Best in Mental Health (7/13/15-7/26/15)

Below is a round-up of some of the latest news in mental health (and more)!

This week’s wrap-up has the following main themes:

Cultural Sensitivity/Advocacy
Technology and Mental Health
Healthcare/Therapy
Depression/Suicide
Child Therapy
Career/Self Care

Cultural Sensitivity/Advocacy

• 6 Questions To Help You See Visual Processing Disorder Clearly – Stephen Borgman explains how a child with visual perception problems may learn best via audio and shares the typical symptoms for visual processing disorder.
• How We Talk (or Don’t) About Being White – Jennifer Petersen suggests that white people be honest about their feelings around race; this includes enduring hurt feelings as we realize how many privileges we have based on race.
• Human trafficking is all around you – in Noy Thrupkaew’s TED talk, she exposes some myths and explains how human trafficking takes place in degraded work environments that are behind the everyday bargains that we enjoy.
• Minority Mental Health Month: Lifting the Burden of Disparities – to improve social inclusion, strive for an understanding of culture and provision of care that is respectful of the beliefs, practices and needs of diverse patients.
• The Pains of Mass Imprisonment – Book Review – authors provide an understanding of confinement’s serious repercussions on an inmate’s well being, negatively impacting health and family relationships.
• Preparing counselors for America’s multiracial population boom – Appreciating the strengths, understanding multiracial competencies and being sensitive to the multiracial experience “isn’t an option anymore.”
• Social Work Response to Jihadism – Part II – Pat  Shelly shares a personal account of a meeting in which difficult feelings and concerns about Muslim stereotypes were discussed, and a desire to bring about social change.
• The Top 10 Things We Need to Stop Doing in LGBTQ+ Programming – To be more inclusive, we need to cease being married to marriage, being blind to Whiteness, stewing on the alphabet soup and more.
• Transgender: A Diverse Group of Individuals – On a very basic level, a transgender person is born as male or female, but identifies as either the opposite gender, both genders, or no gender at all.

Technology and Mental Health

• 10 Ways Tech Is Enabling the Disabled –  cool tech such as an app that allows blind users to request the services of a seeing person, a smartphone for the mobility restricted and help for blind people to “see” via vibrations.
• HIPAA Compliant Texting: The Do’s and Don’ts – provides a white paper on HIPAA Compliant texting and additional helpful links to ensure you send secure text messages.
• Calls for Participation/Invitation
  • Call for Contributions – Assignment Compendium for Book – Laurel Hitchcock invites social work colleagues to contribute to an assignment appendix on a book she is co-authoring with Melanie Sage and Nancy Smyth, tentatively titled Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology.
  • Exploring the Benefits of Learning from Failure at #LFFdigital – to inspire people-led digital innovation in health and wellbeing, a Practical Strategies for Learning from Failure workshop will be held on the 5th of August [no charge].
  • Research project – technology and mental wellbeing – Aislinn Bergin, a PhD student, is asking people to tell her about their experiences of using technology for their mental wellbeing.
  • Social Workers! Are You Involved? 5 Minutes Could Tell – SJS & CRISP has a 5 min. survey for you; its purpose is to explore the level of interest social workers have in political advocacy.
• Twitter Chat Archives
  • The Future of Hospitals – #hcldr – a twitter chat about the need for hospitals to radically transform in order to remain relevant.
  • Open Mike Night! #MacroSW Twitter Chat Archive/Resources – this includes summer media reading list, helpful websites and more.
  • @themsalisbury’s #SWtrauma –  how to address secondary/vicarious trauma in social work [ongoing conversation that you may add to].

Healthcare/Therapy

• Art therapy for common mental health disorders – Mental Elf disputes the conclusion that art therapy is a cost-effective clinical treatment for various mental health disorders and calls for better quality research.
• BC Child Welfare is found to have caused injury to children through misfeasance –  case illustrating common child protection problems such as: poor management of hostile divorces, misunderstanding of domestic violence and its impacts on the survivor and more.
• Elyn Saks: A Tale of Mental Illness From the Inside – Robert T. Muller shares a video in which Elyn Saks, a successful mental health lawyer, and professor speaks about her struggle with schizophrenia.
• Healing PTSD Through Writing – Michele Rosenthal shares a book excerpt from Dan L. Hays, a PTSD survivor, demonstrating the healing powers of writing.
• Quadruple Aim: Care of the Provider – to optimize health care, it is recommended to expand IHI’s ‘Triple Aim’ approach of improving patient experience of care, health of populations, and reducing the per capita cost of health care by including care of the Provider.
• Reflections on #NAEH15: Ensuring Forward Momentum –  structural forces of racism reinforce the realities of homelessness; to stabilize people who are homeless, it is critical to work across family systems, community supports and government-funded services.
• Supervision: One construct, many practices? – Liz Beddoe shares her presentation on how supervision is inevitably impacted by many factors such as power, gender, ethnicity, race and more.

Child Therapy

• Children and their emotions – Lynne Malcolm talks about some of the causes of children’s anxiety and the best ways to manage it.
• Fathering To The Strengths of Your Children – Mercedes Samudio speaks with Wayne Jones about how fathering to the strengths of your child will not only help them develop, but will also enhance the relationship between father and child.
• Teach your Child How to Fight Anxiety – Natasha Daniels provides guidance for how you can teach a child to address his/her anxiety by getting them to feel like a superhero.

Depression/Suicide

• On College Campuses, Suicide Intervention Via Anonymous App – NPR – college students are expressing their feelings of loneliness/desperation and thanks to increased awareness about suicide, individuals are helping with kindness.
• The Deadly Side of Perfectionism – Carolyn Ferreira reports on the strong links that have been found between perfectionism and suicide; individuals would benefit from more accepting workplaces and suicide prevention programs including perfectionism themes.
• How to Save a Life (Part Three): Arguing with Suicide Intent – Therapydoc talks about the CASE method for suicide assessment and explains how suicide is a decision, a way to solve a painful dilemma.
• Psychotherapies for depression in children and young people – Mental Elf finds that there are no effective theoretically based interventions that successfully address child and adolescent depression.

Career/Self Care

• Three social workers make ‘most influential’ list – Three social workers are included in a book called “Powerful Women: The 25 Most Influential Women in Congress.”
• 7 Questions to Ask When Reading Program Evaluations – to know whether a program is effective with a particular population/setting, consider 7 factors including objectivity, baseline measurements and the presence of a control group.
• 10 Ways to SIMPLIFY Your Busy Life – Christina Hibbert suggests you slow down, decide what matters most and try 8 more strategies in order to simplify your life and feel happier.
• Current website trends and ‘must have’ pages for websites – Juliet and Austin provide guidance on what makes a professional website including critical mobile-responsiveness, “how I work/my approach”, a contact page and more.
• How Can Nonprofits Become Agile Learners? – to become an agile learner, a required leadership competency, as per Julie Winkle Giuliani via Beth Kanter, get out of your comfort zone and take some time each day to reflect on what you’ve learned.
• Is Your Waitlist a Wasteland? – to address overflow, network with other clinicians so that you have a list of providers that you may recommend for clients to contact to see if they have space to work with them.
• Self-reflection is essential for therapists –  Lisa Mitchell shares how she uses knitting a mood scarf in between sessions as a time to self-reflect, check-in, think about her state of being and get grounded.
• Using Podcasting To Build and Grow Your Practice – Selling the Couch shares what you need to get started with podcasting and some of the benefits you may reap such as more website traffic and  higher website ranking.

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Have I missed a terrific article/podcast? If yes, please describe it in the comments !