Mental Illness |

Therapy for the Elderly

Many of us have the impression that old people are sad, depressed, and/or grumpy but it turns out not to be particularly accurate. Many older adults and seniors can lead a very happy life. However, what about those who had experienced multiple losses, heartaches, and little access to therapy?

Moreover, for many of the elders with whom I work, emotional distress is their own business, sometimes a source of shame, and for sure something not to share with “strangers” like the therapist. Others think therapy is for young or younger people to what even Sigmund Freud noted that around age 50, “the elasticity of the mental process on which treatment depends is, as a rule, lacking,” adding, “Old people are no longer educable.” (Never mind that he continued working until he died at 83.) and as an article in The New York Times by ABBY ELLIN states: “…In years past, too, there was a sense among medical professionals that a patient often could not be helped after a certain age unless he had received treatment earlier in life… ‘that’s been totally turned around by what we’ve learned about cognitive psychology and cognitive approach — changing the way you think about things, redirecting your emotions in more positive ways,” said Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist and professor of human development at Cornell, and author of “30 Lessons for Living.”

Treatment regimens can be difficult in this population. Antidepressants, for instance, can have unpleasant side effects and only add to the pile of pills many elderly patients take daily. Older patients may feel that they don’t have the time necessary to explore psychotherapy, or that it’s too late to change.

But many eagerly embrace talk therapy, particularly cognitive behavioral techniques that focus on altering thought patterns and behaviors affecting their quality of life now. Experts say that seniors generally have a higher satisfaction rate in therapy than younger people because they are usually more serious about it. Time is critical, and their goals usually are well defined. Read Ellin’s article

This entry was posted in Elders mental Health and Wellness, General, Mental Illness, Psychotherapy on July 17th, 2014.
Tags: Depression in Seniors, senior and mental illness, senior wellness, therapy with seniors.

Alternative Therapies for Mental Illness

Searching for more information about how much or how little the public look for alternative therapies when suffering from mental illness and distress, I found an article titled Surprising Alternative Treatments for Mental Disorders. The article claims what I suspected “…The use of alternative treatments for mental illness is growing in popularity due to concern over the side effects of some medications and a general mistrust for pharmaceutical companies. Let’s look at some of the natural ways people are treating disorders like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

9.6 million Adults (18+) in the U.S. with a serious mental illness; 52.6% of those with a serious mental illness who used prescription pills to treat their condition in the past year; 36.2 million of Americans who paid for mental health care services in the span of a year.

While a combination of medicine and therapy can help many individuals suffering from a mental illness, some people are seeking other methods of treatment. What options are out there? This article explains how the so called alternative therapies “medicine douce” like Acupuncture, Hypnosis, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Bio-feedback, Reflexology, Yoga, nutrition and nutritional supplements can help. Actually $34 billion are spent per year in the U.S. on alternative medicine for general use.

This entry was posted in Alternative Therapy, Mental Illness, Psychotherapy on July 16th, 2014.
Tags: Healing the soul, HIV and mental illness, Humanistic Psychotherapy, lesbian therapist.

No Magic Bullet for Treating Mental Illness

On a medical model oriented society, we always look for the magic bullet to cure all our illnesses. Mental Illness has not been spared of such a mythical quest. There is not one size fits all or magic bullet to makes “whole”. People in the field of healing and psychiatry like Dr. Stan Grof , author of the holotropic paradigm shift, refers to disease like the manifestation of our “body and soul” trying to move towards wholeness. Thus, health is a total state of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social well-being and yet Western medicine is poor at preventing and treating mental distress otherwise called diseases and keeps looking for the “magic bullet” to cure every disease

Referring specifically to HIV/AIDS related mental illness treatment. Dr. Thomas Insel has written “… Universal prevention has been a focus of psychiatric research for the past 4 decades. Using a public health approach, research has shown that mitigating major risk factors, such as poverty and early life stress, and promoting protective factors can improve behavioral outcomes. In other areas of medicine, we have observed how similar preventive approaches have reduced deaths from cancer and infectious disease. By contrast, while reducing environmental stress and providing better maternal support improve general behavioral outcomes (by preventing the development of antisocial behavior, for example), there are few, if any, examples of preventive approaches in psychiatry that reduce either the morbidity or the mortality of our most disabling illnesses—such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Read More)

Dr. Insel expresses the needs of doing the same type of preventive work when approaching HIV/AIDS related mental illness and caution of the myth of the magic bullet. He says “…Imagine for a moment that we had the magic bullet for depression or schizophrenia or anorexia or autism. A single pill, taken once a day, safe and effective, that would immediately and continually keep all of the symptoms at bay. With this magic bullet, an end to episodes threatening job and family, no more hospitalizations, and a chance for a long life not cut short by mental illness and its complications. Now imagine that such a magic bullet existed, but only one in four people received it. Seems impossible? (See more)

Imagine for a moment that we had the magic bullet for depression or schizophrenia or anorexia or autism. A single pill, taken once a day, safe and effective, that would immediately and continually keep all of the symptoms at bay. With this magic bullet, an end to episodes threatening job and family, no more hospitalizations, and a chance for a long life not cut short by mental illness and its complications. Now imagine that such a magic bullet existed, but only one in four people received it. Seems impossible? – See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blogs/couch-crisis/aids-cautionary-tale?GUID=&rememberme=1&ts=15072014#sthash.LXr8RamO.dpuf

Universal prevention has been a focus of psychiatric research for the past 4 decades. Using a public health approach, research has shown that mitigating major risk factors, such as poverty and early life stress, and promoting protective factors can improve behavioral outcomes. In other areas of medicine, we have observed how similar preventive approaches have reduced deaths from cancer and infectious disease. By contrast, while reducing environmental stress and providing better maternal support improve general behavioral outcomes (by preventing the development of antisocial behavior, for example), there are few, if any, examples of preventive approaches in psychiatry that reduce either the morbidity or the mortality of our most disabling illnesses—such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/neuropsychiatry/prevention-preemption-paradigm-shift-psychiatry#sthash.NKRl0BQW.dpu

This entry was posted in Alternative Therapy, Mental Illness, Psychotherapy on July 15th, 2014.
Tags: HIV and Metal illness, Mental Illness.

Mental Illness in HIV and AIDS: Interesting Podcast

As we know, Mental illnesses are both caused by and causes of HIV transmission and morbidity. On a podcast published by the Psychiatric Times Magazine, Dr. Treisman from John Hopkins Hospital states”…A risk factor for HIV infection, mental illness brings a number of behavioral correlates that put patients at risk for getting infected. As HIV infection worsens, it begins to affect the brain, and a cyclical relationship between the disease and mental illness begins.

Here, Dr Glenn Treisman provides an overview of the treatment of psychiatric disorders in patients with HIV. Dr Treisman is associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Director of the AIDS Psychiatry Service at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Listen to the podcast

sychiatric illnesses are both caused by and causes of HIV transmission and morbidity. A risk factor for HIV infection, mental illness brings a number of behavioral correlates that put patients at risk for getting infected. As HIV infection worsens, it begins to affect the brain, and a cyclical relationship between the disease and mental illness begins.

– See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dementia/treatment-psychiatric-disorders-patients-hivaids#sthash.leR9P3S0.dpuf

This entry was posted in HIV - AIDS and Mental Illness, Mental Illness on July 15th, 2014.
Tags: HIV and mental illness.

Chemical Imbalance and Mental Issues: An Oversimplification?

In Psychology and Psychiatry, there are theories of brain malfunctioning and chemical imbalance to explain the presence of symptoms or alterations we would call mental illness, too easily. Nonetheless, beware, neurochemistry, neurophysiology, chemical imbalances, neurotransmitters have being all explanations that had tried to become the panacea that would help us understand what is inextricable and simplify the grasp of it. The most fatal blow to this “brain disease” model has been dealt by the inability of the research to validate the brain disease hypothesis. The most severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression have been the primary targets of attempts to validate the medical model of mental suffering. Billions of dollars and thousands of research studies have gone into exactly this quest, and yet, according to a large number of highly experienced researchers, scholars and clinicians none of it is substantial. Many claim, in fact, that because the disease model continues to be unsupported in spite of the enormous amount of research that has been conducted in an attempt to validate it, the implications point strongly in the opposite direction—that these types of mental disorders are not caused by a disease of the brain.

Moreover, some doctors believe that they will help the patient feel less blameworthy by telling them, Dr. Ronald Pies, MD wrote “You have a chemical imbalance causing your problem.” It’s easy to think you are doing the patient a favor by providing this kind of “explanation”, but often, this isn’t the case. Most of the time, the doctor knows that the “chemical balance” business is a vast oversimplification…(Read Dr. Pies’ article)

Could we say, what was first? the chemical imbalance, the symptoms, the wounds, the disease? Cd not this be a minimization of a bigger reality. What’s next? It seems that the only way to deal with this tragic dilemma is to ironically create genuine brain disease (through brain-damaging drugs, electroshock therapy, and/or other similarly harmful means) in an attempt to “deaden” you to your unbearable suffering. What came first? The egg or the chicken?

This entry was posted in Mental Illness, Psychotherapy on July 10th, 2014.
Tags: Humanistic Psychotherapy.

Another Take on ADD: Trauma During Childhood

As a very good friend of mine, said when seeing this article:”…It’s about time!

People have had different takes on ADD from stating there is not a real mental illness to advocate for a cure through food and exercise. No matter what approach one takes the truth is that untreated ADD can devastate a person’s life and how helping them get on track quickly provides the biggest chance of success. Obviously there are many interventions but analyzing the cause can be a good start.

For instance, Dr. Nicole Brown’s quest to understand her misbehaving pediatric patients began with a hunch: Inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive behavior may mirror the effects of adversity, and many doctors don’t know how—or don’t have time—to tell the difference. Brown was completing her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, when she realized that many of her low-income patients had been diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These children lived in households and neighborhoods where violence and relentless stress prevailed. Their parents found them hard to manage and teachers described them as disruptive or inattentive. Brown knew these behaviors as classic symptoms of ADHD, a brain disorder characterized by impulsivity, hyperactivity, and an inability to focus.

When Brown looked closely, though, she saw something else: trauma. Hyper-vigilance and dissociation, for example, could be mistaken for inattention. Impulsivity might be brought on by a stress response in overdrive…” (Read More)

This entry was posted in ADD in Adulthood, General, Mental Illness, Trauma on July 9th, 2014.
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Doris Bersing, PhD
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Category: Mental Illness