Reality Sandwich: Meditation for Life: The Spirit of Grieving

    Adam ElenbaasIn a recent scientific study conducted at the University of California Los Angeles, researchers examined the neurological processes surrounding short and long term grieving. The results, although partially speculative, provide an excellent backdrop for a conversation regarding meditation and its age old role in coping with sadness, depression and personal loss.The study at UCLA examined 23 women who had lost a loved one within five years, eleven of whom still suffered from what psychologists call "CG" or "complicated grief": prolonged grieving resulting in depression, stress, fatigue, and lowered immune efficiency. While monitoring brain activity, researchers showed each woman pictures of her deceased loved one...

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Newsday.com: Mental health, perspective in economic crises

BY TONI RAITEN-D'ANTONIO | Toni Raiten-D'Antonio is a private practice psychotherapist and professor of social services at the Hauppauge branch of SUNY Empire State College October 30, 2008Switch on the TV news and you hear about a Massachusetts woman facing foreclosure who committed suicide, and a man from Nebraska who abandoned his children because he was overwhelmed by his responsibilities.Want more proof that people are coming unhinged over the economy? Check out the recent American Psychological Association study reporting a stark rise in headaches, stomachaches and muscle tension - all caused by money worries. Given the headlines, you might expect that psychotherapists are seeing sky-high anxiety in their patients. In my private practice the opposite is true.While others fret and...

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The Guardian: Pet Theories

  // <div><img alt="" src="http://hits.gureport.co.uk/HG?hc=we89&cd=1&hv=6&ce=u&hb=DM55122475CN;DM54102495BW&n={article}{Pet+theories}{p1104316}&vcon=/GU/Life+and+style/Health++wellbeing&seg=&cmp=&gp=&fnl=&pec=&dcmp=&ra=&gn=&cv=&ld=&la=&customerid=(none)&c1=usa&c2=(none)&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Health+and+wellbeing+(Life+and+style),Medical+research+(Science),Animal+welfare,Life+and+style,UK+news,Science,Health+(Society),Society&c5=&c6=Emine+Saner&c7=2008_10_21" width="1" height="1" /></div> // // <div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-lifeandstyle,guardiangu-network/1/H.15.1/64041?ns=guardian&pageName=Life+and+style%3A+Pet+theories&ch=Life+and+style&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Health+and+wellbeing+%28Life+and+style%29%2CMedical+research+%28Science%29%2CAnimal+welfare%2CLife+and+style%2CUK+news%2CScience%2CHealth+%28Society%29%2CSociety&c5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CHealth+Society%2CHealth&c6=Emine+Saner&c7=2008_10_21&c8=1104316&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Life+and+style&c12=Health+%26+wellbeing&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FHealth+%26+wellbeing&c1=usa&c2=(none)"...

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Seattle Times: Mindfulness: Take charge of your mind and body

By Richard Seven, Seattle Times staff reporter Boeing engineer Miryam Chavarria has, like the rest of us, reasons to stress. She is concerned about upcoming labor negotiations, the future of her job, and a chronic health condition she must manage. She even disregarded her husband's warning and peeked at their plummeting 401(k) bottom-line.In times like these, she turns to her practice of mindfulness. It's a meditative approach that focuses attention on the present — not on what might happen or what she should have done."I thought it was a bunch of hocus-pocus at first," Chavarria says. "I had a rough first session, but I chose to stay with the meditation and it has caused a great transformation in me. I find I'm more myself, rather than what the world expects of me."She doesn't meditate every...

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Blogger News Network: Governor Palin’s Mental Health Problems Surface

Posted on October 12th, 2008by psburton in 2008 Election Coverage, Alaska News, All News, Arizona News, Blogosphere News, Breaking News, Op-ed, US PoliticsRead 496 times.In the wake of Governor Sarah Palin’s cheerful insistence the legislative report into the trooper gate probe cleared her of any wrongdoing. I join those who share concern the pressures of the campaign may be taking a negative toll on her mental health. Its an issue that obligates me to set aside partisan perspective and reach out with compassion to someone who is in obvious distress. After all when you come upon a person who is drowning, who amongst us stops to ask party affiliation before diving in to help.Like every other blog pundit, I was waiting with baited breath to pounce when Sarah attempted to spin the damming legislative...

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The Writer's Almanac: May Day

May Day I've decided to waste my life again, Like I used to: get drunk on The light in the leaves, find a wall Against which something can happen, Whatever may have happened Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing The will of an executioner, a crevice In which a love note was hidden, Be a cell where a struggling tendril Utters a few spare syllables at dawn. I've decided to waste my life In a new way, to forget whoever Touched a hair on my head, because It doesn't matter what came to pass, Only that it passed, because we repeat Ourselves, we repeat ourselves. I've decided to walk a long way Out of the way, to allow something Dreaded to waken for no good reason, Let it go without saying, Let it go as it will to the place It will go without saying: a wall Against which a body was pressed For...

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Psychminded.co.uk: Cognitive behavioural therapy is a quick fix

October 9, 2008Dorothy Rowe: Cognitive behavioural therapy is a quick fixThe government has started recruiting thousands of more CBT-trained therapists in a bid to "cure" 450,000 people with depression and anxiety in England and Wales. But cognitive behavioural therapy is based on a desperate simplification of what lies at the heart of distress, argues Dorothy Rowe.....In mental distress the real problem always arises from some kind of threat or insult to the sense of being a person. This can be hard to uncover, and difficult to ameliorate. It is never amenable to a quick fix.New Labour has always favoured the quick fix. Children can’t read and write? Set a national curriculum and test them. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) a problem in hospitals? Deep-clean them. The fact...

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NYT: In ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Dear,’ a Hurt for the Elderly

October 7, 2008By JOHN LELANDProfessionals call it elderspeak, the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people: the doctor who talks to their child rather than to them about their health; the store clerk who assumes that an older person does not know how to work a computer, or needs to be addressed slowly or in a loud voice. Then there are those who address any elderly person as “dear.”“People think they’re being nice,” said Elvira Nagle, 83, of Dublin, Calif., “but when I hear it, it raises my hackles.”Now studies are finding that the insults can have health consequences, especially if people mutely accept the attitudes behind them, said Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University, who studies the health effects of such...

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NYT: Bailout Provides More Mental Health Coverage

October 6, 2008By ROBERT PEARWASHINGTON — More than one-third of all Americans will soon receive better insurance coverage for mental health treatments because of a new law that, for the first time, requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses.The requirement, included in the economic bailout bill that President Bush signed on Friday, is the result of 12 years of passionate advocacy by friends and relatives of people with mental illness and addiction disorders. They described the new law as a milestone in the quest for civil rights, an effort to end insurance discrimination and to reduce the stigma of mental illness.Most employers and group health plans provide less coverage for mental health care than for the treatment of physical conditions like cancer, heart disease or broken...

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The Hour: Calming your thoughts through mindfulness

BY HOWARD COHENMcClatchy NewspapersMIAMI -- Our worries.They're crescendoing like the finale of Beethoven's "Ninth": Bailouts, buyouts. Recession, depression.Enter the meditative practice of mindfulness. Born of Buddhist roots, it's increasingly recognized as a measure to calm the mind's chatter and elevate the brain's thinking and organizational processes.Mindfulness seminars. Mindfulness books. Even the medical mainstream is taking note -- the Sept. 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association had a piece titled "Mindfulness in Medicine.""The uncertainty of tomorrow creates a lot of the angst or discomfort," says Scott Rogers, director of the Institute for Mindfulness Studies in Miami Beach. "People are looking more and more to bring a little bit of 'ahhh ...' Not just stress...

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Ambigamy: Five steps to Optimal Illusion: The path to sophisticated self-deception

By Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D. on October 03, 2008 in Ambigamy Self-deception - the sweetest and sourest taboo: There's no more reliable way to stimulate a rich discussion than to get catty about other people's self-deceptions. And there's no better way to curdle a conversation than to accuse someone of self-deception to his or her face: Self-deception is the other guy's folly. We're above it. Or, at least, we think so for a while.Here's a back-of-the-napkin sketch of how we come to terms with our own potential for self-deception:Stage 1- naïve: We come into the world with no notion of deception, let alone self-deception. Gradually, however, it dawns on us that people lie, and sometimes even lie to themselves. This makes us wary. We learn to spot other people's self-deception.Stage 2-Exempt by contempt:...

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Embracing the Dark Side: The medical view of depression: good for patients, or just for doctors?

By Jenna Baddeley in Embracing the Dark Side It is popular these days to explain depression as a medical problem caused by chemistry: an imbalance of serotonin and other neurotransmitters. Many mental health care providers favor this explanation of depression's causes, supposedly because it destigmatizes the illness and shifts blame away from the patient. The problem is, it may benefit providers more than patients.When depressed people seek treatment, they want relief from their psychological pain, but they also want their experience, their concerns, to be acknowledged. In other words, what they are looking for is to be empathized with, not just not to be blamed. Unfortunately, there is good evidence that doctors aren't very good at responding empathically to their patients' concerns. A recent...

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Psychology Today: Seven Deadly Sentiments

Psychology Today: Seven Deadly SentimentsEvolutionary psychology helps us understand why we are ashamed of having forbidden thoughts that make us feel like lousy people. It tells us that these shameful feelings are hardwired—strategies that led to success on the Pleistocene savanna.By: Kathleen McGowan, Ken GordonIn our confessional culture, it is socially acceptable—even fashionable—to disclose your sexual predilections, your husband's problem with painkillers, your penchant for high colonics. Our hypertherapeutic society lets it all hang out.But plenty of feelings remain in the closet. In the privacy of our own heads, we cringe with dread when we meet someone in a wheelchair, wish our aged relatives would hurry up and die, smirk over our friends' bad taste and think babies are ugly and annoying....

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Mindful Sex: Female Sexual Desire Disorder

By Dan Pollets on October 01, 2008 in Mindful SexA recent study looked at the benefit of giving women who are on anti-depressants Viagra to improve their low sexual desire and poor arousal. In light of the findings, let's consider the very complicated issue of sexual desire disorder in women. Sexual desire disorder in women is in fact an extremely common condition. Studies report that having too little sexual desire is the sexual dysfunction most frequently seen among women, reported by 10 - 51% of women surveyed in various countries. Women reporting low sexual desire also report low levels of arousal and sexual excitement and infrequent orgasms. This all adds up to a lot of women feeling sexually dissatisfied with the experience.Getting back to the Viagra study (see Journal of American Medical...

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Stepcase Lifehack : The Pefect Mess

The Perfect Mess by Dustin Wax In an interview with Michael McLaughlin published in The New Writer’s Handbook (2007), Eric Abrahamson, co-author of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, says "Your mess is perfect when it reaches the point at which, if you spent any more or any less time organizing, you would become inefficient." When we see a perfectly clean, organized office, with it’s sleek glass-topped desk and a white MacBook centered perfectly atop the desk’s vast emptiness, we might find it cold, sterile, oppressive even. It’s not a coincidence that the Death Star’s halls are clean, white — and cold! On the flip side, when we see an office with a desk buried under mountains of paperwork, with trash bins overflowing and computer...

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MarketWatch: New Study Says rEEG(R) Can Slash Cost of Mental Health Treatments

Builds on Mounting Evidence of rEEG's Benefits to Treatment-Resistant PatientsLast update: 9:45 a.m. EDT Oct. 1, 2008COSTA MESA, CA, Oct 01, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) CNS Response, Inc. today released a report from Analysis Group, a national economics consulting firm, which shows the dramatic savings CNS's technology can bring to payers. The technology, called referenced-EEG(R), is a personalized reference lab test that guides physicians to psychiatric medications that work based on a biomarker database. Physicians using rEEG(R) can cut payer costs by avoiding drug treatments that fail. The Analysis Group study is the first that models the cost impact of rEEG(R) to payers.The Analysis Group study focused on treatment-resistant (TR) patients, who add significantly to treatment costs --...

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