Marriage or Morphine?
Hello, everyone. It has been quite a long time since the last post. The longest time between posts in the history of Talk Therapy, in fact. It’s been mostly positive things that have kept me from writing more: a rapidly growing practice, day trips and family visits on the weekends, and generally enjoying the fall […]
Like Fine Wine…
Happiness gets better with age. This NYT article details results from a recent survey on happiness across the lifespan. The article contains several interesting stats on how our levels of anxiety, worry, sadness, and happiness change over the years. Rather than summarize all of the findings, I’ll highlight one piece – that age 50 seems to […]
Changes in the DSM-V
Hello, everyone – I’ve mentioned the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (or DSM-IV-TR) on Talk Therapy during a conversation on diagnosis and its role in therapy. Like many in my field, I’m not entirely pleased with the DSM and sometimes hate what it does to clients and the therapeutic process. That said, the American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force on DSM-V […]
Validation is Sweet (and a Shout-Out to my Graduate Advisor)
So there was a big “oopsy” in the world of psychology this week. A major article looking at the etiology of pervasive developmental disorders was retracted. Which basically means that the data and procedures were so questionable that the article is being “un-published” after more than a decade. This article put forth the claim that […]
What’s in a Name?
Today’s post is all about labels. A big part of being a clinician is figuring out how much to use diagnostic labels in working with clients. Insurance companies say it’s absolutely necessary. Many mental health professionals say that you can’t treat an individual effectively without knowing their diagnosis. I tend to straddle the fence on […]
Got Nonsense?
I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from various New York publications lately, and I’ll continue that trend today with another article from the NYT (thanks, Andrew). Doug Allen made a comment the other day that I think provides a nice intro for talking about this article: I often wonder if the mind is not stimulated enough […]
