Best in Mental Health (6/6/16 – 6/19/16)

Mental 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:

• Advocacy/Bias
• Healthcare
• Therapy/Relationships
• Technology, Education and Social Work
• Self-Care
• Career/Non-Profit

Advocacy/Bias

• Four Ways Your Spiritual and Religious Biases May Impact Your Clinical Work – Jessica Dore – “beliefs you hold can impact everything from the language you use to the way you formulate your cases… affect some of your core assumptions about life… avoid things that are important in the therapy room…”
• Active Bystanding In Families – Angeles Arrien – “bystander is active and advocating for children… “What do I do if I suspect someone in my own family?”… when we confront… We potentially disrupt cohesion, safety, security, tradition – it’s a huge risk… to get to an answer we have to connect to the child’s innocence…”
• The Black Body, Assisted Suicide, & the “Me Before You” Connection – Vilissa Thompson – “main character decides that death is a better choice to make than to live with a disability… differences between Whites and Blacks… Death and the Black body…death by one’s own hands… tremendously taboo…”
• Love Wins in the Wake of the Orlando Shootings – Panagiotis Pentaris- “More than 5,000 people gathered in Soho, London UK and became silent within seconds altogether… Love may be the tool that will enable all people to stop hating each other…”
• Police ‘Blue Wall of Silence’ Facilitates Domestic Violence – Robert T. Muller – “40 percent of U.S. police-officer families experience domestic violence, compared to 10 percent of families in the general population…”
• To Prevent Child Abuse: Replace the “Public Health Approach” with a Social Justice Approach – SJS/Chronicle Of Social Change -“30 percent of America’s foster children could be home right now if their families just had decent housing, make housing a core “preventive service.”… when… need to combine hard services with counseling and parent education… Start with the kitchen…”
• Racial Justice and Social Work Education – video from 6/16 #MacroSW twitter chat and resources.
• What Queer Muslims Are Saying About The Orlando Shooting – Leah Donnella – “Queer Muslims in particular are caught in the crossfire, mourning the tragedy even as they fear an anti-Muslim backlash in the wake of the attack…”
• “When Diversity Means Everything, Diversity Means Nothing” – Relando Thompkins-Jones – Dr. Donnetrice Allison – “Be active about recruiting, hiring and retaining faculty… of color… Stop assuming that inclusion is happening by the presence of one person of color in any given meeting…”
• Yes, Very Skinny Women Still Have Thin Privilege – Melissa A. Fabello – “Intersectionality Means We Can Be Oppressed and Privileged… Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination… exist only on internal and interpersonal levels… Oppression, on the other hand, exists on institutional, structural, ideological, and cultural levels…”

Healthcare

• Cochrane find no evidence for as required PRN medication for mental health inpatients – John Baker – “‘As required’ or ‘Pro re nata’ (PRN) medications are probably the most widely used intervention in mental health wards…”
• Improving Suicide Risk Screening and Detection in the Emergency Department – “effective universal suicide screening for adults in emergency departments could be achieved by using a relatively simple instrument and set of protocols… led to nearly twice as many patients being identified as having suicide risk…”
• Measuring Progress on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity – SAMHSA – ” improved insurance coverage for mental health and substance use disorder care for over 170 million people… there remains unfinished business… add your voice… “
• Men, Women and Health Care Pricing Theory: Speaking Different Languages – Jeanne Pinder – “When I talk… half of my listeners zoning out — the male half…. women make or influence 90 percent of the health care decisions in this country…”
• Moving can be hazardous to your health and wellbeing – Elsevier Health Sciences – “long-term study of Danish children followed into adulthood shows that moving to a new home during childhood increases the likelihood of multiple adverse outcomes later in life…  across the socioeconomic spectrum…”
• Why I Disagree with the Snake Oil Analogy – John D. Halamka – “We created the digital foundation that is a prerequisite for the next generation of tools which will focus on: team-based workflow… pulling data from the patient’s lifetime historical healthcare encounters…”

Therapy/Relationships

• Ethical Boundaries in an Age of Informality – Mary Jo Barrett – “clients need to know up front what makes therapy different from all other relationships… what makes them feel safe and what types of relationships they feel safe in… how we might deal with possible meetings outside of therapy… Ethical issues may seem obvious…”
• PTSD and Trauma – Excerpt from Dr. Glenn Schiraldi’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook – “Unresolved guilt keeps memories emotionally charged and in active memory… Shame goes one step further than guilt, saying, “Not only did I do something bad, but I am bad to the core.”…”
• Guardian of the Golden Gate – Social Work Podcast interview with Kevin Briggs – “Kevin has talked down hundreds of people from the bridge… what it was like… some of his strategies and his struggles… valuable insight… crisis work”
• Helping clients realize their daily potential – Brandon S. Ballantyne – “All of us acquire beliefs about our potential from what we are told as children…  help clients… examining their “daily” potential… offer a less rigid framework for balanced thoughts and considerations… GPS navigation for reaching individual potential…”
• How to Break Into an Adult Clique – Julie Hanks –  “like-minded individuals often form social groups to discuss shared values, lifestyles, and interests… try not to take it personally… try to ease in by finding an approachable person and developing a one-on-one relationship…”
• How your parenting style affects your child’s future – Kobe University – “children who receive positive attention and care from their parents tend to have high incomes, high happiness levels, academic success, and a strong sense of morality…”
• It Takes a Village to Raise a Mom: Building Non-Shaming Support Villages – Dr. Christina Hibbert and Mercedes Samudio – “We need safe, support villages that build us up and foster self-confidence in parenting…”
• Poverty as Trauma, Social Work as Cure – Danna Bodenheimer – “poverty is likely the largest determinant of adverse health experiences throughout the lifespan… a steady, mirroring relationship, the brain calms down… By… seeing people holistically… people experience themselves as cohesive wholes…”
• PTSD and Trauma – Excerpt from Dr. Glenn Schiraldi’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook – “Unresolved guilt keeps memories emotionally charged and in active memory… Shame goes one step further than guilt, saying, “Not only did I do something bad, but I am bad to the core.”…”
• Technical mastery isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be – Lisa Mitchell – “We… bring much more to our sessions than our skill… our years and breadth of experience… the beliefs and values that form us… free webinar… make an… art book… what really matters in psychotherapy…”
• Therapeutic resource from ‘Using Poetry to Promote Talking and Healing’ – Pooky Knightsmith – five poems in this extract… Panic Attack… Ruled by Anxiety… Depression… Boy Anorexic… Recovery… How does this poem make you feel?…”
• “Very Special Building”  – Kim Peterson presents in a video an exhibit and interpretation of a scene from a play session.
•  What Evidence Should Guide Treatment? – Ricky Greenwald – “treatment researchers should focus more on real clients in field/practice settings, and practitioners should systematically collect outcome data…”

Technology, Education and Social Work

• Digital literacies in the age of remix – Steve Wheeler – “My explanation of transliteracy is that it is the ability to be able to present your ideas, connect and manage your presence equally well no matter what tools and technologies you select…”
• NASW, ASWB, CSWE, and CSWA Requests Comments on the Draft Technology Standards in Social Work Practice – Comment Period Closes July 20… help make the technology standards a model best practice document…”
• New Social Media Research – latest issue including: University Students’ Perceptions of Social Media as a Learning Tool, A Mixed Methods Examination of 21st Century Hiring Processes, Social Networking Sites, and Implicit Bias and more.
• #OpenData and Why It Matters – Sean Erreger –  “piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it… A great place to dive in is federal and state data…  turn all this open data information into knowledge…”
• Revised Technology-Based Learning Task List for Social Work Education – Laurel Hitchcock, Melanie Sage & Nancy Smyth – provide over 100 example assignments that can be incorporated into different social work courses.

Self-Care

• 10 Tips for the Fearful Flier – Christine Reber – “learning the basics of how airplanes work can go a long way toward alleviating… anxiety… Acknowledge your fear… Practice grounding exercises…”
• Anxiety Has a Purpose; Know It and Beat Anxiety –  Tanya J. Peterson – “Anxiety has numerous causes involving thoughts, feelings, learned behaviors, past events, chemical imbalances, and more… Four Common Purposes of Anxiety… protect us from harm… spur personal growth…”
• Staff care beyond the World Humanitarian Summit – Alessandra Pigni  -“there’s a long way to go if one of the key questions on social media around staff care during the WHS was: “Should #humanitarian staff be treated fairly?””

Career/Non-Profit

• 3 Tips for Discovering Your Niche – Samara Stone – Work in another private practice where you can see clients before hanging your own shingle and get clearer about who you want to work with… sometimes the best way forward is to start with what you don’t want…”
  • Find Your Niche – Private Practice Experts – “Watch Video… Put into words ONE niche or specialty you want more of in your practice or that you want to speak or write about…”
• Four Steps to Putting Shared Value into Practice – Rob Smith – “shared value is created when a business applies its assets and expertise to a societal need in which it has a vested interest… Set a realistic timeline… Demonstrate success…”
• 10 Questions to Maximize Your Volunteer Experience – Jhia Jackson – “Why do I want to volunteer (and why this specific experience)?… What is my current value to this organization?… How would I describe my experience to someone I care about?… “
• The Ins and Outs of Online Counseling – Selling the Couch interview with Clay Cockerell – “only counsel people who live in states where… licensed to practice… no restrictions on international… pre-screening process, is needed to ensure a good fit for clients and therapists…”
• Networking in Your Community – Casey Truffo – “In order to get more referrals, we must build relationships with existing referral sources and potential referral sources… you are building relationships… Reach out to between three to five people…”
• What Do You Wish You Had Known Before Becoming a Social Worker? – Nicole Clark – “presence of burnout and how it can cripple the most knowledgeable of social workers… you don’t have to be confined to your annual social work salary…”

Like this post? Please share it!