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!”? Many of the replies to the above Tweet were what I would expect. Things like: “They should repeal you.” “Then replace you at a later date.” That was my particular favorite. As you can see I loved it! But then there are people who agree with the Trumpster. Like this…

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 residential facility called reSTART. reSTART, the article states is “…the nation’s first therapeutic retreat devoted specifically to Internet addiction.” Last month reSTART :…launched a new adolescent program…after receiving a barrage of calls from parents desperate to separate their children from video games, consoles, computers and smartphones..” Here in Pasadena, CA…

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 woods, check her bowl, and plop down in front of the fireplace for a good nap. This ability to run and wear herself out, I think, helped her to be as mellow as she was at home. The local kids could pull her ears and her tail and she would…

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 Nation, 3/12/17). This is reiterated frequently by Speaker Ryan, other Republican members of Congress, and Republican policy makers: “I like for Americans to choose the benefits they want… I’m not in the business of telling people what benefits they should and shouldn’t have.” (Quote from Lanhee Chen of the 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 for certain things. Some authors have been concerned about the replacement of people with robots, automatic tellers, and other types of automation in the workplace because of the associated loss of jobs (1). This is one concern, but I want to focus on another. It is about humanity and interpersonal…

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 article from The Hill reports a statement from House Speaker Paul Ryan after the shootings in Orlando. Ryan stated “that many of the shooters are mentally ill and therefore a reform of the mental health system is the right response.”I don’t want to keep saying the same thing over and…

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, or more shaky, or having more headaches, or feeling kind of out of focus or overwhelmed. Some of these friends, colleagues and clients are from immigrant families or are part of the first generation of their families to be born in the United States. Some are Muslem or part of…

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 entitled The Robot Will See You Now by Jonathan Cohn generated pages of notes. This article focuses on IBMs Watson, best known for its success on the TV quiz program “Jeopardy,” which apparently is now focused on the medical information available at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. …

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.” (Dec 28, 2007 reported in the Sun Sentinel of South Florida). These, like so many statements from Mr. Trump, leave one with a gaping mouth and not much idea of where to start. And they, now coming from a man in a position of real power and influence, rise to…

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, perhaps, world-wide context, “Harry Potter” author, J.K. Rowling, stays more focused on individual psyches and the relationships formed around those individuals. Most people can easily see the characters known as “dementors” as personifications of the feelings of depression. The Bogart represents those personal internal fears which inhabit us all— and…