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Dietary Supplements in Mental Health Care

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

In the wake of the recent and very public controversy over weight loss supplements, it would be easy to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Inadequate regulation of supplements has allowed the public to invest considerable money in treatments that may not contain what is stated on the label, can have scant research supporting their use, and in some cases may cause potential harm. Yet, there are supplements that have good evidence of benefit for emotional, cognitive, or other health-related issues, appear to be low risk, and when judiciously used, may be important therapuetic adjuncts for those who have ongoing challenges with mood or other mental health issues.

Supplements Use is Prevalent

Americans spend nearly $34 billion annually on complementary and alternative (CAM) remedies, with approximately 14.8 billion spend on nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products such as fish oil,...

Influencing Behavior and Mental Processes in Covert Operations

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

In the early 1950s, U.S. intelligence concluded that the KGB, Soviet intelligence, was working hard to develop "mind control" and behavior modification drugs. Supporting evidence included the public "confessions" of numerous high-ranking communist officials, the high-profile trial in Hungary of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, who appeared to have been drugged as he confessed to treasonous crimes, and the unusual behavior of American POWs during the Korean War. The filmed testimony of American POWs telling the world that America was evil and that communism was a far superior form of government was an especially compelling example.

On April 10, 1953, Allen W. Dulles, newly confirmed CIA director, alerted a gathering of Princeton alumni to the problem. A "sinister battle for men's minds" was underway, he explained. The Soviets "have developed brain perversion techniques, some of which are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that...

Covert Behavior And Mental Terms: A Reply To Moore

February 20, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

In a recent paper, Moore (2001) compares the behavior analytic treatment of so-called mental phenomena with other behaviorist approaches, in particular, with logical behaviorism and conceptual analysis (see also Moore, 1980, 1981, 1995). Moore concludes that behavior analysis gives a more adequate account of the phenomena than the other positions. In this note, I will argue that the behavior analytic treatment has itself some fundamental shortcomings. These problems are avoided if we adopt a behaviorist theory that has the following features: (i) it only accepts the existence of entities (factors, events, states, etc.) if this existence is supported by empirical evidence, (ii) it is based on Quine’s materialist repudiation theory which assigns no role at all to mental entities, (iii) it acknowledges the well documented fact that organisms can acquire new behavior not only by operant conditioning but also by being exposed to the pairing of two (salient) stimuli.

Mental Health Outcomes Measuring for Quality and Accountability

February 21, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

With accountability pressures and growing concerns about quality of services, managers, practitioners, and system planners need resources to measure the outcomes of the services they provide and should be aware of the best efforts to measure client outcomes and services effectiveness. This newsletter provides resources for program administrators, managers, policy makers, and others about the implementation and use of outcome measurement. The drive toward accountability that is occurring in the mental health field is explored, as are other reasons for measuring client outcomes. Outcome measures and instruments developed as part of multi-site studies sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) are described inside; and can serve as a valuable resource in planning an evaluation or quality assurance initiative. Also included is a set of considerations when planning and conducting a program outcome evaluation....

Mental Health Promotion in Public Health: Perspectives and Strategies From Positive Psychology

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Positive psychology is the study of what is “right” about people—their positive attributes, psychological assets, and strengths. Its aim is to understand and foster the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to thrive.

Cross-sectional, experimental, and longitudinal research demonstrates that positive emotions are associated with numerous benefits related to health, work, family, and economic status. Growing biomedical research supports the view that positive emotions are not merely the opposite of negative emotions but may be independent dimensions of mental affect.

The asset-based paradigms of positive psychology offer new approaches for bolstering psychological resilience and promoting mental health. Ultimately, greater synergy between positive psychology and public health might help promote mental health in innovative ways.

Mental health promotion seeks to foster individual competencies, resources, and psychological strengths, and to strengthen community assets to prevent mental disorder and enhance well-being and quality of life...

The Distinction Between Mental And Physical Illness

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Conditions that now would be regarded as ‘mental illnesses’, such as mania, melancholia and hysteria, have figured in classifications of disease since the time of Hippocrates, and for over 2000 years were treated by physicians with much the same range of potions, medicaments and attempts to correct humoral imbalance as they employed for other more obviously medical disorders. Although Plato attributed some forms of madness to the Gods, and meduieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas attributed hallucinations and insanity to demons and other supernatural influences, from the Renaissance to the second half of the 18th century melancholia and other forms of insanity were generally regarded as bodily illnesses, not differing in any fundamental way from other diseases. When the mid-18th century belle lettriste Lady Mary Wortley Montagu commented that “madness is as much a corporeal distemper as the gout or asthma”, ...

Complementary & Alternative Medicine for Mental Health

February 21, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

This outline is a comparative research-based approach to that question. While some activities, like exercise, are good for everyone who is physically able to do them and have no uncontrollable side effects, most decisions about CAM treatment options, and especially the decisions faced by people coping with serious mental health conditions, involve trade-offs. Nonetheless, 40% or more of Americans treat themselves with CAM without professional supervision, often without disclosing it to their psychiatrist or primary care provider. Moreover, many patients who use CAM remedies also take prescription antidepressants, risking potentially dangerous adverse herb/drug interactions. While most natural psychotropics are generally safe, they are not risk free, and the common public misconception that natural products are inherently safe has been refuted by predictions and reports of toxic reactions from these agents, which may be due to intrinsic toxicity, ,, or interaction with other herbs or drugs...

Labeling You a Mental Health Patient

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

I am advocating that we rethink the whole field of psychology. As we embark on rethinking what we mean by normal, what we mean by mental health, and what we mean by psychotherapy, a first step is removing the labels that we give to people who look for help with their "mental health problems" or who are sent for help for those "problems."

All "mental health disorder" labels ought to be rethought. They flow from a specious, incoherent definition of "mental disorder" and amount to little more than the affixing of fancy-sounding disorder labels to bundles of putative "symptoms." In addition-and the subject of this article-the very naming of the person who walks into the office of a "mental health provider" ought to be rethought. Is that person really a "patient"?

Right now those people are known as either "patients" or "clients." I'll tackle the problems associated with...

Mental Health Courts Resource Guide

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Court-based problem-solving initiatives seek to address the growing number of mentally ill defendants that have entered the criminal justice system by focusing on the immediate pressures that have led to the development of the mental health court strategy, as well as the challenging applications for this therapeutically oriented judicial approach.

Links to related online resources are listed below. Non-digitized publications may be borrowed from the NCSC Library; call numbers are provided.

Mental Health Court Performance Measures (MHCPM). MHCPM is a set of 14 performance measures that offers court managers and administrators a tool to monitor the performance of mental health courts.

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum. The National Center for State Courts partnered with Council of State Governments to develop this free curriculum for courts wishing to develop a mental health court.

Waters, Nicole L. State Standards: Building Better Mental Health Courts. (2015). As formal mental health courts (MHCs) enter their third decade in existence, policymakers...

The Impact of Mental Illness Stigma on Seeking and Participating in Mental Health Care

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Court-based problem-solving initiatives seek to address the growing number of mentally ill defendants that have entered the criminal justice system by focusing on the immediate pressures that have led to the development of the mental health court strategy, as well as the challenging applications for this therapeutically oriented judicial approach.

Links to related online resources are listed below. Non-digitized publications may be borrowed from the NCSC Library; call numbers are provided.

Mental Health Court Performance Measures (MHCPM). MHCPM is a set of 14 performance measures that offers court managers and administrators a tool to monitor the performance of mental health courts.

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum. The National Center for State Courts partnered with Council of State Governments to develop this free curriculum for courts wishing to develop a mental health court.

Waters, Nicole L. State Standards: Building Better Mental Health Courts. (2015). As formal mental health courts (MHCs) enter their third decade in existence, policymakers...

Urbanization and Mental Health

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Urbanization, defined as the increase in the number of cities and urban population, is not only a demographic movement but also includes, social, economic and psychological changes that constitute the demographic movement. It is a process that leads to the growth of cities due to industrialization and economic development (M. Tayfun Turan, Aslı Besirl 2008). The rapid increase in urban population worldwide is one among the important global health issues of the 21st century. According to the projections of the United Nations Population Division, by 2030, more people in the developing world will live in urban than rural areas; by 2050, two-thirds of its population is likely to be urban. The scenario in India is also affected by this trend. In India approximately 28% of the India’s population lives in cities and this is expected to increase to 41% by the year 2020 (UN World Urbanization Prospects 2008).

Urbanization brings with it a...

Mental Health Grantmaking

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

In the paper “What Do We Really Know About Foundations' Funding of Mental Health?” Ruth Tebbets Rousseau and Andrew D. Hyman present findings from their brief scan of quantitative data from the Foundation Center and qualitative information from foundation leaders. The authors note that grantmaking for mental health continues to decline as a proportion of health funding through 2006, with the top ten grantmakers in this area providing nearly 50% of grant dollars.

How can the mental health community and funders address this decline in giving, and identify areas to focus on? As mentioned in our last blog post, the nonprofit sector is gravitating toward integrated systems to assess nonprofit impact at the field level, and these approaches may help discover successful mental health programs and priority areas where more funding can be directed to.

In addition, Brousseau and Hyman note that since mental health is often an aspect of broader program areas, tracking and anal

The Challenge to Mental Health and the Law, Part 1 Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

The Facts and the Future

The basic thesis of the psychoanalytic psychiatrist, and I am still one, is that in order to understand where you are going, you have to understand where you have been. Therefore, let me begin by giving you a very brief developmental history of law and psychiatry. Of course, like all psychoanalytic history, this one is constructed from the peculiar point of view of the analyst and you should feel free to impute to me counter transference, repression, denial, reaction formation, projection and egocentricity.

My history begins with the decade of the 1950s, when psychiatry and, particularly, psychoanalysis had reached the peak of their power and influence in the United States. It was acceptable even for judges to announce that they had been psychoanalyzed. Two such federal judges stood out: Judge Jerome Frank and Judge David Bazelon. Frank is less well known to psychiatrists...

Position Statement 22: Involuntary Mental Health Treatment

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Policy

Mental Health America (MHA) believes that effective protection of human rights and the best hope for recovery from mental illness comes from access to voluntary mental health treatment and services that are comprehensive, community-based, recovery-oriented and culturally and linguistically competent. It is essential that the rights of persons with mental health conditions to make decisions concerning their treatment be respected. MHA urges states to adopt laws that reflect the paramount value of maximizing the dignity, autonomy and self-determination of persons affected by mental health conditions. Voluntary admissions to treatment and services should be made more truly voluntary, and the use of advance directives should be implemented.

MHA believes that involuntary treatment should only occur as a last resort and should be limited to instances where persons pose a serious risk of physical harm to themselves or others in the near future and to circumstances when no less...

Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity

January 22, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008 requires health insurers and group health plans to provide the same level of benefits for mental and/or substance use treatment and services that they do for medical/surgical care. MHPAEA was expanded to ensure that qualified plans offered on the Health Insurance Marketplace cover many behavioral health treatments and services.

Introduction

The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) is a federal law that generally prevents group health plans and health insurance issuers that provide mental health or substance use disorder (MH/SUD) benefits from imposing less favorable benefit limitations on those benefits than on medical/surgical benefits.

See Also: The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA)

Mental Retardation and Mental Illness

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

It’s one of my pet peeves. “He’s having behaviors,” says the new teacher. Argh! I hate that phrase. Of course he’s “having behaviors.” We all have behaviors. When we stop having behaviors, we’re dead. What she means, of course, is that her student is behaving in ways that are difficult, challenging, and unacceptable to her. She wants a behavior plan. She wants to get rid of the difficult behaviors. I want more information. Can we talk?

I think it’s a holdover from the old days. As recently as only thirty years ago, many people in the field thought that people with mental retardation could not have a mental illness. Some people even thought that people with mental retardation didn’t have feelings like the rest of us, or didn’t want to relate to other people, or were too “retarded” to make sense of things.

It’s interesting and humbling to realize that when people...