The Dangers of Diet Culture: What Parents Can Do to Be a Positive Influence on Their Children

in Clinical, Developmental, Featured Article, Pop Culture, Public News

Diet culture puts unrealistic pressure on everyone — children and adults alike — to live within a narrow range of false and dangerous ideals. It does not accept that healthy people can come in many shapes and sizes. Diet culture sends the wrong message that people need to be in thinner bodies in order to be valued, and mistakenly pressures people to value being thin even when thinness may be disconnected from any real health benefits.

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Coping Ahead: Working with Clients to Prepare for Disaster Anniversaries

in Clinical, Featured Article, Public News, Therapy

The anniversary of a hurricane or other disaster can provide an important opportunity to review a client’s gains as well as process reactions to the disaster, continue to work through grief responses, and collaborate to cope with unhelpful reactions ahead of time. Anniversary reactions that are more intense may require more targeted treatments for trauma, anxiety, or other significant symptoms.

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Caring for the Self in 2021

in Clinical, Ethics, Public News

When we are under high stress, it can be tempting to put off self-care.  This can be especially true when our pre-covid routines have been so disrupted.  But I hope that many of us have self-care activities that we have been able to keep, and perhaps have been able to find new ones.  One of my favorites for myself and my clients is mindfulness, which is perhaps best practiced in isolation, and can be practiced almost anywhere and anytime we can find a few moments.

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Should I Coordinate with a Sex Therapist? The Answer is YES!

in Clinical, Public News, Therapy

When I introduce myself as a sex therapist to other mental health providers and professionals in the medical field, I get a mixed bag of reactions. Some respond with enthusiastic curiosity about the strangest cases I’ve worked with in the past. More often; however, I encounter providers who give me a sideways glance and mutter an uneasy, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

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From Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing for mental health problems: a systematic review and meta-analysis

in Academic, Clinical, Featured Article, Peer-Reviewed Article, Therapy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was developed in the late 1980s as a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Shapiro, 1989). It was based on the observation that the intensity of traumatic memories can be reduced through eye movements.

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From APA Division 38: Working Alongside Health Psychologists Improved My Practice

in Clinical, Featured Article, Public News

Understanding the importance of the mind and body connection was one of the most important goals early in my medical career. My interest in becoming a primary care provider was initiated by witnessing the necessity of practicing medicine within a biopsychosocial model of medicine to provide optimal health care and help address health disparities. During my family medicine residency, I had the amazing opportunity to co-train with clinical health psychology fellows training in a primary-care psychology program within a collaborative care model.

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From Behavior Therapy: Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Loneliness: A Pilot Randomized Control Trial

in Clinical, Featured Article, Peer-Reviewed Article, Public News

Loneliness has been described as a common source of discomfort based on a subjective discrepancy between the actual and desired social situation. For some people this feeling may become a sustained state that is associated with a wide range of psychiatric and psychosocial problems. While there are few existing treatment protocols, interventions based on cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) have shown positive effects.

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MDMA as a Catalyst for Effective Treatment of PTSD

in Clinical, Featured Article, Public News, Therapy

A key aspect behind why MDMA is demonstrating effectiveness for the management and treatment of PTSD in a clinical setting, is its apparent ability to assist patients to be more expressive during a controlled psychotherapy session. MDMA appears to reduce anxiety associated with recalling traumatic experiences allowing for increased insight and memory. Negative memories are perceived as less negative allowing for the therapist and the patient to engage in productive therapeutic sessions without the patient becoming hyper-aroused due to stress.

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