Society for Humanistic Psychology holds national conference at Point Park University March 29-April 1

Point Park University will host the Society for Humanistic Psychology’s fifth annual conference in Pittsburgh March 29–April 1, 2012. “Person, Consciousness and Community” will bring together members of the Society, a division of the American Psychological Association, to discuss theoretical and practical applications of considering the person in the context of community. The public is invited to select panel discussions and events.

Early career psychologists and young faculty members and scholars are expected in record numbers, as the Society for Humanistic Psychology continues to see increasing interest from professionals early in their professions.

“Young practitioners are starting with a humanistic understanding of the person,” says Brent Dean Robbins, Ph.D., coordinator of Point Park University’s psychology program, and co-chair of the conference with Robert McInerney, Ph.D.

“There’s a ‘renaissance’ in humanistic and existential psychology going on, and the annual conference reflects this. There will be much youthful energy and new voices being heard as young professionals come and present their work.”

The conference’s keynote speakers will be:

Isaac Prilleltensky, Ph.D.
Constance Fischer, Ph.D.
Robert Stolorow, Ph.D.

A number of the symposiums and panel discussions will be open to the public, including these being held in the GRW Theatre on Point Park’s downtown Pittsburgh campus:

Drugging our Children: How Profiteers are Pushing Antipsychotics on our Youngest, and What We Can Do to Stop It (Thurs., March 29, 4 p.m.)
How and Why to Treat Patients Without Psychiatric Drugs (Fri., March 30, 10 a.m.)
The Legacy of R.D. Laing (Fri., March 30, 1 p.m.)
A Most Dangerous Manual: Division 32 Presidential Symposium (Fri., March 30, 5 p.m.)
Celebrating the Women of Humanistic Psychology (Sat., March 31, 9 a.m.)
Martin Luther King's Vision of the Beloved Community and Humanistic Psychology: Common Ground (Sat., March 31)

All sessions emphasize the theme of community and the importance of healing relationships in the lives of individuals and in therapeutic environments.

“The emphasis on community is a natural extension of humanistic psychology because of its strength-based, prevention-focused emphasis on the well-being and thriving of persons,” says Robbins.

The Point Park psychology professor co-authored the Society for Humanistic Psychology’s open letter about proposed revisions to the “bible” of American psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The letter and online petition outlines concerns that the revisions could result in an increasing number of individuals being labeled as having mental health disorders, and given powerful psychiatric drugs, for behaviors that are within normal ranges. The proposed revisions are the subject of A Most Dangerous Manual: Division http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif32 Presidential Symposium during the conference.

A select number of students in Point Park University’s psychology program and Confluence Psychology Alliance will present posters at the conference.

The complete schedule for “Person, Consciousness and Community” is available on the conference website. For more information, email Brent Dean Robbins or Robert McInerney.

Frans de Waal: Do Monkeys Express Moral Outrage?

Putting a Human Face to Torture

The Human Rights Institute at Kean University premieres Doctors of the Dark Side



Garieka Godfrey at The Cougar's Byte reports:

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012, the Human Rights Institute at Kean University will present the premiere of the film, Doctors of the Dark Side from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the New Jersey Center for Science, Technology, and Mathematics [STEM] building auditorium.

The film exposes the role that physicians and psychologists played in devising, supervising, and covering up the torture of detainees in United States controlled military prisons. It contains interviews of doctors, psychologists, military officers, former detainees, and attorneys to tell the stories of four detainees and how significant health care professionals have been in the physical and psychological torture of detainees.

According to the website for Physicians for Human Rights, "Doctors of the Dark Side gives a human face to an issue that many do not want to confront: medical professionals implicitly or explicitly authorized the torture that occurred at Guantanamo, including practices such as isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, severe humiliation and degradation, and sensory deprivation." The film is earning great reviews at initial screenings, with Dr. Martha Davis as producer/ http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdirector, who spent four years investigating the controversy and produced the award-winning documentary. The team includes Oscar-winners Mark Jonathan Harris, who wrote the documentary; Mercedes Ruehl as the narrator; Emmy-winner and director of photography, Lisa Rinzler; and editor, M. Trevino.

Following the film, Dr. Davis -- along with a panel of Kean faculty -- will discuss the implications of the message of the film. Dr. Denis Klein, director of the M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide studies; Dr. Jennifer Lerner of the Psychology Department program in clinical and school psychology,; and Dr. Virginia Fitzsimons of the department of nursing will be on the panel.

To view a preview of the film visit http://www.doctorsofthedarkside.com/. For more information, please contact Janine Rivera at rivejani@kean.edu.

Patrick McGorry Takes an About-Turn on Treatment of Early Psychosis in the Young

Amy Cordeory at Western Advocate reports:

Concerns about the overmedication of young people and rigid models of diagnosis have led the architect of early intervention in Australian psychiatry, Patrick McGorry, to abandon the idea pre-psychosis should be listed as a new psychiatric disorder.

The former Australian of the Year had previously accepted the inclusion of pre-psychosis - a concept he and colleagues developed - in the international diagnostic manual of mental disorders, or DSM, which is being updated this year.

Professor McGorry has been part of a team researching pre- and early-psychosis, and his work in the latter helped secure a massive $222.4 million Commonwealth funding injection for Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres across Australia.

They have found symptoms such as having some delusions or disorganised speech and thought can predict psychosis.

But he believes young people at risk of psychosis are already over-medicated and inclusion in the manual could worsen the problem. "I think it's a valid point to be concerned about the harms particularly in places like America," he said. "I think probably I have given a bit more weight to that argument now".

He said 27 per cent of patients in his ultra-high risk clinics had to be taken off anti-psychotic medications prescribed by GPs.

Professor McGorry has been heavily criticised for his work in early psychosis by doctors who believe it will lead to overmedication.

"I certainly didn't push for [pre-psychosis] to be included although I got panned as if that was what I was trying to do," he said. ''I just didn't want 15 years of progress to be lost".

Allen Frances, the chairman of the taskforce that created the current DSM and a critic of the proposals for the new manual, proposal to include pre-psychosis, currently called attenuated psychosis, in the manual that inspired his campaign.

"It was a very specific moment, it was in May of 2009," he said. "I realised the ark DSM5 was taking would be so far off the mark that it would be irresponsible not to say anything."

Professor McGorry said it was his focus on developing staging models in psychiatry, similar to those seen in other areas of medicine such as cancer treatment where an illness is graded from symptoms needing investigation through to stages of the disease varying in seriousness, that had led him to decide the DSM listing was not helpful.

"We need a more radical change to the diagnostic approach which allows people to get help when they really need it but also ensures risky treatments that cause harm wont get used."

Treatment centres such as Headspace, which allowed for non-drug treatments such as counselling or employment help, could provide the first step in such a system, without needing a DSM diagnosis to be attached to the people who used them.

"It's quite a legitimate debate, what the boundaries of mental illness are," he said.

"We want to provide help, but we don't want to turn everyone into a brain disease."

FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Allen Frances: DSM-5 to the Barricades on Grief: Defending the Indefensible

Allen J. Frances, M.D. at Psychology Today reports:

The storm of opposition to DSM 5 is now focused on its silly and unnecessary proposal to medicalize grief. DSM 5 would encourage the diagnosis of 'Major Depressive Disorder' almost immediately after the loss of a loved one- having just 2 weeks of sadness and loss of interest along with reduced appetite, sleep, and energy would earn the MDD label (and all too often an unnecessary and potentially harmful pill treatment). This makes no sense. To paraphrase Voltaire, normal grief is not 'Major', is not 'Depressive,' and is not 'Disorder.' Grief is the normal and necessary human reaction to love and loss, not some phony disease.

All this seems perfectly clear to just about everyone in the world except the small group of people working on DSM 5. The press is now filled with scores of shocked articles stimulated by two damning editorial pieces in the Lancet and a recent prominent article in the New York Times.

The role of public defender of DSM 5 has fallen on John Oldham MD, president of the American Psychiatric Association, and a good friend of mine for 45 years. John is a smart and good person placed by the unkind fates in the unenviable position of having to defend untenable DSM 5 decisions. He makes a soldierly attempt- but his arguments ring hollow and are tone deaf to the dangers of the DSM 5 proposal and all the obvious reasons it has met such universal scorn. I wish it were someone else on the other side of this question, but there is no alternative but to show the four ways in which Dr Oldham's arguments badly miss the point.

Dr. Oldham defense can be accessed at: (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/758788)

1)"When we say that we are recommending removing this exclusion of grief from the diagnosis of depression, people have misinterpreted this to mean that therefore everyone who is grieving after the loss of a spouse will be diagnosed as depressed. That is not at all the case. Even if you meet the criteria for depression, it doesn't mean that you're going to have treatment slapped on you. It just means that maybe you'd have a conversation about it with your doctor and perhaps agree to a watchful waiting period and be alert to how things go and maybe check in a little more frequently. Nothing is automatic; there are lots of options."

Annotation: Nothing could betray more clearly the ivory tower world view that consistently leads DSM 5 astray. In the real world, most diagnosis of mental disorder and most prescription of medicine is done by primary care doctors- who have little training in psychiatric diagnosis, spend fewer than 10 minutes with each patient, and are often influenced by drug company marketing. There is no way that even the most skilled psychiatrist can distinguish normal grieving from mild depression- we must not expect primary care doctors to do it. Watchful waiting is wonderful- but all too rare. Drug companies will jump greedily into this vast new market. This is not at all APA's intent, but it is a dreadful unintended consequence that must be (but hasn't been) factored into a complete risk/benefit analysis.

2) Dr Oldham notes that the DSM IV bereavement exclusion is "very limited; it only applies to a death of a spouse or a loved one. Why is that different from a very strong reaction after you have had your entire home and possessions wiped out by a tsunami, or earthquake, or tornado; or what if you are in financial trouble, or laid off from work out of the blue? In any of these situations, the exclusion doesn't apply. What we know is that any major stress can activate significant depression in people who are at risk for it. It doesn't make sense to differentiate the loss of a loved one as understandable grief from equally severe stress and sadness after other kinds of loss."

Annotation: Yes indeed. 'Major Depressive Disorder' is currently applied carelessly and inappropriately to the expectable reactions people also have to others of life's severe stresses- divorce, loss of job, financial difficulties, etc. This is precisely why studies so often show no advantage for medication over placebo in the treatment of depression- many of the people studied aren't really depressed. There is an obvious opposite solution that would correct this and also achieve the consistency Dr Oldham seeks. DSM 5 shouldn't broaden MDD to include grief- rather it should narrow MDD to cover only real depressions. Consistency and more accurate diagnosis can be achieved by raising the severity and duration requirements for 'Major Depressive Disorder' whenever symptoms occur in the context of a powerful stressor.

3)"We want people to get treatment who need it."

Annotation: They already do. DSM IV is completely explicit that the MDD diagnosis should be made whenever grief has clearly turned into depression- ie when the bereaved becomes suicidal, or psychotic, or has severely impairing symptoms, or has had similar depressive episodes before. DSM IV aint broke on this, making the DSM 5 fix even more nonsensical.

4) Dr Oldham says this was not a snap decision. "There was a lot of very thoughtful discussion about it. Nobody saw it as just clear as it could be. It was not an immediately agreed upon consensus. This is something that is sensitive and needs to be thought about carefully, and we recognize that"

Annotation: The DSM 5 decision making process is puzzling and opaque in the extreme. A small group of otherwise very smart people make a decision that solves no outstanding problem, is based on no credible scientific literature, arouses remarkably strong opposition among mental health and medical professionals, creates a frenzy of press scorn, and seems crazy and insulting to the community of grievers. The consensus that needed achieving was not within the narrow confines of a few die hard DSM 5 enthusiasts. DSM 5 is a document with wide public health and public policy implications. It must represent a consensus of the literature and of the field. Instead, it is now DSM 5 against the world. This is no way to develop the consensus needed in an official diagnostic system.

The interesting but very sad thing is that Dr Oldham leaves absolutely no running room for DSM 5. He could have said something like: "This change is still being studied. It is still just a draft proposal and we are very grateful for all the input which will certainly go into the final decision." Instead, he paints himself into a tiny corner, stalwartly defending the indefensible.

This is clear writing on the wall that the DSM 5 decisions on many other equally reckless proposals are also written in stone. If DSM 5 won't back down in the face of this extraordinary pressure on grief, it is probably dug in on many of its other controversial and harmful proposals. My previous lingering hope that external opposition might lead to useful compromises was naively predicated on the overly optimistic assumption that the American Psychiatric Association would follow the rational path, cut its losses, and reject the worst DSM 5 suggestions. Instead, it is APA to the barricades.

So where do we stand? Most likely scenario: The press will increasingly pick DSM 5 apart and expose all of its considerable risks. APA will keep missing the point, continue to provide lame defenses, and follow its blind momentum forward to a premature publication date. A lamentably poor quality and terribly risky DSM 5 will be published. DSM 5 will be roundly rejected outside the United States and will have greatly diminished sales (and hopefully influence) within. But the drug companies will aggressively promote its suggestions to swell further the already swollen sales of antipsychotic, stimulant, antidepressant, and anti-anxiety drugs. The epidemic of childhood obesity will get worse; the illegal market in stimulants will flourish; polypharmacy will increase; and the severely ill will continue to get short shrift- and all sorts of other harmful unintended consequences will also flourish.

Up until this point, I had hoped DSM 5 could save itself if only enough pressure were applied to make it see the light. This no longer seems likely and government intervention is probably the last (and possibly the only) resort.

Secret Agent L, Laura Miller

Laura Miller is the founder of the Secret Agent L Project, which began in July of 2009. She is currently an administrative assistant at Duquesne University, with a background in literature and performance. She holds a bachelor's degree in Theatre Arts and English and a master's degree in English Literature, with an emphasis on 18th-century and Restoration drama, both from Duquesne University. She also acts professionally and can be seen in commercials, industrial films, and print campaigns around the region. Her favorite thing in the whole world is people. Period. But she also loves puppies.

As part of their community service lecture series, Point Park University’s Confluence Psychology Alliance student group will host Secret Agent L on Fri., Feb. 24 at 6 p.m. in the University Center, library room 212, Pittsburgh, PA.

You can learn more about the Secret Agent L Project atwww.secretagentl.com.

Good Grief! Psychiatry's Struggle to Define Mental Illness Goes Awry

A proposed new definition of depression would include normal bereavement. Why that's a bad idea.



Maia Szalavitz in Time Magazine reports:

The editors of the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — psychiatry’s diagnostic handbook — are having a hard time. They’ve been attacked by autism advocacy groups for proposing to eliminate the Asperger’s diagnosis. They’ve been slammed for adding a diagnosis, or “prediagnosis,” for people determined to be “at high risk” of developing schizophrenia. And, now, they’re being pummeled for introducing a provision to diagnose grief as depression.

It has not gone unnoticed that the illnesses for which proposed definitions have been expanded are mainly those that are treatable by drugs — antipsychotics or antidepressants, for which manufacturers seek increased marketing opportunities — while the contractions tend to be in conditions for which no specific medication is available.

Indeed, the suggestion to label normal grief as depression would allow, for example, a bereaved widow to “treat” the sadness over the loss of her husband with Prozac — a condition that previously would have been remedied with time and family support. Meanwhile, other diagnoses that the DSM-5‘s editors have rejected — including developmental trauma disorder for children whose mental problems can be best explained by early negative experiences, such as being shuttled between multiple foster homes — often share the quality of not being easily amenable to pharmacological solutions.

This week, the editors of the prestigious journal The Lancet weighed in strongly on the mourning-as-mental-illness debate. The authors write:

Medicalising grief, so that treatment is legitimised routinely with antidepressants, for example, is not only dangerously simplistic, but also flawed. The evidence base for treating recently bereaved people with standard antidepressant regimens is absent. In many people, grief may be a necessary response to bereavement that should not be suppressed or eliminated.

The journal cites psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, who suffers from bipolar disorder. She noted in her memoir about mourning her husband that she sees “a sanity to grief,” unlike her experience of the shifts in mood unlinked to external events that occur in bipolar disorder.

In a separate column in The Lancet, Dr. Arthur Kleinman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who lost his wife to Alzheimer’s, notes:

Professor David J. Kupfer, who chairs the DSM-5 Task Force making the revisions, is reported to have told The New York Times that making grief into a disease would allow psychiatrists to treat people who were suffering so that they would get the treatment they need for being depressed. And that’s the rub really. Is grief something that we can or should no longer tolerate? Is this existential source of suffering like any dental or back pain unwanted and unneeded?

To me — as someone who has suffered both depression independent of life experience and grief over the loss of my father — these are the right questions to ask. I self-medicated my depression with heroin and cocaine and became addicted, so I have also learned how to distinguish between the pathological desire to escape ordinary experience and the necessary treatment of excessive emotional pain.

The critical distinction between useful and needless suffering comes down to its meaning and effects. Losing a beloved parent matters; it would feel wrong not to hurt over it. But being deeply wounded over a minor perceived social slight, or being unable to work because you’re constantly tormented by self-hatred makes far less sense. The difference between illness and grief is proportionality and context — and in the context of a loved one’s death, grief should be rightly given precedence.

What strikes me as most absurd about defining mourning as depression is the argument that it’s necessary to allow medication to be prescribed to the bereaved. There’s no evidence that people who want antidepressants — including those who are in mourning — are routinely denied for lack of cause. Indeed, doctors are currently free to prescribe drugs “off label” as they wish in just these types of cases. There aren’t masses of prescription-seeking mourners in the streets demanding change.

Of course, it makes sense for bereaved people who also suffer chronic depression to be able to get help adjusting their medications so that grief doesn’t push them back into unremitting illness. But again, there’s nothing stopping doctors from doing this now and such people are already diagnosed with depression.

The proposed changes to the DSM-5 risk making psychiatry into a caricature by medicalizing everyday experience. They add to the stigma and public distrust of valid mental illnesses like depression by eliding it with normal mourning. Depression is not ordinary sadness, and neither is grief. The latter is a proportionate response to emotional catastrophe, which ultimately ennobles us; the former is an emotional catastrophe removed from its source, which simply corrodes.

By failing to make this fundamental distinction, psychiatrists risk making depressed people look like hedonists seeking to avoid normal life struggles, and mourners seem to be people who are improperly overvaluing what is in fact the most valuable experience of all, deep human connection. If we want to be mentally healthy, we need to be clear about these differences. Consequently, if psychiatrists really want to help their patients, they need to stand up to the DSM-5 editors and pharmaceutical companies to ensure that mental illnesses and normal extreme experiences are defined appropriately.

CONTINUE TO FULL ARTICLE HERE.