SocialWork.Career

Social Work Career Development Resources and More

You are here: Home / Education and Training / Best in Mental Health (4/11/16 – 4/29/16)

Best in Mental Health (4/11/16 – 4/29/16)

By

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

April best in mental healthMental Health Roundup

This contains some of the latest news in social work, healthcare, private practice and more!

This week’s wrap-up has 6 main themes:

  • Health & Self-Care
  • Advocacy
  • Therapy
  • Relationships
  • Tech for Advocacy/Education/Practice
  • Your Career

1. Embrace Health & Self-Care

  • 8 Keys to Stress Relief – Dr. Christina Hibbert – “Stress is associated with a multitude of other physical and mental problems… Daily Activity & Exercise… Quality, Nightly Sleep… Relaxation and Downtime…”
  • 10 Signs of a Healthy Self – Dr. Julie Hanks – “I can be flexible when things don’t go as planned…”
  • Bringing together physical and mental health – “compelling case for seeking to support mental and physical health in a more integrated way… creating care which is greater than the sum of its parts…”
  • Nicotine without smoke – Lorien Jolly – “main risks of smoking arise from tobacco smoke rather than nicotine… e-cigarettes are being used almost exclusively as safer alternatives to smoked tobacco…”
  • What does a perfect world for postpartum moms look like? – Jennifer Lincoln – “new moms are seen within 3 days after hospital discharge, then at 2 and 6 weeks postpartum… All new moms… screened for postpartum depression/anxiety… “

2. Advocate on Behalf of Clients

  • The Apathy Epidemic – Natasha Puri – “increase in complexity… parallels… surge in apathy… There seems to be some propensity to wait for someone else to act and take initiative…”
  • Can a Single Question Help Families Confront Poverty? – David Krol – Poverty is one of the biggest health risks that children face…  screening… starts… “Do you have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month?”…”
  • Conservative Christian Beliefs & Sexual Orientation in Social Work – N.A.H. Podcast interview with Dr. Adrienne Dessel about her latest co-edited book…”Models of Christian LGB affirmation and advocacy are presented, and recommendations for teaching, research, and practice are provided…”
  • Environmental Justice – InSocialWork podcast interview with Rachel Forbes, Dr. Andrea Nesmith, Meredith Powers, and Dr. Cathryne Schmitz – how environmental justice represents a subset of our traditional view of social work/justice.
  • Get Out the Vote – Rachel L. West and #MacroSW held a chat to explore the role that social workers can play in voter outreach; catch up with resources shared and chat archive.
  • NASW Foundation names five new Pioneers – Paul R. Pace – latest round of inductees are: Capt. Barry D. Adams, State Rep. Joseph Gallegos, Catherine Goodma, Travis Peterson and Tommy Wells.
  • The tangible effects of invisible illness – Cathy L. Pederson and Greta Hochstetler Mayer –  “Lack of understanding can lead to feelings of alienation and hopelessness for those suffering from these disorders… rates of suicide are believed to be higher…”
  • What You Need to Know and Do About Identity Theft – to reduce your susceptibility to identity theft, Reeta Wolfsohn recommends you keep all identifying info secure, check your credit score three times a year and more.

3. Employ Therapy Tools

  • 6 Things Not to Say to Someone with Social Anxiety – Christine Reber – “Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) as the third largest mental health issue in the United States… share stories and details about yourself first… reassure…  you care and do not judge… for feeling the way they do…”
  • 12 Lies Anxiety Tells You –  Tanya J. Peterson – “Anxiety tells you lies that race through your brain until they feel like the truth… The past continues today…You’re not good enough… You can’t ask for things…”
  • Couples Therapy in the Aftermath of Addiction & Trauma – Businesses in Bloom podcast interview with Sue Diamond Potts – start small… have mentors… take care of your own unfinished business… have boundaries…”
  • Do you have the guts to make honest art? – Lisa Mitchell – “Honest art speaks the unspoken and doesn’t need translation… no aesthetic standard… When we make honest art or we encourage others to make honest art…”
  • Ego State Therapy and writing – Dima Dupéré illustrates how some of the techniques she learned in a training she took with Robin Shapiro may apply with therapeutic journaling such as internal spaces, resourcing and affect tolerance.
  • Guide for Engaging and Supporting Parents Affected by Domestic Violence – National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health – provides self-guided questions, reflection, and real-life examples
  • Life stories in dementia care – Kate Gridley – “we all have a story… no one can be understood by how they appear today out of the context of that story…”
  • Meditation meets neuroscience – All in the Mind podcast interview with Dr Britta Biederman, Maggie Glick and Peter Seidlmeier et al. – “all types of meditation are effective… mantra meditation might be very useful to reduce anxiety… if you compare a meditation group with a group that gets traditional therapy… no difference in effect…”
  • Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy can prevent recurrent depression – Sarah McDonald – “MBCT has the dual attractions of apparent clinical efficacy and cost effectiveness”
  • Thinking Outside the Box to Treat Serious Mental Illness – David Susman – “cognitive enhancement therapy, or CET…physical therapy for your brain… brings great potential to help people with serious mental illnesses improve their lives and their relationships with others…”
  • Using Conversation to Enhance the Therapeutic Alliance – Ron Taffel – “if the conversation generates a spark of interest in the client and you’re learning something new… As a theme develops… hidden competencies often begins to surface…”

4. Build Relationships

  • Adult Sibling Relationships – InSocialWork podcast interview with Dr. Geoffrey Greif and Dr. Michael Woolley about sibling relationships, and the three broad themes that run through nearly every one: affection, ambivalence, and ambiguity.
  • Common Misconceptions [about Teens] You Might Still Believe – Lynn Margolies – take quiz to help you update your knowledge on the latest findings.
  • Coping With the Emotional Aspects of a Client’s Death – Sharon Martin – “the death of a client is unavoidable in your career… Effective and supportive supervision is essential… circumstances of your client’s death add another dimension to your feelings…”
  • From the Field: Global Perspectives Dispatch 3 – Caitlin O’Donnell – “theme in Rwanda this month… is: Kwibuka means to remember… official period of remembrance for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi… the time after those three months in 1994 can be framed… as a time of forgiveness, renewal, and hope…”
  • Managing Screen Time With Your Tween – Mercedes Samudio – “understand your child habits around their screens/devices… open up a discussion about setting limits… realize that this is something they want do to actually take care of to be healthy…”
  • In Public – Martha Crawford shares an exchange between her and “A.”, a client who wrote about the benefits (and challenges) of encountering your therapist’s writing online.
  • Thinking of Walking Down the Aisle? – The Couple Fix podcast interview with Lisa Brookes Kift – “What you need to talk about before you get married… Communication, Addressing Issues and Family of Origin…”
  • What happens when you’ve been faking… and your sex life is not fulfilling? – Gary Katz – “Nobody is served when partners lie about their needs, preferences, and dislikes… Give active feedback…”
  • Why Darwin Is a Terrible Anthropologist – Jodi Nelan – “When westerners encounter cultural differences, the tendency is to view the other relative to the western norm… try to follow my three steps for cultural growth: Notice the jolt you get…Pause and learn more. Try to see how the practice is functional in the other culture…”

5. Use Tech for Advocacy/Education/Practice

  • App to Experience Homelessness – Ellen Belluomini – “The @home game… combine[s] advocacy, awareness, and fundraising… GPS identifies where you are and how many people experiencing homelessness are in your area…”
  • An App for Connecting Therapists – Kelly Higdon – “Flow… A Live Professional Rolodex…”
  • New Technology Provides Support for Sexual Assault Victims – Michael Lissack – app “allow[s] a victim of sexual assault to confidentially record contemporaneous evidence (with video and audio) of an incident…”
  • Self-tracking citizenship – Deborah Lupton – “self-trackers have no legal access to their own data, which they may have collected for years… part of the ethical practice of self-tracking… may involve the notion of contributing to a wider good…”
  • Snapchat Revolution – Sameer Hinduja – “user-to-user picture/video sharing… The only people who can view… are the recipients the user has selected…Stories are different… collection is comprised of images and videos that individuals have specifically shared for all contacts to choose to view… self-destruct component… users can add text, emojis, drawings…”Teaching Snapchat Safety to Teens – “Snaps may still be retrievable… understand the privacy controls… recommend that snaps be sent only to others a person knows and trusts in real life…”
  • #SWDE2016 Incorporating Digital & Social Technologies into Social Work Education –  Laurel Hitchcock shares the slides and other resources from the workshop that she and Drs. Melanie Sage and Nancy J. Smyth gave. More SWDE 2016 Conference – Melanie Sage mentions her activities including a presentation on the importance of students to build online professional identities with links/handouts. Blabbing about #SWDE2016 –  Sean Erreger talks with Melanie Sage, Todd Sage and Linda Grobman about the benefits of social media to accelerate social work education.

6. Advance Your Career

Like this post? Please share it!

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share