Best in Mental Health (7/24/16 – 8/7/16)

Mental Health Roundup

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

This week’s wrap-up has 5 main themes:

• Advocacy
• Healthcare/Technology
• Therapy/Relationships
• Career/Private Practice
• Self-Care

Advocacy

• Churches Child Protection Advisory Service – Thoughts on the Social World podcast interview w/Justin Humphreys – “challenges facing faith based organisations in the current climate of attention on historic abuse… make vulnerable children and adults safer…”
• Providing Support to Children – Paula Sellars – “unmet needs are essential to the grooming process… Children need love and in a word, stewardship… abuse prevention, we talk about risk factors and protective factors…”
• How to Stop the Racist in You – Jeremy Adam Smith, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton – “Consciously commit yourself to egalitarianism… Acknowledge differences, rather than pretend that you are ignoring them… Seek out friendship with people from different groups…”
• The Immigrant Experience: Where the Erosion of Social Justice Begins (part 1) &  (Part 2) – InSocialWork Podcast interview w/Drs. Ortega,  Hanna, and Haffejee – “history of U.S. policies addressing the needs of immigrants… common myths… how… policies affect lives in our communities…”
• Rape Poem To End All Rape Poems – Robert T. Muller – slam poem relayed in a video by Rutgers University Slam Poetry team that says enough!
• Victim Blaming: When We Do It and When We Don’t – Peter Kaufman – “Why do we condemn victim blaming in the case of mass shootings but condone it in the case of sexual violence or vehicular homicide of cyclists?…”

Healthcare/Technology

• 5 Mental Health Recovery Apps You Should Try – Jami DeLoe – “Reachout...  social support app for people with various conditions… PTSD Coach… Department of Veterans Affairs’…”
• Appearance, Individuality & Expected Norms in Healthcare – Colin Hung – “Should clinicians, nurses and administrators look a certain way?… study… majority of patients wanted to be able to easily identify nurses/clinicians…”
• Are suicide and poverty associated in low and middle income countries? – Valentina Iemmi and Jason Bantjes – “At the individual level… positive association between poverty and suicidal ideations and behaviours… At the country level… did not allow us to draw conclusions…”
• Electronic Health Records – What You Need to Know – Selling the Couch Podcast interview with Rob Reinhardt -“system that stores clinical records electronically for clients… refined and specific with the onset of HIPAA laws… “
• Locked wards vs open wards: does control = safety? – Andre Tomlin – “increasingly we see modern mental health units being kept permanently locked… Locked wards saw no reduction in the rates of suicide, suicide attempts or absconding…”
• Rio Bound? The CDC Answers Your Health Questions – Susan Yox – “CDC… recommended health apps… “Can I Eat This?”…TravWell…checklist of what you need to do to prepare for travel…”
• Socializing Determinants of Health – John Irvine – “underlying causes of death can be linked to the economic and social circumstances of the individual, such as her or his income, education and social connectedness…”

Therapy/Relationships

• 5 Things To Know About Teens Using E-Cigarettes For Marijuana – Jane Parent – “Vape pens are a discreet way to use drugs… Inhaling pot from a vape pen intensifies the user’s “high.”… easy to acquire…”
• Addressing ethical issues in treating client self-injury – Julia L. Whisenhunt, Nicole Stargell and Caroline Perjessy – “emotion regulation is the single most common function… work toward empathic understanding of SI…”
• Assertiveness and Strong Boundaries Improve Relationships – Julie Hanks – “we’re not always able to advocate for ourselves because we fear that doing so might come off as rude or hurt our connections with others… be mindful of what… patterns… heart of assertiveness is differentiation…”
• An Enactment With Rice – Reflections on Lunch and Therapy – Danna Bodenheimer – ” I met Jane, the therapist of my life, in 1995… I went from functioning in a way that aligns clearly with an anxious attachment and started to experience my relationships with a certain level of security and equilibrium…”
• Gold Standard Should Work With Real Clients – Trauma Institute – “only 2% – 28% of participants in real-world treatment settings completed their PE or CPT… of the 55 clients who commenced [progressive counting] treatment… 38 completed treatment…”
• How to Integrate Traumatic Memories – Sharie Stines – “What goes unseen and uncomforted remains isolated in our brains; i.e., these memories are in an unintegrated state…”
• How to Respond When a Child Reveals Sexual Abuse – Lourdes Viado podcast interview with Laura Reagan – “Sexual abusers are usually people that the family and the child know… For every victim, there are family/friends who also need support…”
• How to Ruin the Swish Pattern: “Let me count the ways” – Steve Andreas – “swish pattern is a rapid way to change any troublesome habit or other unwanted response, so it has a very wide range of applications…”
• Ignore, Unfollow, or Unfriend? Managing Facebook Connections in Conflicted Times – Justin W. Patchin – “It might make sense to utilize the unfollow option if you have friends who frequently post mundanity that you are just tired of seeing…”
• Types of Parenting: Confident Parenting – Mercedes Samudio- “Confident Parenting is when a parent can mange their stress as well as decrease their child’s stress in a situation…”
• What is death? And how can we help children understand it? – Marian Carter – includes wonderful extract from “Helping Children and Adolescents Think about Death, Dying and Bereavement”

Career/Private Practice

• Brew Your Practice –  Joe Sanok podcast interview w/Allison Puryear and Jane Carter – “no way around the awkwardness… school… fear of being criticized… starting to get more comfortable… but still making… mistakes… learning where to invest your time and energy… setting limits… never graduate… constantly evolving…”
• Event Marketing: Your 10-Week Social Media Plan – Juliana Kelm – “day-by-day checklist will keep your social media plan on track and engage your audience leading up the big event…”
• First Question in Crisis Communications – Amanda Cooper – “first question we ask organizations to consider is “Is this really a crisis?”… if we are going to do sustainable work we can’t respond to these persistent and pervasive causes in crisis mode…”
• How To Create Your Own Notes Template– Kelly & Miranda/Maelisa Hall – “Write your notes in sentence form for at least six months… Review every single note for at least five clients… Write down the 5-10 most common interventions…”
• Looking to Discover Your Passion? Ask This Question Instead – Allison Jones – “What are you willing to get really good at that will contribute to your cause?… It focuses on skills, which are often the biggest hurdles in finding work we love…”
• Running Off At The Mouth On Facebook – Private Practice from the Inside Out/Rosellen Reif – “My client cancelled today – pool time!”… would you really want to know that you contributed to someone not getting the help they needed?…”
• Video and Social Media Marketing for Mental Health Professionals – Person-Centered Tech/Ernesto Segismundo – “August 11… free webinar…basics of using video and social media, but also the ethics of doing so… Matching your marketing to your personality type…”
• Why Therapists Need Practice Management Systems – Therapy Chat podcast interview with Brad Pliner – “how… practice management systems allow therapists to securely maintain clinical documentation along with recording payments received… and more…”

Self-Care

• Fear of Flying? Try These 7 Strategies to Calm Your Nerves – Sharon Martin – “One reason people are anxious about flying is  because they overestimate the dangers… Create a plan for managing your anxiety before you get on board…”
• Self-Care & Healing After Traumatic Events- What You Can Do – Christina Hibbert – “Minimize and limit your interactions with videos, words, and images about traumatic events… Allow yourself to feel whatever comes…”
• Visual Journaling Idea #4 for Clarity and Inspiration – Lisa Mitchell – “While… playing the movie of your session in your imagination, ask yourself, “What do I want to say?”…”
• What Kids Can Teach Us About Creative Self-Care – Amy Johnson Maricle – “use art as a coping skill, a way to express and explore feelings, and a way to quiet a busy mind…”