June 25, 2007
The founder of rational emotive behavior therapy, Albert Ellis, died Tuesday at the age of 93 following an extended illness. His work and theories provided the basis for what is today known as rational-emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) a form of cognitive behavior therapy, which has become an effective treatment approach for many different disorders.
His straight talk approach to cognitive therapy, with an underlying focus on general principles was groundbreaking in its day; in contrast today, many counselors apply many of his theories and therapeutic principles in therapeutic situations. It is interesting to note that while Ellis's ideas were initially met with resistance within the psychological community, a 1982 survey of clinical psychologists ranked Ellis as the second most influential therapist (behind Carl Rogers and ahead of Sigmund Freud).
Where the Freudians maintained that a painstaking exploration of childhood experience was critical to understanding neurosis and curing it, Dr. Ellis believed in short-term therapy that called on patients to focus on what was happening in their lives at the moment and to take immediate action to change their behavior. “Neurosis,” he said, was “just a high-class word for whining.” He was also quoted as saying, “the trouble with most therapy is that it helps you to feel better,” he said in a 2004 article in The New York Times. “But you don’t get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.”
His basic message was that all people are born with a tendency to distort everyday perceptions that sabotage their ultimate quest for happiness. But he recognized that people also had the capacity to change themselves. The role of therapists according to REBT is to intervene directly, using strategies and homework exercises to help patients first learn to accept themselves as they are (unconditional self-acceptance, he called it) and then to retrain themselves to avoid destructive emotions — to "establish new ways of being and behaving,” as he put it.
In 2005, Ellis became involved in legal disputes with the institute that he had founded after he was removed from its board and his weekly Friday seminars were canceled. While he was reinstated last year after a judge ruled that he had been wrongly removed, his relationship with the institute remained strained.
Showing posts with label psychopathology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychopathology. Show all posts
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Teasing
This article was written by Dr. Collie Conelly (http://www.independent.com/online_onlys/2007/02/teasing_a_real_problem_and_sol.html ) Teasing is a problem with children of all ages. Psychologists define teasing as an ambiguous message containing both humor and hostility. The ambiguity makes an appropriate response difficult.
Most children identify teasing as the number one concern that they have regarding school.
Children are typically told to ignore teasing or become aggressive with the teaser. The research on ignoring indicates that ignoring a teaser usually incites a more aggressive response from the teaser. Additionally, ignoring probably erodes the self-esteem of the target because of the inactive, helpless stance. Conversely, acting aggressive when teased is an active stance which could help self-esteem in the short run, but there are long term draw-backs. Aggressive action can easily escalate into a physical fight and recommending aggressive action communicates that harming another person is an acceptable value.
This article discusses an alternative respose to teasing called affiliative humor. As Dr. Conely describes, affiliative humor focuses upon the humorous part of the teasing message. By focusing upon the humor in the teasing message the target takes control of the interaction and transforms the interaction into a level interaction rather than a one-down interaction. The message is that we are both funny and clever. Affiliative humor jokes about the topic without putting any person down.
Most children identify teasing as the number one concern that they have regarding school.
Children are typically told to ignore teasing or become aggressive with the teaser. The research on ignoring indicates that ignoring a teaser usually incites a more aggressive response from the teaser. Additionally, ignoring probably erodes the self-esteem of the target because of the inactive, helpless stance. Conversely, acting aggressive when teased is an active stance which could help self-esteem in the short run, but there are long term draw-backs. Aggressive action can easily escalate into a physical fight and recommending aggressive action communicates that harming another person is an acceptable value.
This article discusses an alternative respose to teasing called affiliative humor. As Dr. Conely describes, affiliative humor focuses upon the humorous part of the teasing message. By focusing upon the humor in the teasing message the target takes control of the interaction and transforms the interaction into a level interaction rather than a one-down interaction. The message is that we are both funny and clever. Affiliative humor jokes about the topic without putting any person down.
Poverty And Social Exclusion Increases Risk Of Mental Illness In Children With Learning Disabilities
A new report from the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities and Lancaster University, UK, has found that children with learning disabilities are six times more likely to have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder than other children in Britain.
According to The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents with Learning Disabilities in Britain, the increased risk of mental illness is not always caused by a young person's learning disability, but instead because of exposure to greater poverty and social exclusion than experienced by non-disabled children.
The report, based on the experiences of over 18,000 children aged between 5 and 15 years old, says that one in three (33 per cent) children with learning disabilities are likely to have a mother with mental health needs and nearly half are living in poverty (47 per cent).
Young people with learning disabilities also have fewer friends than other children living in Britain and are more likely to suffer abuse and be involved in serious accidents.
While the report found that children with learning disabilities are at an increased risk of mental illness than other children in Britain, nearly half (44 per cent) of the families surveyed said they did not receive sufficient help from medical professionals, social workers or mental health services.
Although this review of data was conducted in Great Britain, there are a lot of things that we can take away from this. Most importantly, we should consider learning disabilities as co-occurring with other forms of pathology.
According to The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents with Learning Disabilities in Britain, the increased risk of mental illness is not always caused by a young person's learning disability, but instead because of exposure to greater poverty and social exclusion than experienced by non-disabled children.
The report, based on the experiences of over 18,000 children aged between 5 and 15 years old, says that one in three (33 per cent) children with learning disabilities are likely to have a mother with mental health needs and nearly half are living in poverty (47 per cent).
Young people with learning disabilities also have fewer friends than other children living in Britain and are more likely to suffer abuse and be involved in serious accidents.
While the report found that children with learning disabilities are at an increased risk of mental illness than other children in Britain, nearly half (44 per cent) of the families surveyed said they did not receive sufficient help from medical professionals, social workers or mental health services.
Although this review of data was conducted in Great Britain, there are a lot of things that we can take away from this. Most importantly, we should consider learning disabilities as co-occurring with other forms of pathology.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Physiological Roots for Emotional Eating
I guess that the last few posts have dealt with eating issues and pathology, so I guess that this one is no exception - this posting and this link merely highlight the fact that the emotional eating of "comfort foods" is physiologically based (keep in mind that the link is a summary of previous research articles and not an actual study). The process follows this course:
Technorati tags: eating disorders, obesity, stress
- When the body starts to feel stress, certain hormones like cortisol are released.
- It's those hormones that then make comfort foods actually taste better, sparking cravings.
- It is the fatty foods and the sugar-laden foods that tend to help lower those stress hormones, only temporarily. This represents an inappropriate, inadequate response to stress, as it is very short term.
- Individuals with excess belly fat have an exaggerated response to cortisol which may be why it's difficult for some to lose that weight in the midsection.
- Researchers have also found that exercise, meditation, and massage can be useful in a weight-loss strategy because they keep stress levels from peaking which keeps people out of the junk food.
Technorati tags: eating disorders, obesity, stress
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