All – Illuminated Education

Trump’s Great Healthcare Insurance Idea

Here is Trump’s latest suggestion about the health care debacle: “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!” Now, first off, if you can’t get 50 Senators to vote on a reduction in publicly funded health care for low-income and elderly people (which most of us think is to harsh), how on Earth do you expect to get a majority to vote for pretty much no publicly funded health care for these folks. And what do you have in mind as that “later date!”?…

Addictive internet games

The Washington Post online had an interesting piece today about teens addicted to onliine games and the havoc such an addiction or obsession can cause in a person’s life. There is, of course, a lot of research and concern about this issue. The author, Caitlin Gibson, quotes psychologist Kimberly Young, founder of the Center for Internet Addiction. As saying the number of kids affected by such an addiction might (modestly) be estimated at “… 5 percent. But 5 percent of American kids is a lot.” The article points to some resources, such as sthe Center for Internet Addiction and a…

Emotions are Like Dogs

Emotions are Like Dogs: On the Difference Between Emotional Regulation and Stuffing It When I think about emotions and emotional regulation, I often think about a dog who was my friend. Her name was Tasha and she was half Siberian Husky and half German Shepherd. She and I shared a living space for sixteen years and she was just about the best possible companion. She loved to run outdoors and at the time we lived in the woods in a small town so she could range wherever she wanted. She would always come home after a good play in the…

American Horrible Health Care Act: The Mandate

What we hear from Republicans is that the Affordable Care Act is “a disaster” or “broken,” and that the new House version will provide more access to health care without that nasty mandate that everyone buy insurance, and that it will cost far, far less. Pie in the sky. That is NOT what the current bill passed by the House is about. We also hear people like Paul Ryan talking about the mandate that everyone buy health insurance: “We are not going to make an American do what they don’t want to do.” (Quote from an interview on Face the…

Cooking Slowly – A Tale of Ever-Changing Times

NOTE: If you find this interesting, click on the link at the end to find an expanded version for which you may be able to obtain Continuing Education credit. There is an old adage that if you put a live frog in a pot of water and heated it gradually, that frog would just sit in the water and not jump away (even though it could) until the water boils and it is thoroughly cooked. It may or may not be true (no one has really tried it since the late 1880s), but either way it is an excellent metaphor…

Giving Guns to People with Mental Health Disabilities

There is news from Capitol Hill which underscores the notion that there is more to fear in Washington, DC than just the the White House. According to an article in the NY Times on February 15, 2017. Congress has acted to reverse and Obama administration rule requiring the Social Security Administration to add about 75,000 people, currently on disability support, to the national background check database and deny them gun purchases. These individuals suffer schizophrenia, psychotic disorders and other problems to such an extent that they are unable to manage their financial affairs and other basic tasks without help. An…

Chronic Politics Stress Disorder (CPSD)

As I talk to colleagues I hear virtually all of them saying that they themselves have been highly stressed by recent political events, and that their clients are all talking about the presidential election and politics in an unprecedented way. People talk about old, terrible feelings being stirred up which relate to past experiences of being marginalized or hurt by bigotry and prejudice — or harassed, raped or abused. People talk about anxiety, fear and anger — and a determination to “not let things go back to the way they were before.” People talk about feeling more stressed than usual,…

Your New Robotic Doc

This holiday weekend I took some time to catch up on my reading and ended up in a place I often end up in. That is the question of how to best configure and offer health care, including care in the area currently termed “mental health.” I put it that way because, as a proponent of integrating mind and body and healing the centuries old Western split between mind and body, I think there really should be no distinction between mental and physical health. Perhaps that is the first point to be made. One short article from the Atlantic Monthly…

Autism, Vaccines and the Trump Administration

“So what’s going on with autism? When you look at the tremendous increase, it’s really – it’s such an incredible – it’s really a horrible thing to watch, the tremendous amount of increase…” (February 14, 2017, reported in the Washington Post) “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor,” Trump said. “And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots. We’ve giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.” …

My Thanks to Dobby the House-Elf

My Thanks to Dobby the House-Elf These days the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is what’s hot— and with good reason. Tolkien’s world is richly drawn and philosophically based. I haven’t heard anyone mention Harry Potter in months. But, no matter how overshadowed the Harry Potter books are by the giant trilogy, they still have many things to offer us in the psychological realm. Aimed at a young audience, the Harry Potter books are more simply stated which makes them more accessible. In addition, where Tolkien focuses broadly, imbedding individual psychological development in the context of a larger, international and,…