Best in Mental Health (4/10/17 – 5/7/17)

Mental Health Roundup

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

This wrap-up has 5 main themes:

• Advocacy
• Therapy and Relationships
• Healthcare
• Social Work, Technology & Education
• NonProfit Career & Private Practice
• Self Care

Advocacy

• 13 Things Adults Need to Understand About ’13 Reasons Why,’ – Amy Morin – “program, which is about the 13 reasons a teenager killed herself, sends unhealthy messages about suicide… It romanticizes suicide…”
  • For Families of Teens at Suicide Risk, ‘13 Reasons’ Raises Concerns – “Research has shown that “someone else’s death by suicide can reinforce a vulnerable person’s motivation to die by suicide…”
• Considering Age as a Shared Identity Creates Opportunities for Empathy – Relando Thompkins-Jones – “moving from a framework… “we have it” based on our age… to… generationally, each of us has knowledge and strengths to contribute as well as things to learn from each other…”
• Crushing Debt Affects Student Mental Health – Robert T. Muller – “number of former students I see who are well into their 30s and 40s and are still paying off their student loans is overwhelming… parents are postponing retirement and taking on additional debt to help…”
• Dating Violence and Risky Behavior Among Teens – Binta Alleyne-Green/Fordham GSS – “educating young people about birth control has its limits… What has a significant impact… is “how close they feel” to a father figure…”
• Fighting an Anti-Social Work Agenda: Building a Better World – archive of May 4th #MacroSW twitter chat hosted by Justin Vest… Yes, start in your community. Practice self-care. All of us working collectively can change the world…”
  • Talking Macro on inSocialWork®Podcast – Rachel L. West, Karen Zgoda, & Patricia Shelly – “talk focused on the use of social media to advance macro practice social work… origins on #MacroSW Twitter Chats…”
• Higher Ed’s Role in Economic Mobility – John Friedman – “at any given college, students from low- and high- income families have very similar earnings outcomes… mobility rates vary substantially across colleges because there are large differences in access across colleges…”
• NASW strongly opposes legislation to repeal Affordable Care Act – gwright – “devastating impact on the health of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens…”
• Respect And Applying For Welfare – Kelly Mitchell/SJS – “if and when you get to the point you are applying for social assistance, you should do your best to view this process as a sign of wisdom… accepting some financial support is smarter than not doing so and ending up homeless…”
• Try This: The Knowledge-Power Chart – Nicole Clark – “goal of this exercise… examine how we understand the world, how our understanding… impacts our behaviors and the policies we create, and… impact these policies can have on our communities…”

Therapy and Relationships

• Affirmative Counseling with Transgender Clients – Cathy Hanville – “the introduction I wish I had when I started my work with transgender clients… advocate… understand intersectionality…”
  • The Language of Gender: Beyond Boy and Girl – “a few terms from Nat Geo… Genderqueer: Someone whose gender identity is neither man nor woman, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders…”
• Anxiety vs ADHD? How to Tell the Difference – Dr Susan – “As a general rule, ADHD symptoms are consistent across settings and occur throughout the day from wake up to bedtime…”
• Bring writing into an art therapy session and be amazed – Inner Canvas – “ask them to finish a stem sentence… “When I look at my art, it feels important because ____________________.”“When I listen to my art, I can hear it saying________________________…”
• Depression and Chronic Illness – Norman Cotterell – “Depressed individuals coping with chronic illness may be so preoccupied with their infirmities that they lose sight of other aspects of their lives… focus on capabilities… ask, “If the symptoms were the same, but… you felt great about yourself, and more hopeful, what would change in your life?…”
• DID and DBT: Use Distress Tolerance Skills for Dissociation – Crystalie Matulewicz/HealthyPlace – “TIP skill to help ground you… involves temperature change, intense exercise, and paced breathing/progressive muscle relaxation…”
• Helping Parents Feel Seen: A Conversation  – Practice of Being Seen interview w/Kim John Payne – “be inquisitive rather than accusative: “I wonder why you’re so lost” moves us out of the “fight or flight” brain, the amygdala, into wondering and into the “let’s play” and “let’s cooperate” part of the brain…”
  • Reactive vs Proactive Parenting In The Digital Age – Family Couch interview w/Adam Pletter – “we must teach ourselves about the media our children are using in real time as we are using it… average child spends almost 9 hours a day in front of a digital screen…”
  • What to do About Teen Sexting – Justin W. Patchin – “When it comes to students, I suggested that if they receive an explicit image of a peer that they delete it immediately…”
  • When you Catch Your Daughter… – Jessica Harris – “62% of girls had been exposed to pornography before the age of 18… keep your cool… encourage her to talk to you (and do listen)…”
• The Neuroscience & Power of Safe Relationships – Jayson Gaddis interview w/Stephen W. Porges – “we often lack an appreciation of the cues that disrupt us… our bodies can respond to things that are totally unrelated to our spouse… when our bodies respond… create a different narrative… come up with a plausible explanation… have understanding…”
  • Normalizing the Challenges of Marriage – Julie Hanks – “Problems in marriages almost always stem from unmet needs and underlying vulnerable emotions, such as fear, inadequacy, or shame…”
• Preparing You and Your Daughter for College Transition – Launching Your Daughter – “Teach her practical skills…how to do laundry, budget for expenses… manage her time well… be good to yourself…”
  • They’re Baaack! House Rules for College Students Returning Home – Jane Parent/Your Teen – “You have two days to sleep, lie around… then the lying around is over. Get your stuff out of the living room… Get a Job…”
• The Privilege of Social Work – Ermintrude – “a sense of professional belonging… Social work has given me a voice… Even if we don’t always feel it, we have power intrinsic to our roles as social workers…”
• The secret history of self-harm – All in the Mind interview w/Sarah Chaney – “People will focus on ‘this is something bad you’re doing to yourself’, and will only look at the behaviour, will only look at the damage you might have caused and view that as a problem, rather than listening to you…”
• The Secrets Men Carry  – Lourdes Viado interview w/James Hollis – “pressure men face by being evaluated on their ability of what they can produce… How men’s lives are governed by role expectations…”
• Somatic and EMDR Therapist and Trainer – Juliet Austin interview w/Arielle Schwartz – “advice to therapists starting out in the field is to find a really good supervisor…
• Time Piece – What a Shrink Thinks – “My grandmother’s teaching watch hung upside down from a long chain around her neck… It belongs to me for now. It still keeps perfect time…”
• What are the different forms of bullying and what strategies can be used? – Michael Panckridge – “Cyberbullying occurs via technology… abusive texts and emails… hurtful messages, images or videos… humiliating… nasty online gossip and chat…”
• Why Some Clients May Not Want to Change – David Burns – “learn how to bring the client’s resistance to conscious awareness and find ways of melting it away at the very beginning of therapy… significantly improve treatment effectiveness…”

Healthcare

• Can digital communication improve relationships between young people and clinicians? – Mental Elf – “digital communications can enable timely access for young people to the right clinician at the time… they can improve trust…”
• Identifying cultural issues in diagnostic assessment: the Cultural Formulation Interview – Mental Elf – “14-item pilot version of the CFI was tested across six countries…Both patients and clinicians considered the CFI a useful tool…”
• It’s time for psychodynamically informed clinical thinking – Steven Reidbord – “Two patients may meet criteria for “major depressive disorder, recurrent, moderate,” yet look and act very differently from one another…  How does the patient relate… next step is curiosity: Why is the patient this way?…”
• Maternal Health – What Moms & Therapists Need To Know – TherapyChat interview w/Kat Kaeni – “For about 20% of women, the transition into parenthood can lead to severe mood changes…”
• The online health revolution (it’s not too late to jump in) – Susannah Fox – “potential of both social media and health care — to be human, to talk with each other, and hopefully to turn up the volume on good information when we can…”
• The suicide rate is increasing. Why is that? – Christopher Johnson – “In 2012 suicide was the second leading cause of death in [female] adolescents aged 12 to 19 years… Prescriptions of anti-depressants have increased dramatically…”
• Using your integrated behavioral health toolbox – David Engstrom – “Motivational interviewing is nonjudgmental, nonconfrontational and nonadversarial… empowers clients to take a more active role in their health… mere act of self-monitoring and recording can significantly change behavior…”
• When the Patient is a Racist – John Irvine – “colleagues are experiencing an increase in bigoted comments… I could not find any concrete guidelines or policies anywhere about managing patient-to-provider bias…”

Social Work, Technology & Education

• Digital Identities & Digital Citizenship: Houston, We Have a Problem – Bonnie Stewart – “digital identity, as a practice, operates counter to the collaboration and cooperation that need to be part of digital citizenship… We’re algorithmically manipulated… encouraged to speak rather than listen…”
• Ethical dilemma – Steps for Social Workers – Lauren – “National Association of Social Workers (NASW) developed a training curriculum that describes… 14 sequential steps… What’s the main ethical dilemma?…”
• Sustainability, Social Work, and Earth Day – Pat Shelly – “Fundamental to social work is attention to the environmental forces that create, contribute to, and address problems in living…”
• #SWDE2017 – Integrating Technology-rich Assignments and Professional Learning Networks for Social Work – Laurel Hitchcock – “three different types of technology-based assignments…  Twitter Chats, Technology Assessments, and Infographics… PLN… stay up-to-date and share information…”
  • Keeping Up With #SWDE2017 (Social Work Distance Education Conference) – Sean Erreger – “Keynote @drkimberTweets recommends Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners…Teaching tip #SWDE2017 – peer reviews, self-reflections and journaling are recommended for online courses. @becky_anthony…”
• Twenty-Two Apps for the 21st Century Therapist – Mike Langlois/SWH – “Whether you are looking for games to play with patients, productivity or billing tools, or something to help you research, there’s an app for that…”
  • I’m Flipping for the Flipp App For Financial Literacy – socialworkpad – “there are many teaching ideas that can be developed with this app… helpful to the adult shopper… teach younger students a little financial literacy…”

NonProfit Career & Private Practice

• 10 Tips for Sharing Your Office – Marie Hartwell-Walker – “Read your lease… Be clear about who has decision making power… make mutual decisions about what goes where before you move in…”
• Benefits Of Being a 1099 – Practice of the Practice – “Many group practices are offering to take individuals on a 1099 contract… gives you a steady stream of clients and referrals… benefits at tax time…”
• Credentialing: 8 Factors to Consider – Perfected Practice – “discover what insurance companies are popular in your area… fee schedule is the disclosure that lets you know how much you will be paid for your services…”
• Different Ways Nonprofits Are Using Design Thinking to Solve Problems and Achieve Impact – Beth Kanter – “look for the gaps, the unaddressed nodes in a network of need, so that the entire problem is addressed…”
• Don’t Let Student Debt Keep You From Your Dream Job – Idealist – “Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF)… Download the Employment Certification Form from studentaid.ed.gov… Only Federal Direct Loans are eligible…”
• Sample Private Practice Schedules – Allison Puryear – “You’re the boss! When do you want to work? Now how can you get your name out there enough that people will make whatever work in order to work with you?…”
• Social Work Entrepreneurship – InSocialWork podcast interview w/Nicole Clark – “journey from agency practitioner to self-employed, independent consultant…”
• Starting a Group Within Your Private Practice – Selling the Couch interview w/Katie May – “What to consider in the process of beginning a group… be heart-centered and come from a place of passion…”

Self-Care

• 7 Surprising Ways to De-Stress in Five Minutes or Less – Melanie Greenberg – “Recognize when you begin to feel stressed… Take a few slow, rhythmic breaths with long exhales…”
• 10 Easy Ways to Live Through Your Work Day Practicing Mindfulness -Goodtherapy.org – “Practice Mindfulness on Your Daily Commute… Practice Mindfulness While Drinking Coffee or Tea…”
• How to Design Your Day: Tips for Busy Therapists – Ili Walter interview w/Katie Lee – “everyone is different, but start with your own situation and recognize that there’s a lot that you CAN change… if you feel like you don’t have complete control… batch like tasks together…”
• Inspiring Self-Care Through Stories of Resilience – Erlene Grise-Owens/New Social Worker – “vicarious resilience refers to the positive impact of hearing how others cope with trauma and difficulties…”
• Your Job as an Artist is to Show Up – Amy Johnson Maricle – “the more you commit to just show up, the less you judge your work, and the more likely you are to produce more and enjoy the process and the product…”

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