Awhile back I asked you for your sanity tricks, techniques that help you fight the forces of the dark side. Here are some of the gems.

1. Learn the alphabet.

Do you know why the vowel “I” comes well before the vowel “U”? Because a person must take care of herself before trying to help someone else or the world. It’s the same logic that flight attendants use when they swear to you that your plane isn’t going to crash, but in the event that it does, you’d be smart to fasten your own oxygen mask before helping the kiddies. Do it in reverse, and you’ll all run out of air.

2. Stop the singing lessons.

I could have used this one a long time ago: “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” In other words, you can’t change other people. Mean creatures inhabit every planet. But you can change yourself: the way you relate to them, or your reaction … to their singing.

3. Get a yellow light.

Some folks intuitively know how to relax and slow down. And some go to therapy to learn how. The latter group operates with two speeds: go and stop. They go, go, go, and go even faster until they crash. And that’s never pretty. Which is why they need a yellow light signaling … Hit the brakes! … Transition, dude! … Yo, Speedy! You’re missing the good stuff!!

4. Play out your hand.

This was an excellent reminder by a reader for those moments when I’m griping about the cards that I was dealt in life. Granted, in proper perspective, my hand is a winner. I live in a free country where I actually get paid for whining. I have two “spirited” kids who have all their limbs. And I have a freezer stocked full of dark chocolate. But I often focus on the stinkers in my hand: a severe mood disorder and some other health conditions.

Playing out our hand is about living the stuff of the Serenity Prayer: tucking away the loser card we can’t get rid of, trying to steal our opponent’s King if we can, and knowing when to draw.

5. Write it down.

In an August 2003 issue of Australian Journal of Psychology, University of Texas psychologist James W. Pennebaker summarizes dozens of studies linking expressive writing to improvements in immunity, academic performance, social behavior, and mental health. In a 2003 British Psychological Society study, results indicated that writing about emotions might even speed the healing of physical wounds.

If journaling about pain can heal your knee scab, think about what writing might do for your heart, mind, and soul! Articulating my journey from the abyss of severe depression and back has certainly contributed to sanity in my life and I can vouch for others, as well.

6. Think outside the symptoms.

A woman who struggles with anxiety told me that when the panic minions whisper into her ear things like “this is the worst thing that’s ever happened,” “we’re doomed,” and “there is no way out of this,” that she scolds them. “I’m not buying whatever you’re selling, so save it for someone else,” she’ll say. I’ve been learning to use the same technique with my depression– to think outside my symptoms–so that when I hear myself repeat to the person staring back at me in the mirror unfair assessments like “you’re a failure,” “you’re lazy,” and “you’re good for nothing,” I know that it isn’t me talking, it’s my mood disorder.

A reader writes: "I graduated from college a few years ago with an undergraduate degree in economics. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about pursuing a career in psychology. Can I apply to a psychology graduate program if my previous degree is in a completely different field?"

Earning a graduate degree in a field that differs from a student's undergraduate program is more common than you might think. For example, students with an undergraduate degree in psychology sometimes choose to earn a graduate degree in an alternative field such as counseling, social work or law. You can certainly study psychology at the graduate level with an undergraduate degree in economics (or another area of concentration). However there are a few factors you should consider:

• What requirements does the graduate program have? If you have not yet taken some of the prerequisites, you should consider taking those courses before applying to the program.
• Have you taken the required tests? Many graduate programs require at least a certain score on both the GRE and the psychology subject test.
• Have you shown an aptitude or interest in the subject? Previous coursework and volunteer experiences are great ways to demonstrate that you have the ability to excel in the study of psychology.

Tara Kuther, About.com's Guide to Graduate School, offers some great advice for students interested in changing fields between undergraduate and graduate school. Learn more about some of the things you should consider and steps you should take in her article on earning a grad degree in a different field.

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

The 'men agree on female attractiveness, women don't on male attractiveness' story has been a little exaggerated. There was consensus in both groups, just more in men than women.

The British Journal of Psychiatry has started putting fantastic art on its covers with a brief discussion of the piece. This month 'Welcome to my
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/vol195/issue1/cover.dtl">
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http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/vol195/issue1/cover.dtl">Psychosis'.

A piece from BBC News on psychologists studying their own children to understand language development is clearly ripped off the New York Times, but it's still very good.

The Economist reports on a study finding that depression is linked to how willing someone is to give up their goals.

Divorce rates are dropping. Is marriage being rehabilitated asks The New York Times. Jonah Lehrer also mans the marricades.

New Scientist discusses spite and theories on the function of social punishment.

Ten key studies that tell us about group behaviour are covered by PsyBlog.

Advances in the History of Psychology covers a US legal case that was a key moment in the history of eugenics for mental disability.

There's an excellent neuroimaging study in PLoS One finding that brain areas linked to social cognition (described rather grandly as 'empathy' areas) are activated more by sweat from anxiety than sweat from sport.

Big Picture magazine is an awesome resource for teachers that gives neuroscience activities and materials. Latest issue on 'Music, Mind and Medicine'.

An anthropologist working for Intel discusses her work on ABC Radio National's Future Tense.

In Our Time, the excellent BBC Radio 4 history of ideas programme has a discussion on
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot/">logical positivism.

Neurotech market analyst Zack Lynch gives an interview on emerging commercial neuroscience markets and participates in a discussion about cognitive enhancers on Canadian TV show The Agenda.

The Frontal Cortex finds an entertaining interview with Oliver Sacks on US comedy programme

A list of Top 10 psychology feeds on Twitter is on PsychCentral and there's also a follow-up with a few more. Mostly therapist focussed but a good collection.

The Independent sends one of its reporters to try out a number of 'legal highs'. But I thought love was the drug?

There's a tale of two suppressed studies at the Neuroskeptic.

Deric Bownds' MindBlog has been excellent recently. Go check it out!

A 'treat violence like a disease' safer streets project is discussed by New Scientist.

Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica has started some surprisingly good psychiatry podcasts.

There's a segment on brain cancer on ABC Radio National's Health Report.

Danvers State Insane Asylum is a wonderful website on the history of this imposing gothic asylum built in 1878.

Two-year-olds possess grammatical insights according to a study covered by New Scientist.

Analysis from BBC Radio 4 has a good programme on experimental philosophy and morality. Grab the mp3 before it gets sucked into the black hole of their butchered archiveless website.

We have larger responses in brain areas linked to social cognition when seeing people of our own race in pain, according to a new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Neuron Culture covers a fascinating study finding that the effect of Ritalin may partly be due to a placebo effect in the parents.

My mate Rich at PC Advisor riffs on the Troublemaker's Fringe and the 'Facebook causes cancer' panic.

Dr Shock has an excellent post on placebo response in transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Picasso or Prosopometamorphopsia? asks a fantastic post on The Neurocritic on a neuropsychological disorder where faces seem distorted.

Petra's written up her barnstorming talk she gave last night at the Troublemaker's Fringe where she discussed 'eight problems with science/health journalism and what we can do about it' from her perspective as a social psychologist specialising in sex and relationships.

It's a fantastic guide to how health stories get badly spun and why sexual health material is most likely to be misrepresented as it is considered 'light' and so not worthy of serious attention.

One of the main culprits seem to be the reliance on PR surveys which are intuitively easy to understand but are specifically designed to push a certain angle.

I was interested to hear that they are often designed not with journalists so much in mind, but the picture editor - see Clairol's recent 'survey' finding that women are happiest at 28. Women like 28-year-old Jessica Alba and Gisele Bundchen by any chance? Bingo. Free celebrity tie-in reported as science in the national press.

Petra has plenty more media gems and it makes for a great insight into the thinking behind the sex and relationship stories that makes the media.

Link to Petra's on science and health reporting.

Earlier today, we reported that NIMH-funded researchers at three different genetic research institutes from around the world collaborated and published three new studies yesterday in the journal, Nature, that suggested a true breakthrough in our understanding of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And to think that just earlier this week, I was dismissing the largely inconclusive findings of genetics research in mental illness.

One of the researchers commented on the findings: “There was substantial overlap in the genetic risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that was specific to mental disorders. We saw no association between the suspect gene variants and half a dozen common non-psychiatric disorders.” This is an important discovery — that some of the roots of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may be very similar. This may also begin to partially explain why drugs — atypical antipsychotics — developed for schizophrenia also appear to work for bipolar disorder.

Furthermore, all three studies implicated an area of Chromosome 6, which is known to include genes involved in immunity. This area also has genes that seem to control how and when genes turn on and off. As the NIMH notes, this hotspot of association might help to explain how environmental factors affect risk for schizophrenia.

The other important finding from these studies was the huge impact of pooling data and resources in genetic research. Without large data sample sizes, genetics research often ends up at a dead-end. By being able to analyze over 30,000 genetic variants in over 3,000 people with schizophrenia and 3,000 people without, the researchers were able to draw conclusions based upon the data. A smaller sample size would’ve made such conclusions impossible.

Although the vast majority of the genetic causes of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder remain unknown (the current studies could account for only approximately 30 percent of the genetic risk), the current research is an important contribution to our real knowledge of how these disorders may be caused by gene variants. Also, these most recent findings won’t result in any new treatments for the disorders for many years to come. But scientists are truly excited about the findings, a somewhat rare thing when talking about genetics research.

With more genetics research like this underway, I suspect we’ll be seeing more breakthroughs similar to this one in the years to come. These studies inch us closer to understanding some of the potential contributing causes to these conditions, which could one day perhaps pave the way to new treatments for them.

Read the full article: Genetic Breakthrough for Schizophrenia and Bipolar

Take a group of 18- and 19-year-old women, college freshmen and sophomores. Then test them to find out who has the most social anxiety: who's most nervous about dealing with other people, particularly in public situations. What would be the most difficult thing you could ask these high-social-anxiety women to do? How about this:

I would like you to prepare and deliver a four-minute talk. This talk will be videotaped and viewed later by several professors and graduate students.... It is extremely important that you do the best job that you can with this talk.... Your talk should be about the most difficult time in your life and how you coped with it.

Now, give them five minutes to prepare, and allow their boyfriends to "help."

That's what a team led by J. Gayle Beck did; their goal was to see how socially anxious women and their romantic partners handled a difficult social situation. They asked women with low social anxiety and their partners to do the same task; 45 women in all participated. Of course, what the researchers were really interested was to see how the couples interacted while they prepared the speeches; in the end none of the women had to give a speech, and they were told their preparation session had been videotaped and would be analyzed for insights into how their relationship worked.

You might think that highly socially anxious women (which I'll abbreviate as HSA) would be more distressed about this than women with low social anxiety (which I'll abbreviate as LSA). You might also think that HSA women who weren't satisfied with their relationships would show more have more negative interactions with their partners than HSA women who were satisfied. And you'd probably speculate that if the boyfriends of HSA women made negative comments or behaved negatively during the preparations, that HSA women would show even more distress.

Beck's team predicted all three of these results, and were surprised to find that none of the predictions were supported by the study. They studied all the videos and rated the women along three dimensions:

• Positive: Specific analysis of the problem, statement of feelings, asking for help, positive response to helper
• Negative: Demanding help, criticizing, blaming, accusing, rejecting helper, whining, complaining
• On Task: Staying focused on the assignment.

The boyfriends were rated on a similar scale.

Independence Day in the U.S. is the day that America declared its independence from a tyrannical government, but real independence took many longer, hard years of war. The sacrifice of tens of thousands of people was needed first, before our declaration of independence had any real effect.

And so it is with any change in our lives. We can make the declaration, “Today, I’m going to start losing weight,” or “Today, I’m going to try and reply to every cognitive distortion by examining the evidence and answering it back.” But declarations are only starting points — they represent the beginning of our journey, not the end.

But declarations serve an important purpose — they place us (and others) on notice. Something is going to change. It may not change today, it may not change tomorrow, but I’m now committing myself to this course of action.

I suggest a declaration of independence from fear this Independence Day.

Fear is such a sneaky and invasive emotion. It prevents us from taking action in our lives when action is needed. It holds us down from trying something new, usually for little good reason other than not quite knowing what will happen (usually what actually happens is enjoyment, fun, or learning something new). It is the darkness behind the door that we’re so afraid to open, we just turn and walk away.

Fear is baffling. Psychologists refer to the “fight or flight” response to fearful situations, that we’ve been conditioned through our ancestors and genetics to either fight the trouble lying ahead, or run away from it. But we’re no longer hunting within a dark cave for our family’s dinner. We’re simply trying to live our lives in peace and quiet. And how do you fight something you can’t see — insecurity, depression, anxiety, PTSD, poor self-esteem? You don’t. You just run away from it.

And run we do. We try and run away from so many things in our lives. Our terrible childhoods. Our relationships that are just too hard to commit to working on and changing. Our responsibilities to others. Our commitment to raise our children with thoughtfulness and attention. Even ourselves and what we truly want out of our own lives.

Try as we may, however, our attempts to run away often fail. Like the sullen teenager who comes back home after a few nights away, we learn that life doesn’t really care what your want if you don’t stop to face your fears. Sure, you can get a divorce or dump your relationship that seems to be going nowhere positive fast. But was the problem with the other person, or the relationship itself? Such problems simply reappear later on, in another relationship, with another person. You ran away from the first one, but it did little good because the problem remains.

Fear teaches us that it’s natural to run, it’s okay – it’s what people do. But fear is wrong. Fear is a lone siren call to our darkest emotions, and we too often willingly respond to it. Like the siren call, however, fear shows us nothing positive, teaches us nothing that will help our lives in the future. It crashes us against the empty shores of our hearts and our minds.

This Independence Day, I suggest you start the process of putting fear aside in your life. It is a process, and it will take time. You have to learn to put aside your long-standing trust and commitment to your fearful thoughts and feelings, and replace them with thoughts of all that you can accomplish in your life if you stop “What if-ing” yourself and imaging all of that bad things that could happen. This is not an easy task and will take time. But the best things in life do take time and effort, and this is easily one of the best things you can do in your life.

Living a fearless life is living a full life, open to potential, opportunity, and joy. Declare your independence today!

Yesterday evening a group of science enthusiasts, bloggers and at least two science journalists crammed into the Penderel’s Oak pub, Holborn. We were all there as an alternative (and free) event to run alongside the very expensive World Conference of Science Journalists happening in London this week.

The ‘Troublemaker’s Fringe’ event was planned in response to poor science and health journalism, and the apparent lack of critical reflection organised in the official WCSJ event. All attendees at the WCSJ event were welcome at our gathering, although rather depressingly/predictably it seemed most weren’t interested. Maybe the way we pitched the evening offended their sensibilities?

One journalist, the Independent’s Science Editor Steve Connor certainly was put out by the event. He told all three presenters in no uncertain terms where we could shove it in his opinion piece “Lofty medics should stick to their day job” In fact we made Mr Connor so furious he was able to describe the event before it had even taken place. Mr Connor was invited to the event, but sadly didn’t turn up. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know the event was recorded so he can catch up at his leisure.

The presenters were myself, Vaughan from Mind Hacks (who is very organised and has already posted his slides from his excellent talk on media panics over communication technologies), and Ben Goldacre who you’ll all know from the famous Bad Science site.

My talk tackled Eight problems with science/health journalism and what we can do about it. I’ll be posting the slides later. Below is a list of the eight problems identified and links to further reading about the issues raised in my talk.

Problem #1 – Overreliance on surveys
The media is currently swamped with ‘surveys’ which are really a disguise for PR activity and free advertising. You can check places like response source or google news at any time with the word ‘survey’ (prefixed with any term you like – car, health, sex, food) and you’ll find a smorgasbord of dreadful surveys promoting all manner of nonsense. Along with the occasional kosher study. Except those are hard to spot and increasingly difficult to get covered as they’re competing alongside PR surveys which use shocking ‘findings’ and (allegedly) large samples to ensure coverage.

PR based surveys (or as Charlie Brooker describes them - PR-Reviewed Phindings) are cheap and easy content for journalists who are pressed for time and under pressure to fill copy. Unfortunately many journalists don’t understand social research and therefore believe the ONLY method out there is a survey, or that studies using smaller scale samples (qualitative research) or complex designs (RCTs, epidemiological studies) are either untrustworthy or too difficult to report on. Besides, PR companies make a very good job of writing clear press releases with all information set out for copying straight into your piece – and they pester the life out of journalists to ensure coverage. Something academic research doesn’t tend to do so well.

I’ve written various rants about crappy PR surveys on this blog previously (a fairly good summary with links to some atrocious examples of PR surveys can be found here). You may also be interested in this guide I wrote for the charity Media Wise ‘How to spot PR based research’. If you are interested in surveys for research I wrote a three part series on questionnaire design and use in the BMJ with colleagues a few years back. Unfortunately these aren’t open access, but if you want copies please email me.

One comment arising from the meeting last night (from someone who works in PR) was that academics could learn from PR in terms of how we deliver key messages. I completely agree with this, and for those of you interested in this area you might want to check out Gerard Hasting’s excellent Social Marketing: why should the devil have all the best tunes?

Problem #2 – The Fake Formula
This is the friend to the duff PR survey. It’s a false quasi mathematical ‘formula’ that suggests you can identify perfect days, biscuits, kisses and the like. All to promote a product. I mentioned an ongoing and well known problem formula from Cliff Arnall concerning the Most Depressing Day equation, which has combined poor mathematics with collaboration with mental health charities who ought to know better. Oh and threats to me from Mr Arnall to sue, so the least said there the better.

Aside from the bad science behind such formula there’s the problem of ‘experts’ fronting them. Which is particularly worrying when they are endorsing sexist celebrations of say, the perfect breast or bottom. Interestingly some of those who’re keen to participate in such activities view what they’re doing as science communication – as evidenced on a previous episode of Radio 4’s More or Less.

Problem #3 – Science/health stories are not always written by science/health journalists
Many of the stories concerning the health or social sciences are written about in the style pages of newspapers or mainstream magazines. By people with little or no training in how to understand social research – or critically appraise evidence. Which results in such travesty’s of reporting as the recent What Women Want stories running in both the New York Times and Sunday Times newspapers. Blogged in a very ranty (and long) post here.

Problem #4 – Where journalists cover social/health/natural science research they often fail in even basic fact checking
To evidence this particular claim I referred to a recent piece in the New Scientist about the female orgasm and six things science has revealed about it. Which suggested the New Scientist don’t understand contemporary research on female sexuality, but are very happy to promote poor studies on sexual behaviour that often has links to drug companies or are just very badly designed. The post above has links to all the poor coverage from the New Scientist and critical appraisals of the studies reported so you can see for yourself just how shoddy this coverage has been. The result for the public, of course, is misleading information about sex, relationships and how our bodies work. Again, you’ll see from the links above this can cause distress and dissatisfaction.

During the talk I mentioned one piece of research that studied twins using a questionnaire and concluded orgasmic dysfunction was genetically inherited. I questioned how you could measure genetic inheritance from a survey and one audience member rightly reminded me that comparing answers from identical and non identical twins would enable you to see if there was heritability (gleaned from more similar answers from the identical twins). This is a fair point, although I think you’ll find from the report of the survey it did not really measure what it claimed to at all.

Problem #5 - On many issues, health/science coverage appears completely uncritical but when it’s important to have a balanced account, you can be sure coverage will be VERY judgemental
All the previous examples indicate that fake formula, PR surveys and shoddy research are unquestioningly accepted by the media on a regular basis. However, there are occasions when the media become very critical and the example I used here was around the response to changes to sex education on the UK school curriculum suggested last October.

Following a consultation on the issue, and (unusually for the current government) reviewing the evidence base, it was agreed sex education needs to change (see link above for documentation on how this might work). This was in response to our rising STIs, teenage pregnancy and wider problems around children growing in a highly sexualised culture.

Sadly the majority of media coverage ran with hysterical headlines and coverage implying CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS FIVE TO GET SEX EDUCATION! Of course the response from the public was negative, with fearful parents worried their little ones would be given condoms or corrupted with adult concepts of sexual behaviour. You can’t blame parents for being worried. But the truth is young children won’t be taught about condoms, they’ll be taught about relationships and confidence and emotional awareness. As they grow they’ll be prepared for puberty and learn about relationships, pleasure, sexuality, contraception and STIs. It was as though the media here deliberately wanted us to be afraid of something they knew full well wasn’t going to happen. When it comes to sex education and sexual health they do it all the time.

The only exceptions I’ve noted are The Mirror, who have attempted some balance on this issue and ITV’s This Morning whose agony aunt Denise Robertson has kept this issue on the agenda and reassured parents about the need for sex ed – and how to do it.

[After last night a few people asked me for further references about sex education and young people, so you may be interested in these blogs:
Fifteen tips for talking to your kids about sex

A critical take on delivering sex education (with a link on what to say to your kids at different ages)

Helping parents become sex education experts]

Problem #6 – The rise of the ‘fakexpert’ and the ‘sexpert’
The media currently relies heavily on ‘experts’ to stack up stories. Usually psychologists (or people pretending to be psychologists) folk are wheeled on to give quotes, analyse celebrities or make general judgements. In return for a plug for their book/website/product.

My colleague Gary Wood has written two excellent summaries about this practice in his blog Psycentral
Celebrity Body Language: fact or flim flam?
Gender, Cave People and an Apology for Psychology

I’ve also written a guide on how to identify an expert (and what they can/can’t do in the media) for PressWise

During my talk I complained about the problem of ‘sexperts’ in the media. Unqualified people who give sex advice. I wrote about this a few years ago in The Guardian – Beware the Sexperts, as well as some more in depth academic papers on this – both opinion pieces and ethnographic studies of my experience working as an agony aunt/sex columnist in the mainstream media. (If you can’t access the papers below and would like them please email me):
Advice for Sex Advisors: a guide for ‘agony aunts’, relationship therapists and sex educators who work with the media Sex Education (2007) Vol.7 (3) ps: 309-326

Understanding media coverage of sex: a practical discussion paper for sexologists and journalists Sexual and Relationship Therapy (2006) Vol.21 (3) ps:333-346.

Whatever happened to Cathy and Claire? Sex, advice and the role of the Agony Aunt (book chapter in Mainstreaming Sex edited by Feona Attwood).

Problem #7 - Media training for scientists and journalists is polarized and outdated
So we’re pitted against each other, have our training in isolation, and do not learn from each other. I’ve been trying to implement more training that brings journalists and academics together, along with archiving resources for journalists and training for journalists that lets them know what scientists’ working practice is really like. I have ongoing issues about media training for academics which seems to operate on training you to write press releases or present your research findings – when the modern media wants you to speak generally about your area of working practice in ways you’re rarely prepared for. I’d welcome further discussions on how we might improve this.

Problem #8 – We pitch our criticisms at the wrong level
There’s a tendency to pick on individual journalists or just blame ‘journalists’ generally for bad media coverage of science/health. The problem lies with editors, publishers and production companies. It is about economics and unspoken prejudices. We need to think of more effective ways to highlight poor practice but take the fight to those who hold the power. Most journalists are stuck having to deliver poor coverage because they’re told to do it and won’t be paid if they don’t. Bullying is rife in media (something journalists have in common with academics, sadly). I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticise poor practice, but I do feel we need to find ways to work more collaboratively together.

Finally, it’s very easy to highlight bad practice, but we don’t do half as well as praising good media coverage of science/health. So I’d like to see more efforts made to do this.

And not to forget the small things. The problems I’ve highlighted are often those related to surveys, ‘soft science’ and sex – things we treat as a joke or ignore. We can’t afford to let this sloppy coverage go as it’s all part and parcel of generally low standards. And whether it’s a cancer scare story, misreporting MMR, or a sexpert telling you something incorrect about your sexual health – it’s all harming the public.

If you’ve any questions about the event last night please let me know. I’ll add further links/updates as other bloggers report on this.

And thanks to those who turned up. I thought it was a great night with amazing talks from Ben and Vaughan. Shame hardly anyone from the WCSJ showed, but here’s hoping we can disseminate the audio from the event with journalists and encourage wider discussion.

Due to exciting new career developments, I've decided to shelve Cognitive Monthly. I still think this sort of thing is a good idea, and CogMonthly was selling about as well as I expected. But I'm in the process of making a major career change (which should not affect Cognitive Daily), and something needed to be done to free up the time to do it. Expect another announcement here soon!

Ever wonder why kids behave the way they do? Satellite radio Sirius XM and a team of medical experts from NYU Langone Medical Center have the answer with a special on the Doctor Radio channel on July 4th. Doctor Radio is heard on SIRIUS channel 114 and XM channel 119.

24 Hours About Our Kids is a July 4th weekend marathon of Doctor Radio’s weekly child psychiatry and psychology show, exploring important topics that all parents and kids face today including ADHD, mood disorders, the effects of online social networking, issues related to coming out of the closet, Autism, depression and more.

About Our Kids is hosted by leading doctors from NYU Langone Medical Center, including Dr. Jess Shatkin, Dr. Lori Evans, and Dr. Alexandra Barzvi. Dr. Harold Koplewicz, Director of The Child Study Center, is a regular contributor to Doctor Radio. Dr. Shatkin will host this special.

On 24 Hours About Our Kids: Why Kids Behave the Way They Do, the doctors tackle many of the most important issues kids and parents are facing today, and provides expert insight and advice. Issues explored on this special include:

• Depression, anxiety and mood disorders: Dr. Harold Koplewicz tells parents how to spot the signs of a depressed teenager and what your immediate response should be. He will also explore kids’ attitudes - when are they just being moody and just being teens, and when are they seriously depressed? How to know the difference and spot and treat depression in kids.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping to be outside barbecuing on July 4th. But if I were a parent and has Sirius XM, I might tune into a few hours of this special to see what it was all about. Hopefully some parents will do just that, and maybe even learn a thing or two about mental health issues and their child.

We’ve already talked about how moms and daughters can help boost each other’s body image. However, moms aren’t the only influential ones. Dads, too, play a pivotal role in shaping their daughter’s body image. And parents today have a lot to contend with; our society isn’t getting any easier on girls (or boys). It’s tough enough on full-grown women to navigate the treacherous world of women’s magazines, double-zero clothing and weight-loss ads. Add to that peer teasing and cyberbullying, and it’s understandable why some dads are voicing their concern. Paul Nyhan in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described his fears of raising his daughter in our appearance-conscious society:

“Girls as young as 7 are now treated for anorexia, more than 40 percent of girls in first, second and third grade wish they were thinner, and the number of reported cases of anorexia and bulimia is rising, according to the Seattle-based National Association of Eating Disorders.”

Like Nyhan — who’s “worried because in a few years this toddler will stand at the edge of the nation’s body-image vortex, swirling with size 00 jeans, underfed celebrities glorified in gossip magazines, the latest “America’s Next Top Model” and an unrelenting marketing drumbeat that skinnier is better” — many dads aren’t sure how to approach their daughters. They’re typically more comfortable coaching their sons on their baseball game and catching up with their boys on the latest sports stats.

That might be because dads don’t see themselves as that important to their daughters, writes father-daughter relationship expert Linda Nielsen in College Student Journal. However, a good relationship between dads and daughters can have many benefits for daughters, Nielsen said: Research has found that daughters who have healthy relationships with their dads tend to be more self-reliant, self-confident and successful and less likely to develop eating disorders.

What You Can Do

Building a better body image is just as critical as building a healthy self-image. Here are ways to help your daughter build both:

1. Remember you’re a role model.

The experts in Nyhan’s article note that “both mom and dad set examples when they talk about their own bodies, eat and watch movies and television.” So be aware of the messages you convey to your daughter.

2. Call out bad messages and help your child analyze advertising.

We’re surrounded by self-objectifying ads and a pop culture that promotes sexy, skinny images, even to young girls. Just recently, Calvin Klein — a fashion design company swimming in controversy because of its highly sexualized images — unveiled a shocking image in New York City’s Soho neighborhood. Conveniently (for Calvin Klein), you can’t just turn off the TV to avoid the ad; kids and parents have to endure it every time they walk by.

Sexualized images in advertising and in the media can lead to shame and anxiety and are associated with low self-esteem, eating disorders and depression, according to a report from the American Psychological Association.

You can counteract these consequences by talking about negative advertising and teaching your daughter to think critically about what she sees. Some questions you can start with: What do you think about this ad? How does it make you feel? What do you think are the company’s motives? What is it trying to sell?

Jean Kilbourne, an international expert on advertising and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, offers an extensive list of resources here. In this excellent article, Diane E. Levin, the book’s other co-author, discusses practical tips, including talking to your daughter about revealing clothing and sexualized advertising.
Canada’s Media Awareness Network also has advice on talking to your kids about advertising in general.

3. Check out expert resources.

The Dad Man is an excellent website that offers dads tons of tips on raising their daughters. Joe Kelly, who founded and maintains The Dad Man, on his blog lists 16 tips for dads to help their daughters foster a healthy self-image. Kelly adapted his tips from Margo D. Maine’s book, Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters and the Pursuit of Thinness. You can find tips 1-6 here and 7-16 here. Here’s a snippet of the valuable advice:

Know what you don’t know. Learn about your daughter’s life. Don’t believe that your experience and hers are similar; in fact, you are years and cultures apart. Respect the differences.

Encourage her to identify and discuss her emotions and opinions. Let her disagree with you without withdrawing your affection. Show respect for the differences between you.

Teach her to say no and set limits. This will prepare her for situations that might compromise or even endanger her.

Help your daughter develop values other than consumerism. Share some of yours and create opportunities to enjoy nature, reading, the arts, sports, music, cultivation of friendships, volunteerism, or other activities.

Maintain a diet-free home. Encourage enjoyment of food, moderate exercise, and a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Rules about food only backfire and contribute to eating and weight problems.

4. Engage your daughter in “life.” Jezebel blogger Jennifer suggests going beyond body image. She writes:

“When I was growing up, my dad never told me what I could and couldn’t do, but he did let me know that he thought that, in his opinion, YM magazine portrayed women as stupid. (Not to mention trashy.) My dad’s opinions meant something to me. I never read YM.

When I was growing up, my dad talked to me non-stop about his love of the music of Diana Ross, Laura Nyro, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King. My dad’s opinions meant something to me. That was the music I listened (and still listen) to, and those were the women I thought were really cool. But most importantly, both of my parents didn’t sit down and drill me about my “body image” — they were too busy asking me my opinions on what was going on in the news, what I was learning in school and nurturing everything from my interest in politics to my love of musicals. And guess what? I was too interested in life to be interested in what I weighed.”

5. Spend quality time.

Pick an activity that you both enjoy that doesn’t involve mom. Let this be your special time. As a little girl, my close friend used to tag along with her father, a biologist, in the field, helping him find specimens and collect data. He’d also regularly read science books to her (before she even knew what “science” meant) and ask her thoughts on various subjects. To this day, she talks about how influential these father-daughter experiences were and how they’ve shaped her interests and goals — she completed her master’s degree in evolutionary biology and is now an instructor at a state university. Oh, and she still tags along with her dad to do field work. Check out Time for some great stories about dads and daughters.

Boys and Body Image

Don’t forget that boys struggle with body image, too. They might not be as vocal about it, but unrealistic, unhealthy standards for boys proliferate. Big biceps, toned bodies and six-pack abs are today’s ideal, and can have various negative consequences.

Common Sense Media, an independent, nonprofit organization that helps parents review and find positive media experiences for their kids, includes on their site some useful tips—and some startling statistics:

• Nearly a third of teen boys try to control their weight through unhealthy methods, like taking laxatives or smoking.
• In a 2005 study, 1 in 8 boys ages 12 to 18 reported using hormones or supplements to change their appearance, improve muscle mass, or gain more strength.
• 1 in 20 teen boys said they used products, including growth hormones or steroids, at least once a week.

Remember that you play an integral and influential role in helping your kids build a positive self-image. Hope you had a great Father’s Day!

One Reader Asks: "I read a lot of articles on psychology websites and I often see the terms 'psychologist' and 'psychiatrist,' but I'm not really clear on what those titles mean. What exactly is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?"

Many people are not quite sure of the distinction between these two professions, but if you are planning a career in mental health or seeking a mental health provider, it is important to understand exactly how these two professions differ. The simplest answer lies in the educational background required for each profession. A psychiatrist has a degree in medicine and a psychologist has a doctoral-level degree in psychology. However, there are a number of other distinctions that make each profession quite unique. Learn more about the different educational, training and job requirements in this overview of the differences between psychologists and psychiatrists.

Ever wondered what the age of consent for sex was in Honduras, Khazakhstan, Sri Lanka, or the Isle of Man?

Well, now you can find out thanks to HIV charity AVERT who have produced a table of global data on the age of consent for straight and gay sex. You can view it here.

It’s useful if you’re a young person and want to know when sex is legal within your country, what your country’s position is on homosexuality and teen marriage, or if you’re a parent or teacher and are worried about exploitation.

What’s worth noting is how some countries legally permit much younger ages of consent for girls than boys, some omit any information on homosexual sex (mostly for countries where this is illegal). Some countries make it clear that you can have sex at a young age (around 14) but only if you are married.

It’s a fascinating read and calls into question a lot of our assumptions about teenage marriage, pregnancy and sexual behaviour. Where one country may see sex as illegal until someone is 17, others permit sexual activity at 12. Perhaps unsurprisingly the countries where sex is only legal within marriage or where sex with 12 year old girls is permissible are most likely to legislate against homosexuality (particularly for men).

Along with the table of global age of consent data, AVERT also have a helpful report which asks ‘Am I ready for sex?’. Something you may want to consult if you’re thinking about having a sexual relationship, or if you’re a sex educator working with young people. I’d also recommend reading a similar checklist from the fantastic Scarleteen Ready or Not?

It’s worth noting that different countries have different approaches to how they manage underage sex. Some have legal limits but enforce them less strongly than other countries. Some may punish underage sex, extra/pre marital sex or homosexuality more stringently than others. So if you are unsure about your legal position you may want to think carefully about the ramifications of having sex. And if you are in a situation where you feel exploited or coerced, regardless of your age, you should seek support and help.

Out of fairness I couldn’t put us in the top ten list, but PsychCentral tweeps have some great Twitter accounts.

• @docjohng (our fearless leader)
• @aliciasparks (glamorous author, Celebrity Psychings editor, World of Psychology contributor)
• @dr_aletta (therapist/life coach, World of Psychology contributor)
• @summerberetsky (mental health writer, World of Psychology contributor)
• @channelNvideo (me, editor of Channel N, features extra neuro/psych videos and new media talk)
• @unsuicide (me again, a suicide prevention peer resource with positive, practical info and support)
• @psychcentral (feeds posts from all the blogs)

Therese Borchard and everyone else who makes this site so valuable, I hope you’ll get accounts too.

Midweek Mental Greening

If you’re interested in the connection between the environment and your mental health - and you enjoy writing or creating art - here’s a treat for you:

The Mental Health Association in Tompkins County, New York, is seeking submissions for its Summer 2009 issue of States of Mind, “Nature as Nurture: Mental Health and the Environment,” and if you don’t live in New York, don’t fret - I was fortunate enough to email with with States of Mind Editor Celia Smith who assured me the call for submissions is open to all interested parties; however, available slots are filling up fast and inclusion will be highly selective.

Plus, the deadline is…

….tomorrow! July 1, 2009!

Sounds like a challenge!

Acceptable entries include artwork (in a reproducible format that will translate well into a black-and-white format) and poems, stories, and personal accounts (between 700-1,000 words long) and you can submit them in one of three ways:

1. Via email to info@mhaedu.org. Note that you can either paste your poem, story, or personal account directly into the email or attach it as a .doc or .rtf format only.
2. Mail your entry to: Mental Health Association, Attn: Editor, States of Mind, 614 W. State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850.
3. Hand deliver your entry to the same address (which Ms. Smith points out is the best method for artwork).

If this deadline’s too soon for you, or you aren’t into writing or art, you can still benefit from others’ work. The completed issues should be printed in August and you can send a formal request for one along with $1.10 to cover postage to the address above.

Good luck to all who enter!

Today I have the honor of interviewing Irish author Patrick Tracey, who penned an amazing book, “Stalking Irish Madness Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia,” for which he has won the Ken Book Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness for “outstanding literary contribution to the understanding of mental illness,” a Slate best book of 2008, and the prestigious PEN New England/L.L. Winship Award for Nonfiction. “Stalking Irish Madness” is a dynamite, compelling read. It’s intriguing, informative, poetic, and captivating.

1) Correct me if I’m wrong. You began this search because you have been so devastated by the emotional toll that schizophrenia has already had in your family, which includes two of your sisters, your uncle, your grandmother, your great-great-great grandmother who came over from Ireland. And also because you are afraid to pass the mental illness on to the next generation. I know you are close with your nephew, that he is like a son to you, but have you made a decision not to have children because of the risk of passing the illness on?

Patrick: Yes, I made a point of not having children. And then I kept meeting women who were mad to have them. Or women who were running out of eggs and desperately wanted children. Given my family history, I was not the man.

Not that I would have made a bad father - I think I could be great one - but because I lived with the burden of believing that our bloodline might produce more madness and I could not bear to see another loss. I was on the horn of the same dilemma my mother had been on. Because she saw her own mother and her brother go stark raving mad, and because they were told there was nothing that could be expected to be done about it, my mother decided against having children.

Instead Mom set her sights on a career in the law, inspired by Shakespeare’s cross-dressing Portia from The Merchant of Venice. She was on her way to a high-powered legal career, sans children, and then her head was turned by my father. Dad was set on having his own big Irish Catholic brood. They saw two doctors–a family doctor in Boston who said it ran in families and cautioned against it–and a second specialist in New York that my father found. I’m sure the fix was in, because Dad did roll that way. He knew how to get his way. He talked Mom into having us, and when not one but two daughters, including her baby, stepped into the empty elevator shaft–the change was that dramatic–it killed my mother. She could not handle it. Of course, few could.

They say that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. My own feeling is that my mother loaded the gun with her family’s errant gene bank, and my father pulled the trigger with the atmosphere of alcoholism he brought to the table.

Me, I didn’t fall far from the tree. I was behind the door when God was giving out the schizophrenic genes, but I was front and center for the alkie ones. I became a drunk and when I sobered up, finally, I found that the new ex-drunk me was determined to get answers. I was alcoholically clean but I had to get emotionally clean for my sanity.

My travels through Ireland validated many suspicions I had about the high levels of schizophrenia and alcoholism in the Irish and Irish-Americans. The British-fed famine promoted fetal malnourishment that can more than double rates in children. Also older fathers - because you were often 50 before you inherited the potato patch to become eligible - can also more than double rates. Late age of paternity was a direct consequence of the famine. But for me, personally, I could not take the chance because I am no spring chicken myself these days. The clear risk in children of older man was the final nail in the coffin for me. I must get snipped!

So fetal malnourishment and late age of paternity and alcohol abuse form the three legs of my three-legged stool of Irish madness. They didn’t cause it–the underlying susceptibility is there in all of us–but they inflamed it. I promise you.

2) I love your description of schizophrenia in the beginning of the book: “Schizophrenia is not a case of snapping back and forth between different personalities–a common misconception. Schizophrenia is the hearing of voices, but the hallucinations can be seen, felt, and smelled as well as heard. It’s fright night for life for many, an all-consuming terror that never ends.” Wow. What a description. What do you think the most common misconceptions are about the illness?

Patrick: There’s only one misconception that must be cleared up, and it’s a massive one. There is widespread ignorance about the experience of hearing voices, having verbal or auditory hallucinations, and this is the most common experience of schizophrenia. If we could just start thinking of schizophrenia as hearing voices, then this would clear up a lot of confusion right off the bat. People would begin to understand the experience from the point of view of the person having it.

Unfortunately, our ignorance has been abetted by fear. For so long, the idea of engaging therapeutically with verbal hallucinations has been viewed with boneheaded suspicion. This needs to change. The evidence is in. This one shift in attitude could open the flood gates to healing and recovery.

The correction has been firmly planted in Europe, the first glimmer of hope coming twelve years ago with the beginning of the Hearing Voices Network in Maastricht. Their meetings have since flourished in Europe. For some reason this more opened-minded attitude has taken much longer to reach and root itself in the United States. It will though–it’s absolutely inevitable like all irrepressibly good ideas.

The technique, known as “dialoguing,” was deemed irresponsible, even dangerous, by mainstream psychiatry. Now the ground has shifted beneath psychiatry’s feet and all but the most hidebound are open to the technique of encouraging so-called schizophrenics to dialogue with their voices. This places the key to their recovery within their own hands.

It’s encouraging to see that more and more psychiatrists are open to this kind of treatment. It’s nice to see the big tent attitude replace the tiny teepee. I don’t mind drug therapy and continued research, but to believe that medication is the sole answer requires a desperate poverty of imagination.

At one time, if you came in to see a psychiatrist and complained of hearing voices, he’d say “it’s nothing, take these pills.” I know this to be true from my own family. With my sisters, my uncle and my grandmother - who all have lived in the throes of verbal hallucination - we were told “it’s nothing, take these pills.”

I think we can speak for most families in saying, we don’t mind the pills, if they work, but we do mind the blind indifference to auditory hallucinations. If somebody comes to you with a broken nail, the very last response should be “it’s nothing.”

It’s sad to think that so many lifetimes have been lived on the sharp end of “it’s nothing,” but at least we now live in enlightened times. Even if America has yet to accept the hearing voices movement as warmly as it has been received by our more progressive European cousins, it’s just taking a bit longer. The key thing here is that psychiatry on both sides of the water now see things differently.

Click here to visit Patrick’s website.

By now you’ve all heard the sad news about the death of Michael Jackson, and doubtless seen the increasingly ghoulish media coverage of the case.

I was contacted by journalists working on two separate stories about the case today.

The first wanted me to describe what ‘the impact of Jackson’s death’ would be on his children – and speculate on a ‘possible, forthcoming custody battle’ (and again describe what that might do to the children).

The second wanted an in-depth ‘profile’ of Jackson, with a specific request that I show a ‘link’ between Jackson’s childhood experiences and (alleged) subsequent ‘abuse of children’.

I refused to do either. Firstly, to discuss a celebrity and speculate on their lives is unethical and breaches my professional guidelines. (Let’s all repeat the very dull Dr Petra mantra ‘if I know the celeb personally I’m breaching confidentiality by discussing them, and if I don’t know them personally I’m just gossiping about them’).

Secondly neither of the questions I was asked to comment upon are within my area of expertise – so again it would be unethical for me to make any pronouncements about them.

Unfortunately this does not seem to have stopped a number of psychologists from the UK and US from commenting publicly on a variety of issues relating to Jackson and his family.

Here are a few of the worst ones I’ve spotted:
Michael Jackson’s children could be damaged for ever by custody battle, says top psychologist

Jackson: Inside His Mind

Was Michael Jackson’s Death Possibly Attributed to His Inability to Be His “True” Self?

What will happen to Michael Jackson’s kids?

It’s worth noting that not all the people giving ‘psychological insight’ are psychologists, and those who are qualified as psychologists may not belong to any official bodies that oversee professional standards. Sadly some are members of professional bodies but don’t seem to be following their rules.

The impression I got from the two journalists I spoke to was pretty clear. Any psychologist would do. They weren’t bothered about qualifications or expertise. They wanted a quick analysis – as one put it - an insight into ‘Michael Jackson’s Mind’.

Neither journalist accepted my statement that it was unethical for me to comment in the way they requested. Both told me ‘other famous psychologists’ had already ‘analysed Michael Jackson’.

Unfortunately this is a major problem with ethical practice. Because for every professional who is careful, there are many more who are happy to give the media what they want.

The result we’re seeing is the misuse of psychology within the media, the misrepresentation of psychologists, and in some cases the exploitation of a tragic story to promote someone’s products, services or name.

Ethical psychologists are those who don’t try and turn someone’s personal tragedy into their personal gain. They can take a view about whether it’s right for them to comment, and do so in ways that are appropriate. They are also able to decline an interview if they think there’s nothing more to be said, or if it’s better to remain silent.

I’m not saying reporting on the Jackson case is wrong. What is wrong is where psychologists are being invited to go way beyond their skills base and to speculate on someone – mainly based on what they’ve gleaned through the media.

We should always remember in cases like this that there are family members, friends and colleagues who can be deeply hurt by generalisations and speculations. And a wider public who may be misled into thinking what is shared is more than gossip and actually represents a psychological insight into a celebrity.

For decades, scientists have been making claims about the genetic roots of mental illness, ranging from schizophrenia and depression, to bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder (ADHD). And for decades, they’ve largely been chasing ghosts.

Eric Kandel, writing for Newsweek, makes the at-least-annual appeal that scientists are making “certain advances in genetics” which give “us new reasons for optimism” in understanding the biological basis for mental illness. As someone who’s been tracking the progress of such genetic advances over the past two decades, I have to say, I remain squarely skeptical.

It doesn’t help that Kandel’s own arguments are exercises in circular logic:

One major advance has been the discovery that there is much more variability in the genome than had been anticipated, and that this takes the form of copy number variation (CNV). These are duplications or deletions of segments of a chromosome, often involving several or tens of genes, that enhance or depress the actions of specific genes. A well-known example of a CNV is the extra copy of chromosome 21 resulting in Down syndrome. It has recently been discovered that this type of variation is extremely common in everyone’s genome.

If there’s “much more variability in the genome,” guess what? That means finding specific meaningful, predictable variations is all the more challenging. If the extra copy of chromosome 21 is “extremely common,” how come Down syndrome isn’t so much more common?

We’ve highlighted previously altered genes that may increase the risk of schizophrenia, for example. But not a year goes by where more such research highlights other genes or other gene variations. I mean, we’ve been talking about this for years. What’s changed recently?

Nothing. If anything, new research shows just how complicated gene research is. If hundreds of gene variations could be indicted in a “simple,” less-serious mental disorder like attention-deficit disorder, imagine the complexity of more debilitating disorders like depression or bipolar disorder.

Kandel also makes this claim you’ve probably heard before:

Scientists are also making progress in finding the biological markers for depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive neurosis. Markers are essential to understanding the anatomical basis of mental disorders, diagnosing them objectively, and following their response to treatment, as well as perhaps preventing psychosis in those at high risk.

Progress? Well, if you call understanding how extraordinarily complex the human genome is, compared to what we thought it was 10 years ago, yeah, I guess you could call that “progress.” But honestly, researchers are not significantly closer to finding genetic markers for depression, anxiety and OCD than they were a decade ago. Think of our understanding of brain disorders and genetics similar to that of unpeeling an onion. The size of a giant watermelon. Or the moon.

But the strangest point made by Kandel is that the effectiveness of psychotherapy is now “proven” because of brain imaging studies which have been called into question:

The most convincing scientific progress in psychiatry in the past decade has had little to do with genomics. It is the rigorous, scientific verification that certain forms of psychotherapy are effective. [...] Insofar as psychotherapy works and produces stable, learned changes in behavior, it can cause stable anatomical changes in the brain. We are now beginning to measure such changes with brain imaging.

Who cares? We don’t need brain imaging to understand that psychotherapy works. I guess all those decades of psychology research showing the effectiveness of psychotherapy were for naught until we had the sheer magic of brain imaging.

While I believe understanding human genetics and the neurological basis of mental disorders is important, invaluable work, I think articles like Kandel’s sort of miss the point. This work is slow and arduous, and for every one step forward, we take two steps back. Indeed, we are making progress, but it is not progress one can easily track or summarize in a mainstream news article of this nature.

In the treatment of mental disorders, we have plenty of approaches that work just as well as (and, in fact, work better than) any medical treatment for a medical disease. (Honestly, Kandel should look at the research behind the vast majority of surgical procedures to see the lack of rigorous scientific data that he’s demanding for mental illnesses.)

Genetics may one day hold some sort of key to our understanding of mental disorders. But that’s a line that’s been repeated hundreds of times over the past two decades, and one that seems no truer today than it did in 1989.

Read the full entry: A Biology of Mind

While parental demonstrations of affection are often taken for granted today, there was was a time during the early twentieth century when experts warned parents about the dangers of holding their children. Behaviorist John B. Watson once even went so far as to warn parents, "When you are tempted to pet your child, remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument." According to many thinkers of the day, affection would only spread diseases and lead to adult psychological problems.

However, research on attachment soon changed how we view affection and love. In a series of controversial experiments conducted in 1960s, psychologist Harry Harlow demonstrated the powerful effects of love on normal development. By showing the devastating effects of deprivation on young rhesus monkeys, Harlow revealed the importance of love for healthy childhood development. His experiments were often unethical and shockingly cruel, yet they uncovered fundamental truths that have heavily influenced our understanding of child development.

Learn more about the study in this article: Harry Harlow and the Nature of Love

Microblogging service Twitter is maximizing in popularity. Though there are naysayers who don’t understand the medium and dismiss it as shallow and narcissistic (just like early blog critics did), Twitter is used in many vital ways. For every snarkster who writes about her lunch, there’s an account like Brainline sharing serious medical info. Musicians set up impromptu concerts while professors analyze journalism, and people organize flash mobs for celebrity tributes or political protests. There are job postings, science fiction flashforward zines… I could go on, but the point is: there are many, many “tweeps” with useful, revealing and cool accounts. Plenty are about psychology and mental health. It was very difficult to narrow this list to just ten, so I used these criteria:

• NO marketing (including “free” e-books, how-to guides, etc.)
• not just “broadcasting” or re-feeding, follows others and reads their feeds
• interacts with friends and followers, replies to people
• shares more than just factoids, quotes, or pop psych aphorisms
• active but not overactive
• not too off-topic, talks mostly about psychology, psychotherapy and/or mental health
• humour, taste, talent, good writing and personality
• poise, swimsuit competition, and how they’ll bring about world peace

Kidding about that last one, but — here are the psych tweep pageant winners:

10. @mtabraham “Professional Counselor - my goal is to help people be more successful through mindful awareness and self acceptance.” Terri Abraham is a very active tweep sharing positive thoughts and info on mindfulness therapy and spirituality. Chatty and responsive even with thousands of followers.

9. @loveisthecure5 “Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Movement Leader.” I love Love is The Cure because it’s a movement that’s completely peer-driven without being disorganized. Volunteer-based with a sleek professional sheen, there’s no crankery or misinformation. It’s positive, directly supportive, promotes awareness while fighting stigma, and offers cool volunteer opportunities through building a network. LITC rocks!

8. @deborahserani “Psychologist, Professor and Author.” Dr. Deb has maintained a blog for years and has transitioned to Twitter very nicely. She shares cool links on a wide variety of psychology-related subjects.

7. @therapyonline “A wide lens is cast at the Online Therapy Institute ranging from email and chat to videoconferencing and Second Life.” DeeAnna Merz Nagel maintains this popular account with a focus that’s business-to-business for professionals who offer online therapy. She manages to share lots of intriguing info while straddling a thin line between professional organization and marketer - without falling into the dark side.

6. @shiftstigma “Shift believes that people with a history of mental health problems should have the same chances and opportunities as everyone else.” For anyone concerned about stigma - which is anyone involved with mental health - this awesome UK charity keeps an active Twitter account with lots of thought-provoking info and a friendly, accessible tone. Unlike so many organizations on Twitter that are disappointingly aloof broadcasters, they reply to followers and initiate conversations too.

5. @iopsychology “I/O Psychologist who studies motivation, apathy, gossip, and metacognition.” Industrial-Organizational Psychology grad student/TA at Michigan State University. Gordon B. Schmidt writes about research and shares the work of other tweeps and bloggers in the field, but also takes the time to compliment a friend’s puppy.

4. @drdavidballard “Head of Corporate Relations and Business Strategy at the American Psychological Association. Business, psychology, technology, health and productivity.” Dr. Ballard is Tweeting on behalf of a organization so you won’t find personal opinions on things that aren’t professionally relevant, but he is thought provoking, interactive, shares great news links and he writes, well, like a pro.

3. @drkathleenyoung “Licensed Clinical Psychologist Treating Trauma in Chicago.” Her practice (and Twitter & blog focus) is on PTSD, domestic violence, sexual assault, trauma in general which you might think would make for a bleak feed but she’s very upbeat, encouraging, active and interactive. Shares useful info and talks to lots of tweeps whether professional or civilian.

2. @kidtherapist “Children’s Therapist and Author of Kids Awareness Series Books.” Kara T. Tamanini’s feed is an awesome mix of personality, community, well-aggregated professional quality info, and friendly interaction. I adore her account, and I’ll bet the kids that she treats adore her too. Enthusiastic and on point.

1. @drkkolmes “Clinical psychologist in private practice specializing in anxiety, depression, relationships, sexuality and the intersection of technology and mental health.” Very in tune with the net culture zeitgeist, Keely Kolmes has spoken about online mental health at SXSW and MentalHealthCamp. She challenges paradigms and explores boundaries in questions like: Should you “friend” your therapist? Read her blog? Should a therapist Google a client? A 21st century psychologist who’d top any new media mental health list, she unquestionably deserves the crown from us.

Should the winners not be able to fulfil their tweeting duties, here are the runners-up:

@countersuicide Shares crisis resources, suicide prevention info and news. Unlike the professional suicide prevention orgs on Twitter, this heroic volunteer directly interacts with people in crisis online. Crucial and literally lifesaving.
@apahelpcenter From the American Psychological Association, not very interactive but oodles of valuable info.
@marielhemingway My fave mentally healthy celebrity on Twitter, she offers lots of love, positivity and tips for healthy living.

Did I miss someone who you think is a winner? Please share your picks in the comments.

I’m, right now and right here, sitting on the peak of that so-called hill we always talk about. Things could go swell for another 40 years, at which time I’ll be buried by any remaining friends. Or they could blow up in my face and trim my life back by a few decades. My body is no longer resilient to careless experiments. That’s for sure. At almost 40, I do indeed suffer the consequences of an extra shot of espresso, two nights of interrupted sleep, or a chocolate binge.

The forgiveness and flexibility of my youth has officially gone bye-bye.

So I’ve begun to ask myself what the energetic 80-year-olds that swim at the Naval Academy with me are doing differently than the lifeless elderly folks at the senior center I occasionally visit. And, yes, I’ll occasionally pretend to be Barbara Walters and ask nosy questions about what they are doing right (or wrong, but I don’t quite word it like that).

Here are a few observations from my unscientific study, three characteristics or things in common the winners have:

1. They like to laugh.

Yep, nearly all of them have a marvelous sense of humor. And this is consistent with a Norwegian study that suggests folks who can laugh at life’s ups and downs live longer. For example, the study, which was presented at a meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society and reported by USA Today, followed a subgroup of 2,015 cancer patients for seven years, and found that the people who could laugh more easily and had a healthy sense of humor were 70 percent less likely to die than the poker-faced guys.

2. They are involved.

Yep. Each and every one of them was engaged in some type of project: babysitting their grandkids, participating in some writers’ group, working on a literacy campaign, or playing a part in the local theatre group. All the vibrant folks had some passion or life mission that got them up in the morning and gave them reason to wake up another day.

3. They watch what they eat and they exercise.

I was so hoping that this would not be the case, because I am aware that maintaining your weight gets more difficult with every year you hike down from that peak. Metabolisms slow and appetites grow, because energy starts disappearing like coal, and you can’t burn off the calories that used to crank up your metabolic rate. And will power? Well, it’s where the energy is … gone. Many studies have found that exercise keeps the mind in shape as well.

Well, that gives me plenty to work on this week. I don’t know about you.

Do you have any of your own observations?

It’s been a rough week in the entertainment world, with the loss of three stars in music, Hollywood and television. With the passing of Michael Jackson (music, mostly in the 1980s), Farrah Fawcett (movies), and Ed McMahon (The Tonight Show and Star Search), the world has lost some significant talent. Each, in their own way, contributed something special and unique to their field.

You couldn’t have grown up in the 1980s and not been affected by Michael Jackson’s music (regardless of whether you liked him or not, doubtless one of your friends or girlfriend/boyfriend did). The later recriminations against Michael Jackson and his alleged interest in young boys no doubt will tarnish his otherwise popular rock career. Farrah Fawcett was, for better or worse, an icon of female sexuality in the 1970s and carrying over a little into the 1980s. And Ed McMahon was the perfect sidekick to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, but was in the news more recently for being broke despite his lucrative career. He also hosted the popular-at-the-time TV talent show, Star Search.

Our own Alicia Sparks has the coverage over at Celebrity Psychings: Jackson, Fawcett, McMahon: Coping With The Loss Of American Icons.

A few days ago a friend forwarded me a post on DailyOM.com called “Boredom: Fanning the Creative Flames.” It says:

The human mind thrives on novelty. What was once a source of pleasure can become tedious after a time. Though our lives are full, boredom lurks around every corner because we innately long for new experiences. Yet boredom by its very nature is passive. In this idle state of mind, we may feel frustrated at our inability to channel our mental energy into productive or engaging tasks. We may even attempt to lose ourselves in purposeless or self-destructive pursuits. While this can be a sign of depression, it can also be an invitation issued from your mind, asking you to challenge yourself. Boredom can become the motivation that drives you to learn, explore the exotic, experiment, and harness the boundless creative energy within. 



In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, boredom is perceived as a pathway to self-awareness. Boredom itself is not detrimental to the soul–it is the manner in which we respond to it that determines whether it becomes a positive or a negative influence in our lives.

A bored mind can be the canvas upon which innovation is painted and the womb in which novelty is nourished. When you identify boredom as a signal that you need to test your boundaries, it can be the force that presses you to strive for opportunities you thought were beyond your reach and to indulge your desire for adventure.

The wisdom in these words is especially important to depressives and addicts. Because the depressed person often looks to a person, place or thing, to take away her pain, and an addict does the same to numb himself, or to avoid the uncomfortable feelings hidden underneath the addiction. In his book “The Addictive Personality,” author Craig Nakken writes:

Any addictive relationship begins when a person repeatedly seeks the illusion of relief to avoid unpleasant feelings or situations. This is nurturing through avoidance–an unnatural way of taking care of one’s emotional needs. At this point, addicts start to give up natural relationships and the relief they offer. They replace these relationships with the addictive relationship.

In other words, addicts, even if they have given up the addictive object, remain vulnerable to swapping the right and peaceful and sometimes-boring path with an exciting one that could get them into lots of trouble.

Boredom, then, is the door to addiction, distraction and danger or creativity, innovation, and growth.

The trickiest part is that first move. Beginning a healthy alternative. Signing up for a club. Registering for the new class. Trying a new program.

I have been inspired lately by my seven-year-old boy, David.

Two weeks ago he could barely swim from one end of the pool to the other. After some nudging on my part, he agreed to be on the swim team.

I watched him closely at that first practice, which must have felt incredibly scary. Not only was the water frigid, the other seven-year-olds all seemed a bit more advanced–they knew how to breathe correctly and float on their backs. Some even knew how to dive.

But David didn’t give up. He followed the other guys to the end of the pool, imitating them. And when the coach asked if anyone didn’t know how to do backstroke, he didn’t freak as I remembering doing as a kid. He simply learned it on the spot.

Guess what? He won first place in his heat for a freestyle race, and he competed in a backstroke event! Now he has a new love … swimming, and his excitement is palpable.

Observing David try something new–seeing him go way out of his comfort zone–has inspired me to do the same. I researched some Master’s swimming programs, and showed up for my first practice last Sunday.

That morning I felt like a nervous kid on her first day of school. I had no idea which lane to hop in, or how I was supposed to time myself, or the right way to do some of the drills. But despite some confusion, I did find my groove halfway through, and was glad I had taken the risk.

Boredom gives us the opportunity to stretch ourselves, to motivate us to grow in surprising ways, and, as the DailyOm meditation said, “to harness the boundless creative energy within.”

So that the same energy doesn’t end up in distraction and addiction.

There are a number of different approaches to the study of social psychology, each with a different area of focus. For example, the evolutionary perspective emphasizes the importance of genetic influences on social behavior while the social learning perspective stresses the importance of unique experiences.

Learn more about some of the perspectives in social psychology.

Why is the new revision of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the “DSM-V”) — the reference book used to diagnose mental disorders in the U.S. — being updated in secrecy?

That’s a legitimate question, and one asked by the previous head of the other modern DSM revisions (III, III-R and IV), Dr. Allen Frances in an upcoming Psychiatric Times article:

The secretiveness of the DSM-V process is extremely puzzling. In my entire experience working on DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV, nothing ever came up that even remotely had to be hidden from anyone. There is everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose from having a totally open process…

You’d have to ask Dr. David Kupfer, the head of the DSM-V revision process, or the American Psychiatric Association, the folks responsible for the update, but they aren’t talking. We last wrote about this issue in November 2008, and apparently little has changed in the past seven months.

Dr. Doug Bremner has the continuing saga of the groups of dozens of professionals and researchers who have been sworn to secrecy in their work on revising this important book. But even more disturbing is that people are so upset about being called out on the lack of openness and transparency in the process, they are now using intimidation and “blacklisting” to try and silence the DSM critics:

Add to Dr. Kupfer’s [the head of the DSM-V revision] strategy of: 1) keep everything a secret; 2) make members sign confidentiality agreements; 3) allow no note taking; 4) ignore outside experts and comments; we can now add, 5) intimidate and ostracize academic psychiatrists whom you can’t ignore.

Dr. Bremner was dis-invited by email in co-authoring a research paper on an unrelated topic because of some very indirect criticism he posted in a previous blog entry. The email came from “someone on the DSM Anxiety, OCD, PTSD and Dissociative Disorders committee:”

What was particularly chilling about this episode is that the email was copied to all the members of the committee, implying that I was now persona non grata and should be shunned by what are in fact my peers in the anxiety disorders and trauma community of academic psychiatry.

Reasoned and thoughtful criticism is the hallmark of science. The whole point of publishing in a peer-review journal isn’t just to get the information out there — it’s to get it out there in a form that other scientists and researchers can understand and reproduce (if they want), so the entire field can move forward in their knowledge. That also means criticizing the work when it is lacking, cannot be reproduced, or has obvious flaws in methodology or logic.

Sadly, academics who can’t take criticism are more common than you might imagine. And the more senior you become in a particular research field, it seems the less able you are to take criticism or feedback.

Sure, it can be difficult to see your methods or procedures being dissected or criticized on a blog, such as Dr. Bremner’s. But that comes with the territory.

But Dr. Bremner’s case is not necessarily unique. You anger the wrong people in a passing sentence in a blog entry, and you can be denied professional opportunities. Dr. Carlat suffered a similar fate not because of something he wrote on his blog, but because a commenter wrote something critical of the DSM-V process that Dr. Carlat did not remove quickly enough to the satisfaction of those in power at the American Psychiatric Association. It seems that if you publicly criticize the DSM-V process, you are going to anger folks at the American Psychiatric Association.

These episodes — and the amount of politics one must play — are key reasons I have little interest in academia. If I have to worry about every word I write might be mis-portrayed or misunderstood by someone who could deny me a future professional opportunity, I’d just quit writing. (Of course, things I’ve written have likely denied me certain opportunities anyway, but at least my career doesn’t depend on them.)

I’m not certain this is what Dr. David Kupfer, the head of the DSM-V revision process, had in mind when he originally implemented these policies of secrecy surrounding the revision of the DSM. Perhaps he thought it was in the APA’s best interests to keep it as private a process as possible, but in this era of increasing openness and transparency, the APA made the worst decision possible.

Dr. Kupfer could still redeem himself, if he had any interest in doing so. So I’d like to call on Dr. Kupfer and the American Psychiatric Association to answer these issues, and explain to the public — the folks who will suffer for better or worse as a result of the DSM-V — why such an important reference manual is being updated in such secrecy.

Philip Dawdy over at Furious Seasons also has a good summary of these two issues, which is also worth the read.

Read Dr. Bremner’s article: DSM-V Shadow Team: Retaliations & Beware of Consequences

Read Dr. Carlat’s article: The APA, Power and the Exclusion of Dissent

Read Philip Dawdy’s take on it: Psychiatrists Attacking Psychiatrists For Blogging On Disclosure Controversies

I’ve noticed many more men at pick-up from school and camp, soccer practice and birthday parties. The women? They’ve gone back to work because there are more jobs available in their fields.

In a recent BusinessWeek.com article, Peter Coy writes:

They eat from the same dishes and sleep in the same beds, but they seem to be operating in two different economies. From last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, according to the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs. You might even say American men are in recession, and American women are not.

What’s going on? Simply put, men have the misfortune of being concentrated in the two sectors that are doing the worst — manufacturing and construction. Women are concentrated in sectors that are still growing, such as education and health care.

Yep. That’s what’s going on in my home. No one needs architects right now because the housing market got flushed down the toilet with the rest of the construction business. My job as a mental health professional? As my former boss liked to say, “When times are good, business is good. When times are bad, business is better!” So I’m working more, and Eric is working less. We essentially traded places.

Like all major adjustments, the transition has included its share of awkwardness. That’s why I’m going to share a few tips that have worked for us.

1. Say thank you. Often.

Honestly, what has helped us most during these months are our brief emails to each other. I will often write him a note like this: “I appreciate your picking the kids up from school today and for folding the laundry. You are a wonderful father, and I’m glad the kids get this time with you.” He often sends me an email like this: “Thanks for working so hard and for being so productive. I’m glad your career is going somewhere.”

2. Respect each other.

I remember the bridal shower I attended where each person in the room had to share one piece of marriage advice. A woman who had been married for 40 years said this: “Be nice to each other.”

It was so simple, and yet so profound.

My writing mentor Mike always reminds me to “err on the side of compassion.” So right when I’m about to storm into the kitchen… or the location of the mayhem … and tell Eric to stop shouting at the kids, and tell the kids to stop driving their dad insane, I will take a few deep breaths, say to myself that they are fine, that this stuff happened all the time when I was with them … it’s just that Eric couldn’t hear it from his office down the road. Moreover, I can’t go stomping into his turf, because I need to respect him and the job he’s doing.

3. Communicate clearly.

This is probably the hardest step. First, I think it’s important to know when NOT to say anything: when you are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (HALT, I learned in 12 step meetings). So, in the three minutes you have after lunch, there’s your window of opportunity!

John Grohol outlines some great tips for better communication in his post, “9 Steps to Better Communication Today”:

• Stop and listen. When we’re knee deep within a serious discussion or argument with our significant other, it’s hard to put aside our point for the moment and just listen.
• Be open and honest with your partner. Being open means talking about things you may have never talked about with another human being before in your life. It means being vulnerable and honest with your partner, completely and unabashedly.
• Pay attention to nonverbal signals. Most of our communication with one another in any friendship or relationship isn’t what we say, but how we say it.
• Communicating is more than just talking. To communicate better and more effectively in your relationship, you don’t only have to talk. Some couples also find that using email or another method is easier to discuss emotional issues rather than trying to do so face-to-face.

4. Stay flexible. And give.

Eric and I have an advantage here. Both of our jobs are very flexible. To a certain extent, we make up our schedule. But we didn’t land these jobs in a stroke of good luck. We made conscious decisions all along, to go with the more flexible job over the higher-paying one. I know that Eric could easily work for a prestigious Washington, D.C.-based architecture firm, commuting to the city on top of long hours. He opted instead for a flexible position around the corner because he knew that working was important to me, too, and that if he took a D.C. job I wouldn’t be able to keep a finger in my career.

In that vein, I like to think of this time … when he doesn’t have much work and I do … as giving back to him … as a way of thanking him for the choices he has made in the past for me and for our family. Staying flexible, for us, means thinking as a family, not necessarily as an individual.

5. Revisit priorities and commitments.

Eric and I never call a “commitments” or “priorities” meeting.” We’re far too disorganized for that. However, we do analyze our priorities quite often… usually after running into some of our friends that seemed much less stressed out than we are.

We revisit our commitments.

• We don’t want to hire a full-time nanny or au pair.
• We don’t want to use full-time daycare.
• We would both like to continue working.

Since we don’t have a lot of outside help from our families, that makes our goals very difficult to attain. Something, ultimately, has to give: our marriage, our jobs, time with kids, or all the housekeeping and domestic tasks in which June Cleaver excelled.

We chose D: the plants, the laundry, the stains on the walls.

As long as we keep on remembering that we chose this route–we chose this set of priorities, and we chose them together as a couple–then the stress over us becomes less debilitating.

6. Think outside the box.

It’s important to know that you have options today, especially given all the technology available. If you’ve been laid off and can’t get another job like the one you just had, that doesn’t mean you can’t use your talents, skills, and services in a slightly different capacity … part-time or full time.

I’ve seen folks pursue a part-time job at the bookstore, dally in graphic design, wait tables … anything that gets them out of the house and generates a few bucks. Think for a moment: Is there any way you can use your skills as a consultant? Can you ask some of the contacts you’ve made over the years if there is a service you can provide? Be creative. Broaden your view. Open your mind to a new way of working.

7. Make some rules. Get a system.

Eric and I did have to adopt some appropriate procedures for processing the reams of paper sent home in the kids’ school bags, not to mention all the emails about soccer practice, Cub Scout meetings, and community news. For about three months, whenever I’d get an email from the school, I presumed he was handling it. He thought I had it. Thus, we missed out on the summer homework we were supposed to order, soccer signups for next fall, and oh, those damn letters of the alphabet we were supposed to cut out every week.

“Okay, we need a system,” I said, after I got reprimanded from Katherine’s teacher on not cutting out letters D through X. “From here on out, you put all the papers about school stuff on my desk. And I will presume you are handling all the emails unless you forward something to me. Does that work?”

It did work. Not full proof, you know, but good enough.

8. Don’t forget to laugh.

As I discussed in my post “9 Ways Humor Heals,” a sense of humor is absolutely crucial here because humor combats fear. And when you don’t know how you are going to pay your next bill … or find another job, fear can take over your life. Laughter forces a few steps–some much-needed distance– between a situation and our reaction. We all would do well to follow the advice of Leo Buscaglia: “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. And swing!”

Penderel’s Oak Pub, Holborn, London
1st July 2009
8pm – Midnight

Next week the World Conference of Science Journalists will be coming to London. A few of us felt they were might not adequately address some of the key problems in their profession, which has deteriorated to the point where they present a serious danger to public health, fail to keep geeks well nourished, and actively undermine the publics’ understanding of what it means for there to be evidence for a claim.

More importantly we fancied some troublemaking and a night in the pub.

As a result, you have the opportunity to come and see three angry nerds explain how and why mainstream media’s science coverage is broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal, and silly. Join our angry rabble, and tell the world of science journalists exactly what you think about their work.
All are welcome, admission is free. They may not come.

After the presentations (with powerpoint and everything, in a pub) we will attempt to collaboratively and drunkenly derive some best practise guidelines for health and science journalists, with your kind assistance.

Ben Goldacre has written the Guardian’s Bad Science column for 6 years, where he exposes misleading science journalism, health scare hoaxes, pill-pushing quacks and the crimes of the evil multinational pharmaceutical industry. He will talk about how the media promote the publics’ misunderstanding of evidence, focusing on health scares, journalists’ hoaxes, and their consequences, as well as cases where scientists have had their work misrepresented and failed to get satisfaction
from newspapers.

Vaughan Bell is a neuropsychology researcher and clinician in the NHS, where he deals with disorders of the mind and brain, and is a writer for MindHacks.com, where he deals with disorders of the media. His talk will be called “Don’t touch that dial! Technology scares and the media” and will discuss how the media loves to
tell us that new technology will give us brain damage and mental illness but is strangely adverse to discussing the research even when the science says there’s not a lot to be worried about.

Petra Boynton is a Social Psychologist and Lecturer in International Health Services Research. She specialises in researching sex and relationships health. For the past 7 years Petra has worked as as an Agony Aunt in print, online and broadcast media. She actively campaigns for free and accurate sexual health advice within the media both in the UK and Internationally. Petra will talk about the consequences of PR companies misusing surveys and formulas as a form of cheap advertising, the problem of unethical or untrained people posing as ‘media experts’, and what happens when journalists fail to fact check science and health stories.

Of note, attending the WCSJ will cost you £200 a day. You are welcome to come to our event entirely for free, beer/shrapnel in a bucket gratefully received. Journalists, corporate event organisers: welcome to the shits and giggles economy. Special thanks to Sid the Skeptic from Viz for booking the room at short notice.

What:
World Conference of Science Journalists 2009 – Troublemakers Fringe

Where:

Penderel’s Oak Pub, 286-288 High Holborn, London WC1V 7HJ (Holborn Tube).

When:
1st July 7pm for 8pm – Midnight

Please come along if you’re interested in how the media tackles science stories, if you’re a science writer/blogger/journalist, an academic who’s interested in working with the media, or just someone who fancies a pint and a lively discussion.

Hope to see you there! Please feel free to forward this message to anyone you think might like to attend.

Definition: Counseling psychology focuses on providing therapeutic treatments to clients experiencing a wide variety of symptoms. It is also one of the largest specialty areas within psychology. The Society of Counseling Psychology describes the field as " a psychological specialty [that] facilitates personal and interpersonal functioning across the life span with a focus on emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related, developmental, and organizational concerns." Learn more about counseling psychology.

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_{Image courtesy Piotr Bizior}

Child psychology is one of the many branches of psychology and one of the most frequently studied specialty areas. This particular branch focuses on the mind and behavior of children from prenatal development through adolescence.

As early as a century ago, people viewed children simply as small versions of adults. When psychologists such as Jean Piaget and other experts began to suggest that the thoughts, minds and behaviors of children are fundamentally different from those of adults, the concept was considered revolutionary. Today, child psychology research focuses on diverse topics such as education, emotional development, cognitive development, language and gender roles.

Learn more about this fascinating area in psychology and some of the major topics of interest in this field in this brief overview of child psychology.

More About Child Psychology

• Issues in Child Development
• Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development
• Developmental Psychology Quiz

You may remember my recent blog on the case of science journalist Simon Singh who was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) following a piece Singh wrote about treatment of childhood ailments with chiropractic.

One of the criticisms those working in healthcare and science have made of the BCA hinges on their claim to base their practices on evidence without making it clear what this evidence is.

On Wednesday (17 June) the BCA circulated a third update on their case against Simon Singh which you can read here. Within this document the BCA included a list of 29 publications which they claim represent ‘good’ (but not overwhelmingly conclusive) evidence on the “effectiveness and safety of chiropractic treatment in children”.

So the BCA have now produced the evidence they feel enables them to make decisions about chiropractic treatment of infants. This allows the wider scientific community, healthcare professionals and anyone else with an interest in this topic to interrogate the studies listed.

Many bloggers have been quick off the mark and produced some excellent critiques on the evidence promoted by the BCA. Highlights include:
Jack of Kent’s blog BCA’s worst day (also contains links to some other fantastic blogs on this topic)

Holford Watch’s BCA demonstrates what Evidence Based Medicine isn’t

Evidence Matter’s British Chiropractic Association and the Plethora of Evidence for Paediatric Asthma

Gimpy’s discussion on the evidence around ear infections

David Colquhoun reviews the papers on colic presented by the BCA

Ministry of Truth’s analysis of the supplied evidence

along with a further excellent critique from God Knows What

also covered in depth by The Lay Scientist

Since the BCA don’t clearly explain their search strategy or appraisal of this evidence it is difficult to know why they selected these particular papers. It’s also unclear how said evidence is used. We don’t know if these papers are recommended reading for all chiropractors, for example. I have emailed the BCA to ask them for their search strategy, key terms used to identify papers, papers included/excluded in their search, how they appraised the papers finally selected, and how they use these papers to directly inform their treatment of infants.

What does seem immediately obvious (and is clearly outlined in the blogs linked above) is the evidence produced by the BCA does not seem to support their assertions for the success of chiropractic treatment on infants. Indeed, it would be worrying to think these papers have underpinned any practice. Also of concern is the BCA’s assertion they are using evidence based approaches and yet do not appear to demonstrate this fully in the papers they have cited. Not least because they have failed to contextualise how they searched for, selected, and interpreted these publications.

The blogs listed above have all done their bit to critique and summarise the evidence presented by the BCA. What the BCA makes of this remains to be seen. No doubt supporters of the BCA will argue those who’ve already blogged about the BCA’s evidence are biased and were deliberately negative in their reviews.

To counter this claim, as an exercise in good science practice, and a learning opportunity I would advocate that anyone who wants to evaluate the BCAs evidence should have a go themselves. Those of you teaching/researching within the health/social sciences may want to use this as a teaching activity.

I have archived all the papers cited by the BCA that are available electronically. If you’d like to see them, please email me.

Here are some additional resources to help you carry out a critical appraisal of said papers.

[I’ll be adding a downloadable table to help you appraise the papers shortly]

Trisha Greenhalgh’s excellent book ‘How to read a paper: the basics of evidence based medicine’ provides detailed instructions on how to critically appraise research using a variety of methods (RCTs, qualitative studies, questionnaires etc).

University of Sheffield’s School of Health and Related Research department have an easy to follow introduction to Critical Appraisal and Searching the Literature which guides you through the process of finding papers and making sense of them.

The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine has a slew of free tools to help you understand evidence and carry out research.

The National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools has an equally helpful stepwise guide to the process of collating and interpreting evidence that might improve/inform practice (includes some great links to tools to help with all areas of appraisal).

Surgical Tutor has a stepwise guide to appraising a paper (it focused more on quantitative research, but gives an idea on how to get started). This open access paper from Nature is similarly biased towards assessing quantitative studies, but it’s 10 steps for critical appraisal is still a helpful guide on finding your way around a paper.

Trent R&D have a fantastic resource pack with worked examples that takes you through how to search the literature, find papers, make sense of them, and apply them to your practice.

For a more reflective account on the whole process of understanding evidence, how we do it, and why it’s important I’d recommend reading ‘Just the Facts Ma’am’ courtesy of Canada’s National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women, which is written from a women’s health perspective but covers in lay terms the kind of questions you ought to be asking about research.

Learning to search the literature and appraise papers isn’t always easy, but is really just a matter of practice. The reason it’s important to use evidence to inform practice is to make sure whatever we recommend for patients/the public is safe and effective.

This is important whoever you are working with, but particularly important if your patients are children.

With that in mind I’d invite you to look again at the list of papers recommended by the BCA and see if you think what they’ve presented justifies chiropractic treatment on children.

Have you ever noticed that you seem to learn best under certain conditions? For example, some students learn best from class lectures while others learn best by reading textbooks. Your unique learning style can play a role in how well you learn as well as your ability to retain and recall information.

Discover your unique learning style.
Image © Warwick Lister-Kaye/iStockPhoto

All people have different abilities, personalities, motivations and past experiences that may impact how they learn best. Numerous theories exist to categorized and describe these different ways of learning. One of these theories is based upon the work of analytical psychologist Carl Jung. Jung's theory suggests that there are a number of psychological types based on several different personality patterns.

Jung’s theory focuses on four basic psychological functions:

1. Extroversion vs. Introversion
2. Sensation vs. Intuition
3. Thinking vs. Feeling
4. Judging vs. Perceiving

You may be familiar with these personality types from the well-known Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, which is based upon Jung's work. While Jung's theory is typically applied to personality assessment, it can also be a useful tool for understanding your unique learning style.

Remember that your learning style is not set in stone. It may change over time or based upon the learning situation that you are in. Most importantly, remember that no single theory or style can fully encompass the way you learn best. In reality, your learning style is likely a mix of many different abilities, characteristics and preferences. Learn more by reading the article on Jungian learning styles and consider which combination of styles best describes how you learn best.

The real joy of writing a blog is you fairly frequently find someone who says what you’d like to say. Only they say it better, and with more balls.

So today I really enjoyed reading Feminisnt’s blog How not to suck at interviewing me.

Aimed at journalists, journalism students, and all those social science students who like to do projects on porn, it’s a very frank take on what not to do if you want someone to talk to you.

It’s basically what goes through my mind each time I’m asked in a duff way to help with a feature, essay or TV show. Although my efforts to blog about this haven’t been anywhere near so pithy or fun.

My favourite quotes from this blog that’s just dripping with sarcasm include:

“Don’t cop an attitude as though I should be thanking you profusely for this very special opportunity to be in your sociology term paper”.

“On the business side, a blurb in your women’s studies thesis is the last place on earth where I think I’ll make a lot of pornography sales”.

“I’m pretty sure that colleges these days require all students to write at least one essay on “alternative porn” to obtain degrees”

“Clever people have been amongst the ranks of sex workers since the dawn of time, so please don’t assume that we began existing three months ago when you first discovered Suicide Girls”

“Nothing makes an interview subject fell less special than being treated as your half-assed last-ditch effort at cranking out a quick essay”

“If you’re a socially inept person who cannot follow these rules, you are still welcome to conduct an interview with me live on my web cam at the rate of $3 a minute. You’ll get to see my tits and have an anecdote to repeat to your straight friends for years to come”.

I’m definitely LOVING Feminisnt’s blog!

Although written as a guide on how to interview people involved in sex work, I’d suggest this guide is actually useful to students and journalists who’d like to get anyone to help them with an essay, programme or feature.

So while we’re at it, here are a few of the guides I’ve written on a related topic - mind you don’t expect any entertainment here, my blogs are pretty dull in comparison to Feminisnt *note to self, try and be a bit less worthy in future guides for journalists*

How to email and expert - ten tips for journalism students
More tips for journalism students
How to get experts to talk
Ten tips for TV researchers