LinkBlog
[USA] Think Social Networks, Blogs Can’t Hurt You? Health insurers can use your on-line posts to avoid paying for treatment
Debunking the 'Chemical Imbalance' myth (pdf)
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Antidepressants (Note: requires registration of a valid email address)
Not Depressed, Just British!
recommended links
Depression Is Real Coalition
-
ABIL: Agoraphobics Building
Independant Lives -
Agoraphobia and Panic
Disorder Foundation -
Anxiety Disorders Association
of America - Anxiety Network Australia
- Anxiety-Panic.Com
- AnxietyZone
- Army Behavioral Health
- BrainPhysics - OCD
-
Canadian Network for Mood
and Anxiety Treatments - Children of Hoarders
- Choices in Mental Health (UK)
-
Dart Foundation: Gateway to PTSD
information -
David Baldwin's
Trauma Information Pages - e-couch free personal self-help guide
- EMDR Institute, Inc.
- EMDR Network Japan
- Fear of Flying course (free)
- Healthy Minds
- Information for People with Anxiety Disorders
- Internet Guide to REBT, CBT
- Living with a Brain Disorder
- Morita Therapy
- Mayo Clinic : Depression
- Mayo Clinic : GAD
- Mayo Clinic : OCD
- Mayo Clinic : Panic Attacks
- Mayo Clinic : PTSD
- Mayo Clinic : Social Anxiety
-
Medicines.org.uk - Anxiety &
Depression guides - Mind-Your-Mind Canada
- National Center for PTSD
-
National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) - No Such Thing As Crazy
- OCD Action, UK
- OCD Ireland
- Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
- Open Minds, Open Doors
- Out of the silence - site for young people with mental illness
- Paniccure.com
- Partners With PTSD
- Prescription Drug Information
- Psychiatric Service Dog Society
- PsychNews
-
Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT) - Sane Australia
-
Shyness & Social Anxiety
Service of Australia -
Social Phobia/Social Anxiety
Association - Social Anxiety Support board
-
South African Depression &
Anxiety Group - Suicide Prevention Help
-
tAPir - the Anxiety Panic
internet resource -
The Panic Center (Free
CBT based programs) - The School of OCD
- UN-WHO Drug Trials Database
- U.S. Army Behavioral Health - PTSD
we support
"just don't smoke"
Yul Brynner
- Menthol cigarettes harder to quit
- Secondhand smoke in cars serious threat to kid's health
- Starting smoking young increases addiction risk
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Smoking doesn't slim girls;
stunts boys' growth - 40 reasons why you should quit smoking
- Pregnant smokers 'prime' their kids to smoke
- Smoking related coronary artery disease quickly reversed if young smokers quit
- Not ready to quit? Try cutting back
- Half smoking again within year of lung cancer surgery
- Cutting back 'compensation' increases toxin load per cigarette
- Tobacco companies upped nicotine level 11% since 1998
- Workplace passive smoke increases lung cancer risk
- Hooked by genes: The DNA sequences cigarette companies love
- Smoking causes long lasting changes to brain's bio chemistry
- Nicotine receptor stimulant trebles the odds of stopping smoking
- Bupropion, nortriptyline double chances of quitting
- Nicotine's powerful role in reinforcing smoking
- Pregnant smokers raise child's risk of stroke, heart attack
- Smoking linked to pancreatic cancer
- Neurobiology of Smokers' Cravings
- 'Low cancer risk' cigarettes as deadly as regular kind
- Quitting reduces lung cancer death risk by 70%
- Fetal nicotine exposure linked to teen attention problems
- Outdoor second-hand smoke exposure can harm
- Response to day's first cigarette predicts ease of quitting
- 'Healthy' children of smoking parents aren't really so healthy
- Children of smokers have up to five times higher levels of a nicotine toxin
- Smoking increases risk of dementia
- Smoking kills even after quitting
- Antenatal second hand smoke exposure increases child's psychological problems
- Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO
- Just 1 cigarette can lead to nicotine addiction
- Smokers less likely to survive early stage lung cancer
- Smokeless tobacco delivers carcinogens more efficiently than cigarettes!
- Smoking permanently turns on genes that increase lung cancer susceptibility
- Secondhand smoke a health hazard for pets too
- Hypnosis for smoking cessation sees strong results
- Smoking doesn't burn fat
- Smoking linked to sagging breasts
- No evidence waterpipes decrease smoking harm
- Tobacco smoke + alcohol damage hearts more than either alone
anti torture campaign
- Torture experts write APA policy
- [APA] still rocked by torture debate
- Petition for psychologists
- AMA president says APA "did not accurately represent our ethical guidelines"
- Psychologists Aiding Torturers
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Annual conference endorses
APA's torture policy :( - Physicians for Human Rights call on Congress to vote No on Military Commissions Bill
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Torture is a Form of Trauma;
Trauma Causes PTSD - Psychoanalysts' association condemns torture use
- Humiliating, inhumane or degrading treatment IS torture
- Two American psychologists accused of war crimes. U.S. DoD investigating.
- DoD report proves psychologists central to POW/detainee abuse (pdf)
- 40 psychologists demand APA change policy on torture (pdf)
- Did the American Psychological Association turn a blind eye to torture for medicine precribing rights?
- Will psychologists still abet torture?
- Psychologist, Author Mary Pipher Returns APA Award Over Interrogation Policy
- Guantanamo Medical Role Likened to South Africa Under Apartheid
- The ethics of interrogation and the American Psychological Association
- A bait and switch trick on torture and psychologists?
Deputy Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. General John (Jeff) Kimmons, has stated that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through abusive interrogation methods in the last 5 years.
monument, Monmouth County
New Jersey.
Flawed science behind claims grief counseling harmful
Despite frequent claims to the contrary, there is no empirical or statistical evidence to suggest that grief counseling is harmful to clients, or that clients who are "normally" bereaved are at special risk if they receive grief counseling, according to a new look at the scientific literature on grief counseling published in the August issue of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.
A report published in 2000 claiming that 38 percent of clients (and close to 50 percent of so-called "normal" grievers) deteriorate as a result of grief counseling has been frequently cited in the scientific literature. The new review, by co-authors Dale G. Larson, PhD, of Santa Clara University and William T. Hoyt, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that the data on which these figures are based have never been published and came from a student dissertation that was never peer-reviewed, using a statistical technique attributed to another student's master's thesis, also never peer-reviewed.
The belief that conventional grief interventions are potentially harmful has become common wisdom among bereavement researchers in the seven years since the published report, and has been featured in the national media. Larson and Hoyt reviewed published and unpublished meta-analyses of more than 50 outcome studies and solicited the assistance of the American Psychological Association to conduct a peer review of the dissertation on which this claim was based. Reviewers were unanimous in their conclusion that the statistical analysis on which deterioration claims were based is fatally flawed.
Larson and Hoyt documented the spread of the deterioration claims from specialty journals to journals aimed at a wider audience of social psychologists and general psychologists, and note that authors of these articles cited the published summary rather than the student dissertation. This implied that authors citing the finding never examined the data on which it was based, they said. "It is no exaggeration to say that these deterioration claims have stimulated a revolution in our views about grief counseling, from cautiously optimistic to deeply pessimistic," said Hoyt. "It is disturbing that such radical claims, which contradict clinical experience and even common sense, could proliferate in journals, at conferences, and in national reports without anyone's ever acting on the basic scientific obligation to examine the data and analyses on which they were based."
A related claim from advocates of a pessimistic view of grief counseling has been that the average effectiveness of these interventions is small or nonexistent. According to Larson and Hoyt, the most rigorous peer-reviewed meta-analysis so far - Allumbaugh and Hoyt (1999) - found that the effects of grief counseling were positive, although somewhat smaller than those generally seen in other forms of counseling. However, they concluded that this difference may have been attributable to sampling procedures in the studies reviewed. Re-analysis of a subset of studies using self-referred clients showed strong positive effects, comparable to those observed in psychotherapy generally. "The studies showing weak or null effects are usually those using recruited clients, many of whom enter the study two or more years after the loss they are presumed to be grieving. It is not clear that we learn anything from this type of research about the benefits of grief treatment as it is actually conducted," said Larson.
As a practicing grief counselor, Dr. Sean O'Riordan at Stanford University agreed that the negative view of grief counseling needs correcting. "I've been working with grieving clients for the past 20 years and they consistently report that our work together is enormously beneficial. It would be a tragedy not to offer counseling to these people in their time of need."
Larson DG, Hoyt WT. What Has Become of Grief Counseling? An Evaluation of the Empirical Foundations of the New Pessimism Prof Psychol: Res. Pract. 2007;38(4):347-55 [Full text ()]