"Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized; but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will cause them existential death."

I just read this piece why anti-authoritarians are diagnosed as mentally ill/ and I think it's fantastic. I think it describes numerous people I've worked with as well. I'm very happy that Dr. Levine has written it so well. I think it comes across too in  even smaller ways. I've worked with many kids who their main problem seems to be that other people feel they have problems because they're a little quirky on eccentric and then end up internalizing this message of being broken to a huge degree, or fight it fiercely and get all the flack that comes along with it.

My solution? Support the people in their core selves, while teaching them the skills the need to get along at the same time.

Go show some love to your anti-authoritarian friends and family!

Woo! New Office Space for me!

Hi all!
    Long time no post :-) . I've been very busy lately, but I am pleased to announce the opening of my brand new office space in Larchmont! It's a beautiful space had lots of room for play therapy, sandtray and regular talk therapy. Tell all your friends to come visit me and check it out. :-D Here's a google maps link to it. For some reason google thinks my office is at 1967 plamer, when it's clearly at 2039... who knows why



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Health insurance for people with low income does a huge amount of good.

A recent scientific article covered by the NYT shows how having access to affordable health insurance, in this case Medicaid, improves people's lives. It a "duh" article, but it's the first of its kind, because they were able to match SES and region and have a true control group. They found that when people have health insurance not only get more emergent care, but they get more preventative care, and have lower stress levels as well.

If you've never experienced the kind of challenges that being on the lower end of the income spectrum brings (or haven't been there for a while) you might want to check out this game http://playspent.org/ . It's amazing how well they made it fit so many life scenarios and how quickly it sets up the stress and anxiety that goes along with just making it.

Major pharmacology companies cutting back on psychtropic research

According to the podcast from Science, a few of the larger drug companies are doing large cut backs on CNS drugs (which includes meds for mental health) siting that they cost the most to develop, take the longest, and are the least likely to get FDA approval. This is fairly significant as there's a fairly limited amount of ways currently to treat mental health problems chemically, and their efficacy varies greatly between people and particular challenges. What remains to be seen is how the gap between need, and supports available will be filled, as many insurance companies seem to want to keep their panels closed, the public clinic's are running over capacity and many in need cannot afford private pay (one of the main reasons I like working for myself, so I can do sliding scale so I can see people with need if I have appointments times open) .

Alternative forms of thinking, education and adhd,

Most of the ideas in this video have been around for a long long time. The idea that the standard school's model of prepping people for factory work is very outdated, that intelligence as it's currently tested doesn't really measure much and that ADHD while existing in some cases (I worked with a kid who has so little ability to focus he got distracted from being sad about 15 seconds after another kid hurt him pretty badly) but that by and large it's a false epidemic. But he puts it all together very nicely in a very engaging package. Enjoy!

Reverse psychology!

Because I'm quite nerdy

 

I love Bradbury, Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, and many others. I think this, in it's own way, captures the experience that many people I see have. Come feeling like the first part, leaving like the second. :-) 

Via Letters of Notes