Best in Mental Health for August 2020

This roundup contains some of the latest news in social work, therapy, private practice and more! Learn about NAMI’s Family to Family Program, religion and spirituality, evidence-based practices, how to promote racial equity, reduce stress/anxiety, how to be a peer reviewer and much more!

This wrap-up’s main themes are:

• Therapy and Relationships
• Advocacy
• Self-Care/Inspiration
• Social Work, Technology & Education
• Private Practice

Therapy and Relationships

• 10 Things You May Not Know About NAMI’s Family to Family Program – David Susman – “program runs for 8 weeks. Each session lasts 2.5 hours… free… wealth of current, useful information… If you or someone you know is struggling with how to care for a loved one with a mental health condition… great benefit…”
• Attachment Issues in Relationships – Marie Miguel/The Good Men Project – “Dr. Bowlby found that there are four types of attachment styles… Those who are anxiously preoccupied in love need constant reassurance and are always nervous or afraid that they will lose their partner. Unfortunately, that is what usually ends up driving their partner away…”
• Childhood Emotional Neglect: What Is It + How Does It Impact Relationships?– TherapyChat w/Jonice Webb – “Emotional Neglect is a parent’s failure to respond enough to a child’s emotional needs… Whereas mistreatment and abuse are parental acts, Emotional Neglect is a parent’s failure to act.  It’s a failure to notice, attend to, or respond appropriately to a child’s feelings…”
• Crossing Cultures: The Surprising Complexity of Countertransference – A. Kim, L. Fisher/ Psychotherapy Networker – “when we share cultural similarities with our clients… we need to take the time to deeply examine our familiar views and hidden biases…”
• Listening to Shame – Robert T. Muller – “Referring to shame as the unspoken epidemic in our culture, Brené Brown explains that “Shame drives two tapes: ‘never good enough’ and when you can talk it out of that one ‘who do you think you are’ “…”

Parenting

• • 7 Ways I’m Helping My Kids with Remote Learning This Fall – Star Friend/Your Teen Magazine – “Read with them—and to them… Buy them planners and calendars… Encourage them to reach out to their teachers…”
  • Digital Dating Abuse: Top Ten Tips for Teens – Cyberbullying Research Center – “Take your time to really get to know the other person, and don’t rush intimacy just because it feels good to unload yourself and share everything about yourself as soon as possible…”
  • Free activity sheets from The Big Book of LGBTQ+ Activities -JKP Blog – “activities are ideal for classrooms or at home, and are suitable for kids aged 6 – 9. They teach children about gender identity, sexuality, relationships and different families…”
  • Give Your Kids Autonomy: What It Means and How To Do It – Lynn Lyons – “Kids, like adults, learn from experience… We have to let the cycle of cause AND effect play out… Let them do their own homework… Let your kids play without direction as early as possible…”
  • Going Remote? Helping Kids Thrive with Distance Learning – Devorah Heitner – “No kids, teens or adults should be sedentary and plugged in all day. Movement is crucial… Remember hydration and snacks…”
  • “Is My Brain Really Getting Mushy?” Technology’s Influence on Our Kids – Toni Van Orman and Fiona Leikness/Educate Empower Kids – “even though water can be good for a plant, too much can make the plant sick. I then drowned the empty pot with water until the soil was drenched, mushy mud. “Our brains are the same way… If we’re careful, we can use technology to help us learn and grow, but use too much, and we could end up doing more harm than good…”

• Prescribing art for mental health – All in the Mind – “opportunity for participants to actually create pieces of art inspired by the artworks that they had just seen… preliminary results from the pilot study… significant increases in mental health and wellbeing…”
• Religion and Spirituality – Social Work Podcast Interview w/Holly Oxhandler – “most social workers have no training in what to do when people say that religion and spirituality is important… what we believe in could be very different from our clients… there are manuals coming out… how to weave coping statements that honor client’s faith…”
• Tara Brach, PhD, and How to Work with Chronic Self-Judgement – NICABM – “feelings of not enough… pervasive… a new future starts at this moment… when judging… ask… what does it mean in this moment to be kind?…”
• Trauma, PTSD, and Chronic Low-Grade Inflammation – Melanie Greenberg – “current research supports the idea that PTSD is a reaction to trauma that has long-lasting effects on the way our bodies deal with and recover from stress and on our long-term immunity…”
• Treating Suicidal Patients during COVID-19 – SPRC -“video series with concrete tips on treating patients at risk of suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic…”
• Utilizing evidence-based practices in telehealth – Vaughn, Camelford & Hebert/Counseling Today – “evidence pyramid traditionally moves from expert opinions at the base to case series/case reports to case control studies to randomized control trials to systematic reviews and, finally, to meta-analyses at the pinnacle…”
• A Vision for the Future of Counseling – Bethany Bray/Counseling Today – “Lack of portability has been a long-standing problem… License requirements for counselors were set up state by state… interstate compact will go a long way toward solving both our long-standing licensure portability and cybercounseling [telebehavioral health] problems…”

Advocacy

• 5 Movies About Mental Illness You’ll Want to Watch – Natasha Tracy/HealthyPlace – “The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)… The Soloist (2009)…portrays schizophrenia… A Beautiful Mind (2009)…”
• Black Disabled Lives Matter and How Social Workers Need to Address Structural Ableism – Elspeth Slayter/SWHelper – “Although disabled people make up 1/3 of all households in the United States, which is approximately 61 million people or about 25% of the U.S. population, it still feels as though we are so often *unseen* and *unremembered* in social work circles or any circles as if our identity is an afterthought…”
• How to Engage With People Who Are Stubbornly Stuck on “All Lives Matter” – Sam Killermann – “Start by vehemently, unequivocally agreeing with them. (I know. Hear me out.)… Then ask them why they believe what they believe… Then you listen… Repeat their points back to them and check if you’re understanding correctly…”
• How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace – Robert Livingston/HBR – “organizations must move through… (1) Problem awareness, (2) Root-cause analysis, (3) Empathy… (4) Strategies for addressing the problem, and (5) Sacrifice, or willingness to invest the time, energy, and resources nec for strategy implementation…”
• Inequality and the Care Economy – Inequality Org – “The term “care work” encompasses both paid and unpaid work… The amount of time women spend doing unpaid caregiving in comparison to men has profound impacts on economic inequality across gender…”
• Loneliness, Isolation, and Social Support Factors in Post-COVID-19 Mental Health – L. Y. Saltzman, T. C. Hansel & P. S. Bordnick/APA – “Social support plays a key role in well-being, yet one of the major preventative efforts for reducing the spread of COVID-19 involves social distancing…As providers, we need to develop methods to help people connect during isolation…”
• Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic – CDC – “U.S. adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. Younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported having experienced disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance use, and elevated suicidal ideation…”
• The Price of Keeping Our Heads Down – Relando Thompkins-Jones – “Video by HoodinDidIt… We have succeeded as entrepreneurs but have failed to understand the cost of that success, both for ourselves and more significantly to our fellow Black Americans…”
• Resources to learn about Jewish people, communities and antisemitism – Ermintrude – “Judaism exists on multiple levels as a religion, a culture, a community, a shared history, sometimes a shared language (Yiddish/Ladino/Hebrew and others) and it has been considered, by those who hate us, as a race…”

Self-Care

• Journal to Reduce Stress and Anxiety – Sharon Martin – “journaling prompts to help… What do you feel anxious about right now?… What aspects of these situations or people do you have the power to change?… Where do you feel anxiety or tension in your body?…”
• Reengaging with Self-Care Video Live on Routledge Mental Health – Karen Zgoda – “step one… recognize the signs when you are not engaging in self-care… the smallest things become irritating… body aches… your personal life gets pushed to the side…”
• Self-Care A-Z: Self-Care Is Social Work – Allison Berkowitz/New Social Worker – “now I mainly just read the newspaper in the morning or watch the 6 o’clock news. There’s no need to take it in all day long… My productivity skyrocketed, anxiety plummeted, and “toolbox” of self-care strategies expanded…”
• Your Happiness Calendar for September 2020 – Greater Good – “day-by-day guide to well-being. This month… process your emotions and connect with what matters…”

Social Work, Technology and Education

• A Call to Campus Leadership: Your Social Media Managers Need You to Read This – Josie Ahlquist – “Your social media and the social media managers are the front door of your institution… best way to find out what they need is to ask them through a series of conversations…”
• COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities in Social Work Field Education during a Global Pandemic– Laura Lewis & Daniel Fischer/InSocialWork – “forced social work instructors to think creatively about how to deliver content and experiences in different ways for students… new models of learning and innovative instructional paradigms…”
• Get Your Copy of the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook – Richard Byrne – “64 page PDF… accessibility… time-saving tips… section of tips about remote instruction… in addition to the usual sections about making videos, using AR & VR in education… digital citizenship, assessment tools…”
• Guide for the First Year Social Work Student – Emily Glazer/NASW Blog – “Give yourself enough time to walk to different parts of the campus… Choose electives that interest you…Don’t overbook yourself…”
• How to Be a Peer Reviewer – SAGE/Sept 22 at 11AM EST – “free webinar… how to get started, basic principles of reviewing articles, what journal editors expect from reviewers, and important considerations such as research ethics and reviewer responsibilities…”
• Professional Collaboration Networks for Social Work Practice – Laurel Hitchcock/Teaching & Learning in Social Work- “There are several advantages to having an online PCN: 1) continual access to resources, information, consultation, and referrals; 2)  opportunities for collaboration across geographic and institutional or to learn about, and;  3) develop skills related to your area of practice…”
• Re-Opening Our Schools In Unprecedented Times – Michael Kelly/School Social Work – “Sign up for a free Professional Learning Community hosted on SSWNetwork’s Zoom channel… https://schoolsocialwork.net/creating-your-digital-ssw-office-the-sswn-interview-with-bridget-hills-yoder/…”

Private Practice

• 10 Business Books that Have Changed the Way I Run My Group Practice – Alison Pidgeon/Practice of the Practice – “You Are A Badass At Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero… Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk… Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo…”
• Back To Basics In Private Practice – The Practice of Therapy – “Always start with your why… think about what sort of business model you want to use in your practice because, like it or not, being in private practice is like running a business…”
• Business and Personal Expenses: Where to Draw the Line – Simple Profit – “When evaluating the deductibility of an expense… three steps can help… 1) see if the IRS has specific guidance on the expense, 2) determine if the expense is ordinary and necessary for your specific business or industry and 3) assess whether the expense could be considered personal and therefore not deductible…”
• How to Facilitate Supervision with Teletherapy Safely and Ethically – Elizabeth Jones/Person-Centered Tech – “ Make sure the informed consent covers the fact that you *will* record, and make sure the state has no rules against recording teletherapy sessions…”
• Marketing Masterclass for Therapists: RECESSION Edition (Free & Eligible for 3 CEs) – ZynnyMe – “you can have a thriving private practice in any economy or situation… the world needs you… your leadership, your passion, your enthusiasm, and your expertise..”

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