Best in Mental Health (July – August 10, 2019)

July – August 10, 2019 Mental Health Roundup

This roundup contains some of the latest news in social work, therapy, private practice and more! Reduce your emotional vulnerability with DBT emotional regulation skills, better understand structural dissociation, the world of adolescent girls, and various parenting issues, redefine masculinity, examine white privilege, educate for uncertainty and much more!

This wrap-up’s main themes are:

• Therapy and Relationships
• Advocacy
• Self-Care/Inspiration
• Social Work, Technology & Education
• Private Practice

Therapy and Relationships

• Two Critical Skills For Dealing With An Unreasonable Adult – Neil Brown – “to avoid enabling an unreasonable adult… validate and set limits… Validation is helping a person know you see the reasonableness of their feelings or thoughts… Limits are best set when you own them as yours, not what’s wrong with the other person…”
• On Being Gender Non-Conforming – Cathy Hanville – “effect of the microaggressions on GNC people… the dirty looks… effect that has been cumulative… They add up and they have taken years of working through…”
  • You Be You!: The Kid’s Guide to Gender, Sexuality & Family  – Jonanthan Branfman – “book for ages 7-11… When I grow up, it’s okay if I like men, women, genderqueer people, all or none. It’s okay if I want to get married or not, and okay if I want to have kids or not…”
• Break The Silence: Let Music Heal – Robert T. Muller – “TEDx Talk… As a therapist and abuse survivor, Karla gives a unique and harrowing perspective of the pain and sufferings of childhood sexual abuse and healing…”
• DBT ABC PLEASE Skills of Emotion Regulation (Part Two) – Kathy Morelli – “DBT skills are all about proactive self-care, to reduce your vulnerability to strong emotions… The PLEASE skills are all about managing in advance and recognizing if you are experiencing HALT – Hungry, Angry, Lonely Tired…”
• A Different Kind of Identity – Mark Leary/Psychology Today – “identity characteristics that reflect a similarity or connection with other people or the world… more concerned both with the welfare of people with whom they are in frequent contact… and the welfare of all people, as well as nature…”
• Free Mental Health Webinars for August 2019 – SWC – “wide range of webinars for social workers and mental health professionals, many of which offer free CEs or certificates of completion.”
• The Intersection Between Religion and Posttraumatic Growth – Bret Moore/Psych Central – “Religious beliefs can provide a way to cope with and make sense of trauma. They help some put the most horrific experiences imaginable within a larger context that offers hope and meaning…”
• Isolated And Struggling, Many Seniors Are Turning To Suicide – NPR – “Across the country, suicide rates have been on the rise, and that rise has struck the nation’s seniors particularly hard…”
• Structural Dissociation – TherapyChat w/Kathy Steele – “fragmentation or division or dissociation in the sense of self or the personality…  it’s how we organize ourselves when we become too overwhelmed by trauma to continue and that trauma happens over and over again in the context of normal daily life…”
• The Parenting Report Card: Are You Getting All A’s? – Lynn Lyons – “a parent’s mental health is a huge predictor of a child’s wellbeing… Anxiety demands rigidity. It wants to know everything ahead of time… Perfectionism is rigidity on steroids, the need for things to be a certain way, with no tolerance for mistakes or variance…”
  • 17 Ways to Calm Down for Parents  – Wendy Young – “Calm Parents = Much Calmer Kids… do 10 jumping jacks or more… ask yourself: what does my child need most from me now…”
  • The Battle Against Pop Culture: Mom and Dad, BE IN THE GAME – Jamie Siggard & Melody Bergman – “help combat misinformation from harmful media…  Some media is not worth our time… Our worth is not tied to our sexual appeal, the number of followers… appreciate what our bodies can do…”
  • How To Talk To Children About Miscarriage and Stillbirth – Eleanor Haley/What’s Your Grief – “supporting kids starts with taking care of yourself – which means tending to your own grief… If you told them about your pregnancy, you should tell them about your miscarriage…”
  • Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World – Kristina Wright/Your Teen Mag – “kids are developing the social skills they need through their digital connections… embrace technology as a helpful tool for education and engagement…”
  • Super Nanny for Screens: NPR’s LifeKit for Parents – Devorah Heitner – “listen to the kids’ perspective on technology… The more time your child is spending on a certain game or app, the more you want to understand the experience it offers… model great texting and social media etiquette…”
  • Struggling To Work or Stay At Home – Julie Hanks – “KSL’s “The Mom Show”… deconstruct our internalized beliefs about motherhood and women’s roles to decide which ones are helpful and which ones don’t serve us…”
• Shouldn’t I Be Over My Painful Childhood by Now? – Sharon Martin – ” stuff that happens to us in childhood has a profound impact on us… there’s no prescribed timeline for healing… self-criticism invalidates your feelings and experiences and increases feelings of shame…”
• Tripping for depression – All In The Mind – “psychedelic experience… characterized by typically a sense of bliss, insightfulness, a sense of change in time and space… enables all the parts of the brain to communicate more freely….”
• The World of Adolescent Girls – Mary Pipher/Psychotherapy Networker – “strengthen families… give the daughters power and permission to be who they truly are… ask open-ended questions. How do you feel about that? What do you think? What did you learn from this experience?…”
• Youth Sexting in the US – Cyberbullying Research Center – “Overall, approximately 13% of students reported that they had sent a sext, while 18.5% had received a sext… Some teens who share nudes do get into some serious legal trouble, while more commonly there is significant social and emotional fallout associated with sexting…”

Advocacy

• Anti-Poverty Organizing – Doin’ The Work w/Ocesa Keaton – “strategies H.O.P.E. uses in their anti-poverty work at both the systems and individual levels… voting is critical for social change…”
• Anti-racism – Helpful Social Work – “racism from a social work point of view… how social workers can oppose it in practice…”
• The Impacts of Extreme Heat on Mental Health – Robin Cooper/Psychiatric Times – “One standard deviation of temperature increase leads to a 4% increase in interpersonal violence and 14% increase in group violence… Suicide… is increased during extreme heat…”
• Nalo Zidan: “It’s Time to Redefine Masculinity” – Relando Thompkins-Jones – “how and when ideas of masculinity and femininity are displayed… by reimagining definitions… more accurately and inclusively represent what it means to be human.”
• Maybe we should stop using “White supremacist” and “bad” interchangeably? – Sam Killermann – “White people do stupid stuff that isn’t White supremacist. Men have terrible ideas that aren’t patriarchal. And there are great ideas that aren’t feminist. Etc…”
  • Examining White Privilege: What’s the Fear?  – Lisa Eible/SWHelper – “If you have privilege, you have a responsibility to understand that you have it and use it to ensure all voices are heard. This is your real power…”
• Policy Fellowship Opportunity – Rachel L. West – “practical training in social work management for emerging and mid-career leaders seeking new experiences and skill sets… organize, and work effectively with others to advance the public good… Applications… Due… September 8, 2019”
• The Racial Roots Behind The Term ‘Nappy’  – Code Switch – “[Nappy] will only cease to be offensive when the racism in a society that makes certain physical characteristics to be set aside for ridicule goes away…”
• When a Mass Shooter Attacks Your Hometown: A Therapist Speaks Out – Isabel Acevedo/Shrink Tank – “mass shooters… in common… subjected to violence and abuse as a child… access to guns and weapons… If you see… anybody… that isolates and appears sad and angry, please reach out…”
• Youth Say Anti-Vaping Ads, Most Initiatives Miss the Mark – Amy Jussel – “Juuling is becoming a switchout word for vaping…much like Kleenex is for tissue… teens who have become conscious of the risks don’t know how to get out of their addiction… send messages to youth on how to quit and how to avoid the social temptation…”

Self-Care/Inspiration

• 3 Essential Types Of Self-Care For Everyday Life – Amanda Itzkoff – “Self-care is about putting yourself first and reconnecting with your thoughts, feelings, and general wellness…”
• 7 Ways to Overcome Perfectionism and Cultivate Self-Compassion – Roxy Zarrabi/GoodTherapy – “Identify the beliefs and rules that drive your perfectionism… Honestly evaluate your expectations… Acknowledge the costs…”
• Self-Care Summer: What Is It About Self-Care? – Sarah K. Sloan/New Social Worker – “Self-care is talked about often, yet is probably one of the least followed-through acts in our profession… You are worth it…”
• Setting Boundaries for Yourself Is an Act of Self-Love – Heidi Green/HealthyPlace – “Part of loving ourselves is offering tough love when we need it… my wisest self is in charge. Sometimes she needs to parent the other parts of me…”
• Stoicism: Anticipating misfortune – Stuart Sorensen – “Dealing with anxiety – the 3 stage process… What’s the worst that could happen? If it happened how would you/we cope with it? How can you/we prevent it from happening?…”

Social Work, Technology & Education

• DBT Diary Card – HAPPE – “DBT Diary Card allows users to track their use of DBT skills between clinical sessions and share their progress with practitioners….Price: $4.99… practitioner and client can customize the app to meet the client’s needs…”
• A Futures Lens for the Addictions Treatment Field – Social Work Futures – “Presentation from… Regional Opiate Summit… future is a combination of alternative futures: possible, plausible, probable and preferable… use of technology… social media… online supports for diagnosis, treatment and recovery…”
• Immersive video apps:research-based digital resources to engage learners – Tarsem Singh Cooner/Teaching & Learning in Social Work – “Learners… able to get a sense of the layout and condition of the family home, the anxiety the social worker may feel prior to or during a home visit… effective child protection work…”
• Misconceptions about Disinformation and Manipulation Online – Katja Reuter – “Disinformation is not simply false information, it often layers true information with false… We need models that can encompass how disinformation changes hearts, minds, networks and actions…”
• A Need to Educate for Uncertainty – Miguel Ángel Escotet w/Gena Borrajo – “basic foundation in educating for uncertainty is to teach students to think, to dissent, to tolerate and respect other people… theory and practice go hand in hand… education is… a lifelong process….”
• Research integrity and selective reporting bias – “Selective reporting bias is when results from scientific research are deliberately not fully or accurately reported, in order to suppress negative or undesirable findings…”
• Special conference issue of JTHS is published – “move by universities to incorporate technology in social work education… generating support for a “flipped approach” where students learn from each other…”
• TikTok is Going To College – Josie Ahlquist – “TikTok is to Gen Z as Instagram is to Millennials… Students are shocked and proud to see their schools on TikTok… all TikToks have some sort of soundtrack whether it is a song or voiceover…”
• What do we do when we do ‘social work’ – Ermintrude – “training we have as social workers and the life course perspective that brings to us… we are most definitely stronger together…”
• What role should psychoanalysis play in modern mental health practice? – Camille Hart and Iain McDougall – “narrative review of psychoanalysis… psychoanalysis and its related therapies have an empirical evidence base… Reflective practice… essential for mental health services…”

Private Practice

• Blogging Fear, Coaching and Therapy, Graduation – Allison Puryear – “blurb on… blog… this is not a substitute for therapy… don’t start off controversial… supportive… inspiring… everyone hits anxiety with their first blog…”
• Doing Time Evaluations in Career, Relationships, and Life– Joe Sanok -“real friendships balance out over time… identify a few core needs that are “non-negotiables”… step back and look at the ROI in your career decisions, relationships, and personal development…”
• How I Structure My Days – Melvin Varghese – “Block time for big tasks… Chunk repetitive tasks into a block of time… Employ “just in time” learning to get more done… Categorize your time to be more purposeful…”
• One Quick Tip for Better Paperwork – Christina Kaake/QA Prep – “first progress note… include… regular progress note info, and… ‘reviewed intake packet with client.’ Write down specifics like… Discussed fees and cancellation policy… obtained consent for treatment…”
• Spreading The Word About Your Private Practice  – Gordon Brewer – “There is no one foolproof way of getting clients through the door. You have to get your name out there and get yourself known…”
• Yelp and Your Private Practice – Get Down to Business Consulting – “If you receive a negative review… respond with a generic response mentioning confidentiality… suggesting… person… contact you directly… Yelp can be a positive for your practice…”

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