Category: psychology in the media

The Role of Sadness in “Inside Out”

Unsurprisingly very nice piece by Dachel Keltner and Paul Ekman in the New York Times on the portrayal of emotions in the recent Pixar movie “Inside Out.”

…studies find that sadness is associated with elevated physiological arousal, activating the body to respond to loss. And in the film, Sadness is frumpy and off-putting. More often in real life, one person’s sadness pulls other people in to comfort and help.

First, emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations.

Also posted at LA Eastsider Depressed

The Depression Blog*

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA photo by nevil zavery (creative commons) I’ve got another blog kicking around. Though it’s called LA Eastsider Depressed it’s devoted to a number of topics, much like this blog. The style is a little less wordy than here, and I’m making more of an effort toward variety — quotes, images, videos, poetry, etc. Some of the recent posts:

*LA Eastsider Depressed has been renamed! It’s now Los Feliz Psychologist, but there will still be plenty of stuff about depression. All the old links will work, too.

New Blogs and a Web Page

Since I’ve moved my practice to the Los Feliz neighborhood, about a year ago, I’ve started two new blogs. One covers mental health in general, Los Feliz Psychologist, and the other, LA Eastsider Mindful, focusses on mindfulness. The mindfulness topic was taking up lots of bandwidth on this blog, so I gave it its own forum.

There’s a map on the sidebar to the right, to help you locate my new office. Find a brief bio and some thoughts about psychotherapy at kaleachapman.wordpress.com I hope you’ll stop by!

Free Ebook — Psychotherapy FAQ

For some time now I’ve hosted a page with a compilation of thoughts on “What is Psychotherapy?” I’ve now combined and lightly edited these posts, and bundled them together into a free ebook, Psychotherapy: Frequently Asked Questions. The book is divided into two parts.

Part I focuses on the many questions —  frequently relating to doubts, fears, and misconceptions – that people have about psychotherapy.

Part II digs in a little more – focusing more on the nature of therapy and what one might expect from treatment. You can click here for the page.

Or click here psychotherapy faq to download the ebook.

 

Understanding Bipolar Disorder, Visual Edition

Recently came across, and enjoyed, this graphic novel that chronicles one woman’s struggle with bipolar disorder. I’m not going to review it here, but I will say that I enjoyed it. It accurately describes the frustrations that those with bipolar face to find the right balance of treatments. As the NPR reviewer wrote:

Bipolar disorder defies easy treatment; each individual patient must become their own guinea pig to discover the balance of medication and lifestyle therapies that will allow him or her to achieve long-term stability.

Here are a few reviews, including the one from NPR:

From Manic Highs to Oceanic Lows, (NPR)

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo & Me, (The Guardian)

Marbles, By Ellen Forney, and More, (The New York Times)

Reprise on Torture – Why Ken Pope Resigned from APA – in 2009

The issue of torture by our government, and the role of psychologists in that policy, has been a concern of some psychologists since as early as 2009. Obviously it’s gotten more airtime since the recent senate report. Some of you may find the thoughts of one prominent psychologist — known for his ethics textbook, among other things — of interest.

Here’s the link to that earlier post.

Understanding Depression, Visual Edition

I want to share a little gem of a resource that I’ve been admiring for some time.* It is a web comic about depression. That might not sound all that inspiring, but if you’ve ever cared about someone with depression or struggled to explain your depression to someone who cares — you know that it can be very difficult.

That’s where Hyperbole and a Half comes in, a website that includes some amazing comics about what it is like to be depressed. And perhaps the best starting point, is the episode: Depression Part Two. The art is rudimentary, even crude. The message is as spot on as anything I’ve ever read about depression. Here’s a sample quote:

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared…

…The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren’t necessarily looking for solutions. You’re maybe just looking for someone to say “sorry about how dead your fish are” or “wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though.”

I’ve also added, in the sidebar under the heading “blogs on depression”, links to both this and the first comic in the series, Adventures in Depression. It is equally insightful and funny, and begins: “Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason.”

I hope you gain some comfort or understanding from the comics.

*As a coda, I was unaware that the author, Allie Brosh, just published a book of her comics with Simon and Schuster and has been getting some press recently. In fact, she did an interview on NPR which aired yesterday. Recommended.

Also:

Meet Allie Brosh, Reclusive Genius Behind the Blog (and Book) “Hyperbole and a Half” at Mother Jones.

‘Hyperbole and a Half’ illustrates Allie Brosh’s precise crudeness at NY Daily News.

“Hyperbole and a Half” creator Allie Brosh: “Good comedy has a lot in common with good horror” at Salon.com

 

NIMH Withdraws Support for DSM-5

There’s been some big news this week in the world of mental health (for one that suicide among baby boomers is increasing to the point where the number of suicides per year in the United States now exceeds deaths by automobile accidents), but perhaps the biggest story relates to the National Institute for Mental Health rejecting the authority of the soon-to-be-released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known to most in the business as simply, DSM-5.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Christopher Lane’s Psychology Today piece:

In a humiliating blow to the American Psychiatric Association, Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the NIMH, made clear the agency would no longer fund research projects that rely exclusively on DSM criteria. Henceforth, the NIMH, which had thrown its weight and funding behind earlier editions of the manual, would be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” “The weakness” of the manual, he explained in a sharply worded statement, “is its lack of validity.” “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”

This could prove to be a very thorny issue for insurance companies, practitioners, not to mention clients — if the diagnoses in the manual, which are used for billing, are not considered to be reliably valid.