001-04:00

Supervision Feedback Sheet

Directions:

Please place a hashmark on the line which most closely measures your degree of satisfaction with the indicator. The far left is 0% and the far right is 100%. The middle of the line would be 50%. Complete this feedback sheet as soon as you are able after the meeting. Bring it for discussion at the next subsequent meeting.

Date of the meeting_________________________________

1. I had an opportunity to talk about what I wanted to talk about.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

2. I felt understood.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

3. I was able to clarify my thoughts and feelings about the topics under discussion.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

4. As a result of the discussion I gained in confidence in my own functioning.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

5. As a result of the discussion I gained in confidence in my purpose in working with the cases and situations reviewed.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

6. I was able to generate and/or obtain new ideas about how to proceed.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

7. As the meeting unfolded I felt I could trust the process and be more self disclosing.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

8. The things discussed were relevant and useful.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

9. A couple of things I got out of the meeting are:

10. A couple of things I would change in future meetings to improve the experience are:

11. Please prioritize the benefits below from 1 = most important to 3 = lesser importance.

____ Personal and professional support for my work.

_____ It helped me know better what to do or not to do in my work to facilitate better outcomes.

_____ It helped me grow in my professional knowledge and skills.

_____ Other -

12. The time and effort to reflect and provide feedback on this supervisory process is worth it.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

13. I would like the feedback process to continue to be part of our meetings.

[__________________________________________________________________________]

0 10

14. Some questions I would like added to this feedback sheet are:

15. Questions which can be deleted from this feedback sheet are: (list numbers)

Nora McInerny - Grief: Moving on or moving forward?

2019-04-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

For a video commentary click here.

How bipolar disorder manifests in 18 year old high school senior

2019-04-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

Percentage of income that goest to taxes in first world countries

2019-04-16T07:48:00.001-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

Almost half of Generation Z are people of racial and ethnic minority groups in U.S.

2019-04-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

Stat: 48%—Almost half the members of Generation Z—age 22 or younger—are racial or ethnic minorities.

Story: Step aside, Millennials. There’s a new, younger group out there: Generation Z, which includes anyone born after 1996.

To learn more about this generation, we sat down with Kim Parker, director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center. Listen in to hear about Gen Z’s social, cultural, and political inclinations, and what this might mean for the future.

For more click here.

Jurors in capital trials suffer PTSD and other mental health problems

2019-04-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

Prophetic women and men is a regular feature of the UU A Way Of Life ministries blog which appears on Sundays.

On 06/24/1994 Lindy Lou Isonhood. as a member of a jury in Mississippi, voted to put a man to death. She has regretted her decision and now become a death penalty abolitionist. Her story is disturbing and inspiring.

For a brief commentary about this article click here.

Alcohol and Tobacco kill far more Americans than street drugs.

2019-04-08T23:06:00.003-04:00

What do you know about alcohol use disorder?

2019-04-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

What do you know about alcohol use disorder?

Take this brief 8 question quiz.

On average 6 people die every day in the U.S. from Alcohol overdoses

2019-04-07T18:29:00.003-04:00

In the United States, six people die each day from periods of extreme binge drinking that lead to alcohol overdose, also known as alcohol poisoning. When taking into account all alcohol-related causes of death (e.g., liver disease, motor vehicle crashes), there were 88,424 alcohol-attributable deaths per year on average from 2006 to 2010.

Adam Schiff provides a moral compass for Republicans

2019-03-29T10:51:00.003-04:00

Social indicators - Deathly consequences of unsafe drinking water greater than natural disasters and conflict

2019-03-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

Click on image to enlarge.

Social indicators - U.S. has low life expectancy compared to other first world countries and continues to drop

2019-03-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

Most Americans think that the United States is exceptional. On most social indicators, however, the U.S. has relatively low rankings for first world countries. One such social indicator is life expectancy and the United States comes no where close to the top ten countries.

There are many reasons for the U.S. low rankings in life expectancy as compared to these other countries. The several that come first to mind are our terrible health care system, our gun policy, our drug problems, infant child mortality, systemic racism, wealth inequality, and our diverse population.

The life expectancy in the U.S. has actually dropped in the last few years.

In 2015, the United States ranked at 31 in the world on life expectancy.

How are our elected officials dealing with issue? When is the last time you heard a campaigning politician raise life expectancy has a policy issue the nation, state, and local municipality has to work on?

Duing the argument over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), then House Speaker, John Boehner, said that the U.S. had the best health care system in the world. Maybe this is true if you have the ealth and health care benefits afforded to a member of congress, but the same health care resources available to a congressperson is available to the the average American.

The Republican party led by the Republican Senate leader Mich McConnell and former Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan have fought against improving our health care system of the last several years being financed by the health care and pharmaceutical industries. While there have been improvements with the ACA making health care available for more Americans many Red states rejected medicaid expansion which would improve health care services to their citizens. Univeral health care is still a vision for the future which is a right in most first world countries which have much higher levels of life expectancy.

Of course, there are other factors which contribute to the low life expectancy in the United States which are better thought of as being pulbic health problems than health care problems with behavioral health issues being significant especially when it comes to substance abuse, suicide, and homicide.

United Health Care was sued and lost on its policy of denying behavioral health care to its subscribers. Access to behavioral health care is still difficult because of stigma and health provider barriers to access.

For a video commentary click here.

Physical, emotional, and verbal abuse in families

2019-03-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

Editor's note:

This is a sad and accurate story of abusive patterns of behavior that develop in some families. This video and story comes from the UK. Here in the US, the narrator and older female sibling can and perhaps should call Child Protective Services who will investigate. In New York State where I live these reports can be made anonymously.

The father, the perpetrator of abuse, does not need punishment but mental health help or perhaps a combination of services from the mental health system and the criminal justice system. In many jurisdictions domestic violence laws first utilized by the police in a complaint driven process, hold people who engage in abuse accountable for their behaviors. It has been my experience that restorative justice approaches work better than adversaril punitive ones.

For the number in New York State is and further information click here.

Child Protective Services are available in all states in the United States, and provinces in Canada. I suspect CPS is available in all first world countries.

How internet "echo chambers" lead to faster radicalization on Marketplace Tech

2019-03-21T16:25:00.002-04:00

The audio clip lasts about 6 minutes. Molly Wood is the moderator of Marketplace Tech. Fathali Moghaddam is a professor psychology at Georgetown University.

Molly Wood: What are the things that move people, ultimately, to violence?

Fathali Moghaddam: It's a slow process sometimes, but it can also be rapid. The key issues are that individuals feel that they are being mistreated, that there is injustice in the world. Particularly nowadays, through the internet, an echo chamber has developed and isolation takes place, so this group radicalizes. The radicalization takes place in relation to other groups. It's what I call mutual radicalization. Gradually they get to a stage where one or two of them are ready for actual violent behavior.

Wood: It sounds like what you're saying is that, not only is the internet particularly ripe for this type of behavior, but that, in fact, as online communities become radicalized, they radicalize each other. They up the ante.

Moghaddam: Absolutely. This is becoming the norm. We see this in politics. We see it in extremist ideology. There is a relationship between these radicalizing movements and the internet. This is taking place in the wider context of globalization.

Editor notes:
People are easily propagandized because of what historically we have called "peer pressure." People want to fit in and belong to something larger than themselves. The norms of the group which influence compliance and obedience can be for positive social good or negative social good.

Perhaps the dangerious step up the ladder of radicalization is when the sense of social justice becomes self righteously personal. The sense of grievance rises to high levels which compels attack on those perceived as being the perpetrators of the injustice. In these situaions, violence and terrorisism seems not only justified but holy to an insane ego. Most of the U.S. public engaged in this behavior when they supported the Afghani and Iraq war back in 2001. The indiscriminate bombing characterized as "shock and awe" by the media was based on the delusional belief that the Iraqis had WMD.

There was one dissenting vote in the congress on the resolution to engage in this delusional behavior. That was Congress woman Barbara Lee. She was the one healthy person in the whole congress and history will remember her brave and courageous behavior in taking a principled stand against trememdous propaganda and social pressure.

The ego likes to play the game of "one or the other." Americans are quick to project their guilt onto people they perceive as different from themselves. The antidote for this radicalization of populations is to provide personal experience of a positive nature with the person perceived as "different" and a reduction in fear with methods other than self righteous attack

For more click here.

Alcoholism and its affects on families.

2019-03-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

Alcoholism and its effects on families learned the hard way contributing to a loss of innocence in a young teenage girl.

Editor's note:

An apparently well meaning mother keeps the secret of her father's drinking problem from her for reasons that aren't detailed in this video. It is a good example of the "don't talk" rule in dysfunctional families.

Teacher who made a difference to a third grader with Asperger's.

2019-03-19T18:55:00.001-04:00

Sometimes it takes an understanding person to make a difference. Did you or do you have a teacher who you got alot out of?

Why our memories can't be trusted.

2019-03-15T08:55:00.000-04:00

Is Zoloft a good medication for depressive bipolar symptoms?

2019-03-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Is Zoloft a good medication for bipolar disorder?

Zoloft can help manage the symptoms of depression for people with bipolar disorder. However, a mood stabilizing drug should be considered the basic treatment with Zoloft added to treat the depressive symptoms during a depressive episode.

Zoloft is one of the drugs in the SSRI category of which there are several. These SSRI drugs can be used to treat symptoms of depression other than the depressed episode of bipolar disorder.

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder has entered the popular culture and most of the people I see who are suffering from depression do not have bipolar disorder. Their depression is caused by other circumstances and factors.

You can read more about Zoloft and bipolar by clicking here.