“SUICIDE.” I intentionally write it in capital letters, and place it in quotes, because so many of us find the word extremely difficult to see and to say. And yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified suicide as an epidemic in the U.S., with rates having reached a 30-year peak since they began to climb in 1999.
Timothy Wahlberg, PhD, and Clinical Director of the Prairie Clinic in Geneva, Illinois, answers questions and busts myths about Autism Spectrum Disorder in this Keep Talking interview.
The concept and practice of enabling is a powerful and complicated issue—one that comes up regularly in my work as a clinical psychologist at the Brattleboro Retreat. Enabling has parallel meanings. To enable can refer to our interactions that empower others to develop and evolve. It also includes those well intended or protective actions that unfortunately may contribute to perpetuating or aggravating another person’s problems.
Irwin Krieger, LCSW, and Darcy Gingerich, MEd, LCMHC, LADC, discuss what it means when children and adolescents identify as transgender, the importance of acceptance and inclusion by families and communities, and how gender-affirming therapy can be helpful for transgender youth and their families.
Recent news of the closure of Maple Leaf Treatment Center in Underhill took many of us in the field of mental health and addiction by surprise. Too many Vermonters in need of addiction treatment are already underserved. And the sudden loss of Maple Leaf's 41 beds along with its outpatient program for people battling opioid addiction is an unfortunate blow that will further strain our state's loosely stitched patchwork of mental health and addiction services.
Joseph Shannon, PhD, a personality disorder expert, follows up his 2012 Keep Talking interview and describes when unreasonable behavior is a symptom of an underlying personality disorder, and how, through the power of empathic listening and the knowledge of universal human concerns, it can be possible to disarm the unreasonable person and avoid conflict.
Mindfulness has been gaining in recognition and popularity in the U.S. for the last two decades, and with good reason. A number of leaders in the mental health field have studied the usefulness of mindfulness in creating mental health and in treating mental illness. In fact, many of the evidence-based treatments (i.e., treatments that have been scientifically shown to be effective) used in the care of patients at the Brattleboro Retreat are centered on the practice of mindfulness. But did you know it’s a technique that can benefit just about anyone?
Brattleboro Retreat
Sargent Rich LaBard has been a police officer for over 16 years but an incident in 2004 when responding to an emergency call at a home where there had been a shooting, left him struggling to live his life for over eight years. Suffering from PTSD, he enrolled in the Uniformed Service Program to start his journey toward recovery. Hear his story captured in this video.
Psychological Cost of Racial Injustice
Smith College professor of clinical psychology, Nnamdi Pole, PhD, an expert of traumatic stress in racial and sexual minorities, joins Gay Maxwell to discuss the impact of chronic and race-related violence on individuals, communities, and society.
As I look back on the various clinical and administrative positions I have held in the field of mental health and addiction in my nearly 30 year career, I have always considered my work with children and adolescents to be among the most rewarding. This is one reason why I read a report released in May by Burlington, Vermont-based Let’s Grow Kids, entitled “Stalled at the Start: Vermont’s Child Care Challenge,” with both interest and concern.
