Ponniah K, Hollon SD.
New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, New York; Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
Background: Acute stress disorder (ASD) predicts the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which in some sufferers can persist for years and lead to significant disability. We carried out a review of randomized controlled trials to give an update on which psychological treatments are empirically supported for these disorders, and used the criteria set out by Chambless and Hollon [1998: J Consult Clin Psychol 66:7-18] to draw conclusions about efficacy, first irrespective of trauma type and second with regard to particular populations.
Methods: The PsycINFO and PubMed databases were searched electronically to identify suitable articles published up to the end of 2008. Fifty-seven studies satisfied our inclusion criteria.
Results: Looking at the literature undifferentiated by trauma type, there was evidence that trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are efficacious and specific for PTSD, stress inoculation training, hypnotherapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, and psychodynamic therapy are possibly efficacious for PTSD and trauma-focused CBT is possibly efficacious for ASD. Not one of these treatments has been tested with the full range of trauma groups, though there is evidence that trauma-focused CBT is established in efficacy for assault- and road traffic accident-related PTSD.
Conclusions: Trauma-focused CBT and to a lesser extent EMDR (due to fewer studies having been conducted and many having had a mixed trauma sample) are the psychological treatments of choice for PTSD, but further research of these and other therapies with different populations is needed.
Copyright © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
 
It’s that time of year when darkness descends like a heavy blanket beginning in mid-afternoon in much of the country. For some people, it also brings a desire to stay in bed and wait for spring.
Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, affects an estimated 6% of Americans, causing depression, lethargy, irritability and a desire to avoid social situations. It can also create an urge to overeat, particularly carbohydrates. As many as 15% of people in the U.S. may have a milder version that includes only some of these symptoms. The incidence rises along with the distance from the equator: Roughly 8% of Canadians, 10% of Britons and as many as 20% of Scandinavians suffer from SAD this time of year.
Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Thu, Dec 03, 2009
Once considered a highly specialized field, assistive technology (AT) now increasingly can be found in applications and devices sold to the general public, says a new report that highlights several key trends in AT development.
The Nation Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) presented the report during its annual conference last month. The issue brief, titled “Unleashing the Power of Innovation for Assistive Technology,” comes at a time of great opportunity for both schools and AT providers, the organization says.
“The confluence of federal stimulus money and guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs … to consider investing in ‘state-of-the-art assistive technology and training’ affords the field a rare opportunity to define and shape what state-of-the-art assistive technology can be,” says the brief.
With that goal in mind, NCTI solicited the opinions of more than 65 people from academia, the education-technology industry, professional associations, and all levels of government.
Based on this feedback and a review of existing literature, NCTI concluded that “applications originally designed for the disabled are increasingly recognized as presenting solutions for the wider consumer market.” As a result, the group said, AT functionality now often is built into mainstream consumer devices.
Here are the five most significant trends in AT development, according to NCTI:
1. Convergence. NCTI defines this as the consolidation of various technological systems into “a single platform to perform multiple tasks”–such as the iPhone and other smart phones or mobile devices.
These devices have the ability to run multiple applications that can support and accompany students with disabilities throughout their daily activities.
For example, the brief mentions that students in Taiwan are engaging in an after-school program with smart phones and the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network. With this technology, students and teachers are able to interact to an extent that was not possible before.
In the United States, an iPhone application called iSigns can facilitate communication between deaf students and others who do not sign. Other iPhone apps for students with disabilities include Picture Scheduler, which helps students with autism create and organize personal tasks, and iPrompts, which provides visual prompting tools to help students understand upcoming events and make choices.
Other examples of convergent technologies include e-Book reader devices and online sites that cater to handheld technologies, such as Bookshare.org, which is an online library of digital books underwritten by the Education Department for students with qualifying print disabilities.
2. Customizability and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). According to the brief, customizable AT is designed so that it “can be configured in different ways to meet the needs of individual users.”
Read More(Requires Free Registration): http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/news-by-subject/technology-management/index.cfm?i=62053
Talking head Baldi now an iPhone app
The $4.99 iPhone application is the latest step in Baldi’s evolution since Massaro created it two decades ago. Previously, the character helped hearing-impaired kids to produce and recognize sounds, helped people learn to read and helped autistic kids recognize emotion. Baldi can recite Web sites, e-mails, books and other texts. It has been featured in Newsweek and on ABC News.
The character is meant to look realistic, but not natural, Massaro said, to keep its appearance from clashing with its synthetic voice.
“The voice has always been a challenge. That’s why Pixar uses real people” to voice characters, Massaro said.
But unlike with other animated characters, Baldi’s facial movements are based on data recorded by mechanical devices placed on talking faces. Its eyes followed Massaro’s as he moved his finger over the screen to play with Baldi’s “emotions.” The head began to recite the news angrily.
The character’s expressions cannot perfectly mimic those of humans, said Jan van Santen, director of the Center for Spoken Language Understanding at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Ore. Yet it has its advantages.
Autistic children may like Baldi because they prefer consistency, Massaro said. Baldi won’t change unexpectedly and will never become impatient.
“An animated character is there 24 hours a day,” Massaro said. “Let’s say you have an autistic kid who has irregular sleep patterns and is up at 3 a.m. He could sit down and play with Baldi.”
On the iPhone, the character has more potential uses, such as helping foreign language speakers sound out words on the fly.
“Instead of being chained to a desktop or a laptop, it can be carried with you,” said Scott Testa, professor of business administration at Cabrini College in Philadelphia, who is not associated with the product. “It’s a great business decision.”
Source: Â http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_13915189
 
Article Date: 02 Dec 2009 – 0:00 PST
The mental health of Australians from ‘young minds to grey matters’ will be in the spotlight starting tonight at the 2009 Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research (ASPR) conference at The Australian National University.
The conference will bring in over 300 delegates from Australia and New Zealand researching in a wide range of disciplines, as well as clinicians, carers and the community and public sector. This year’s conference theme, ‘From young minds to grey matters’ will showcase research examining mental health and wellbeing throughout people’s lives, as well as the interaction between mental health research and public policy.
The conference will open tonight with a public lecture on the role of antidepressants in society, and whether their widespread prescription and use makes them a public health ‘friend, or foe’. The lecture will bring together Professor Kathy Griffiths of the Centre for Mental Health Research (CMHR) at ANU, campaigner for mental health research Professor Ian Hickie and the Chair of Healthy Skepticism, Associate Professor Jon Jureidini.
Conference organiser Dr Peter Butterworth of CMHR said the event would bring together some of the region’s leading researchers to discuss a wide range of mental health issues.
“This year’s conference has speakers discussing areas such as employment and mental health, trauma and stress, helping children respond to natural disasters, e-health initiatives, the neurobiology of mental disorders and mental health in an ageing society,” he said. “It will also be the first major forum to present analysis of the recently released 2nd National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing dataset.”
The ASPR has a long association with ANU. The society’s first meeting was held in 1978 in Canberra and Professor Scott Henderson of ANU was one of the founders of the society. The conference is being hosted by CMHR. A program with speakers and topics is attached. Interviews with selected speakers can be arranged through the ANU Media Office.
What: Antidepressants: Friend or Foe public lecture / ASPR Conference 2009
When: Lecture – 6pm, Tuesday 1 December, Conference – Wednesday 2 to Friday 4 December
Where: Lecture – The Finkel Lecture Theatre, The John Curtin School of Medical Research, Garran Road. Conference venues as indicated on program.
Source
The Australian National UniversityÂ
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/172637.php
 
We trawl the world’s journals so you don’t have to:
Modalities of Social Life: Roadmaps for an Embodied Social Psychology (European Journal of Social Psychology).
Atypical Development of Numerical Cognition (Cognitive Development).
Usable knowledge (Mind, Brain and Education).
Resilience in Common Life: Resources, Mechanisms, and Interventions (Journal of Personality).
Intervention and Prevention with Adolescents (Journal of Adolescence).
 
Autistic and artistic: Poet shares his talent
Robert Schrum made up his own language as a child. Now he crafts poetry to express himself, raise money for college and show others with autism that they don’t have to sit on the sidelines of life.
Schrum, 22, self-published his first book, “The Big Picture’s Worth 250 Poems, Vol. 1,” this fall. With more than 600 poems scribbled in notebooks and a goal of writing at least 750, Schrum said he is confident he will publish volume two and more.
The Alleman resident has another series of poetry publications in the works and also a book his 11-year-old nephew will illustrate — “The Hissy Black Cat.”
“You’ve got to have the self-motivation, that’s the thing,” Schrum said.
Schrum hopes to make a living with his writing and also become an English teacher. He’s had an Ankeny copy center make 100 copies of his first book and he’s sold 30 so far. Fifteen percent of the proceeds go to a charity that helps others with autism.
Schrum said he cannot remember much about the mix of words and sounds he created when he was little. But stringing together thoughts, feelings and observations helps focus his emotions, he said.
His autism sometimes caused him to be picked on in the past, Schrum said.
“I’ve kind of kept it in the dark for a while. … I didn’t want to give people a reason to take advantage of me.”
Writing and sharing his poetry has helped him move beyond that. He’s becoming a regular at the open-mic nights at Des Moines-area coffeehouses and clubs.
“It feels good to have this self-expression,” he said, noting that the poems in his first book revolve around the themes of love, grief, religion and philosophy.
Schrum’s mother, Terry, said her son started out as a healthy baby. He was 15 months old, developing normally, “and then one day he woke up and he was just silent for two weeks.”
Rounds of tests brought a diagnosis of regressive autism. “Very few kids are born with signs,” she said.
Schrum was around kindergarten age when he dropped his creative chatter and spoke regular English full time, she said.
“He’s always been so painfully aware of his condition that he tries really hard to fit in,” Terry said.
Schrum said he often felt that other kids had more street smarts than he did. “The autism, it just kind of blinded me from reality,” he said.
An earlier interest in rhymes through rap music got Schrum writing occasionally by his early teens. While other kids performed covers of songs at a school concert, he rapped an original composition.
Reading was another matter, though, as was memorizing facts for tests.
“I used to hate reading,” he said. “I thought it was so tedious, especially when we were made to read certain books.”
Steph Johnson, an English teacher at North Polk High School in Alleman, said Schrum was never afraid to show his emotions through his work. “Always so creative, always outside of the box.”
Johnson bought two copies of Schrum’s book at a recent celebration at his family’s home. One is in her classroom; the other went into the school library.
“That’s just amazing that he’d see outside of himself and give back,” she said of his plan to donate part of the proceeds to charity.
Schrum graduated a semester early from North Polk and started taking classes at Des Moines Area Community College. He’s dropped out twice, saying it’s been too tough for him to juggle classes and work at the same time.
He quit his last job, as a cashier, because he was unhappy with the work, a move he said he now sees as too hasty even though it’s given him more time to focus on his poetry.
Schrum hopes to get another position stocking shelves in a store – “I don’t expect to have a glamorous job” — to save more money for college.
He plans to divide revenue from book sales between money for school and printing more copies of his work.
“Even if you have autism, you can still make a difference,” he said.
Along with being a successful poet, Schrum’s goals are pretty simple: “Be my own boss. Have control over my life.”
Adults Have Dreamlike Thoughts During Sleepwalking and Sleep Terrors Episodes
ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2009) — A study in the Dec.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that short, unpleasant, dreamlike mental activity occurs during sleepwalking and sleep terrors episodes, suggesting that people with these sleep disorders may be acting out dreamlike thoughts.
Results show that 71 percent of participants reported at least one incident of dreamlike mental content associated with an episode of sleepwalking or sleep terrors, and the action in the dreamlike thoughts corresponded with the observed behavior. A total of 106 reports of dreamlike mental activity were collected; the mental content was brief, with 95 percent of the reports involving a single visual scene. These dreamlike thoughts were frequently unpleasant, with 84 percent involving apprehension, fear or terror; 54 percent involving misfortune, in which injury, mishap or adversity occurred through chance or environmental circumstances; and 24 percent involving aggression, with the dreamer always being the victim. Compared with healthy controls, patients with sleepwalking and sleep terrors reported more severe daytime sleepiness and had four times as many arousals from slow-wave sleep.
Principal investigator Isabelle Arnulf, MD, PhD, neurologist and head of the sleep disorders unit at Unité des Pathologies du Sommeil at Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, France, said that it has been widely believed that dreams do not occur during sleepwalking and sleep terrors events. However, previous studies focused mostly on children rather than adults.
“The results are surprising, as it is commonly reported that sleepwalkers and patients with sleep terrors do not remember dreaming,” said Arnulf. “Adults involved in the study who experienced sleepwalking and sleep terrors were less confused during the episode than children, making it easier to express their dream mentations.”
According to the AASM, sleepwalking and sleep terrors typically occur during arousals from slow-wave sleep and are classified as “parasomnias,” which are undesirable events or experiences that occur during entry into sleep, within sleep or during arousals from sleep. Sleepwalking occurs when a person gets out of bed and walks around with an altered state of consciousness and impaired judgment. An episode of sleep terrors occurs when a person sits up in bed with a look of intense fear, often making a cry or piercing scream.
Forty-three patients with severe, frequent, dangerous or disturbing episodes of sleepwalking or sleep terrors participated in the study and were matched with 25 healthy control subjects. The mean age of patients was 26 years with a range from 11 to 72 years, and 46 percent were male. Five patients suffered exclusively from sleep terrors, eight subjects suffered from sleepwalking only and 30 experienced both sleepwalking and sleep terrors.
Data were gathered retrospectively by interview, so that the dreamlike thoughts that were collected covered a lifetime span for each patient. Thirty-eight patients (88 percent) were able to reliably answer questions about their mental content during the sleepwalking and sleep terrors episodes. Sleep also was monitored during one night in a laboratory.
For a long time rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has been considered to be the neurobiological basis of dreaming, the authors noted. Although complex mental activity has been reported in non-REM sleep during slow-wave sleep, the extent to which the reported dreamlike thoughts may be described as “dreaming” is still debated.
The authors suggested that the brief, dreamlike activity occurring during sleepwalking and sleep terrors could be either the terminal part of a longer dream that is forgotten at the time of arousal, or a short mental creation elicited before or just at the time of arousal.
Source: Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091201084053.htm
Sleep Changes Predict Onset of Physical Changes Associated With Puberty
ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2009) — A new study in the journal Sleep suggests that changes in children’s sleep patterns that typically occur between the ages of 11 and 12 years are evident before the physical changes associated with the onset of puberty.
Results show that over the two-year course of the study, sleep onset was significantly delayed by an average of 50 minutes, and sleep time was significantly reduced by an average of 37 minutes. Girls had higher sleep efficiency and reported fewer night wakings than boys. Initial levels of sleep predicted an increase in pubertal development over time, whereas there was no similar prediction in the opposite direction. According to the authors, this suggests that the neurobehavioral changes associated with puberty may be seen earlier in measures of sleep organization than in bodily changes.
Lead author Avi Sadeh, D.Sc, professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University in Israel, said that biological factors have a significant influence on sleep during puberty; however, psychosocial issues such as school demands, social activities and technological distractions can lead to the development of bad sleep habits. Therefore, parents and educators can play an important role in helping children understand how to prioritize sleep as they grow and mature.
“It is very important for parents to be aware of the importance of sleep to their developing teenager and to maintain their supervision throughout the adolescent years,” said Sadeh. “School health education should also provide children with compelling information on how insufficient sleep compromises their well-being, psychological functioning and school achievements.”
According to the authors, sleep-wake organization undergoes significant reorganization during the transition to adolescence. The main changes include a delayed sleep phase, which involves a tendency for later bedtimes and rise times; shorter sleep, which is associated with increased levels of daytime sleepiness; and irregular sleep patterns, which involve sleeping very little on weekdays and sleeping longer during weekends to partially compensate for this sleep loss. During maturation adolescents also develop greater tolerance to sleep deprivation or extended wakefulness.
Data from 94 children (41 boys and 53 girls) were collected from a larger study on sleep and neurobehavioral functioning during the transition to puberty. Children were recruited from regular classes of five different elementary schools in the Tel Aviv area. At first assessment the age range was about 10 years to 11 years. Each child completed a number of questionnaires, including the Sexual Maturation Scale (SMS) and the Puberty Development Scale (PDS) for pubertal development assessment. All children were healthy with no chronic medical or psychological problems.
Sleep-wake patterns were observed subjectively with a sleep diary and objectively using an actigraph, which the children wore on their wrist. The same assessment was repeated, at a similar time of year, for two successive years. Eighty-two children completed the second assessment, and 72 completed the third assessment.
The authors noted that Israel has a six-day school week, with Friday being the only day that is not followed by school. As expected, significant differences were found between sleep on Friday nights and sleep on school nights. On Fridays, sleep onset was delayed, sleep time was extended and sleep quality was poorer in comparison with school nights. These differences were not associated with puberty status or gender, suggesting that the tendency for weekend compensatory sleep is relatively steady over the period of early adolescence.
According to the authors, a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between sleep and pubertal maturation may provide new insights into the emergence of vulnerabilities for behavioral and emotional health problems in early adolescence, which could improve prevention and early intervention efforts.
Source: Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091201084051.htm
Jan
22
 
Article Date: 01 Dec 2009 – 4:00 PST
Loneliness, like a bad cold, can spread among groups of people, research at the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and Harvard shows.
Using longitudinal data from a large-scale study that has been following health conditions for more than 60 years, a team of scholars found that lonely people tend to share their loneliness with others. Gradually over time, a group of lonely, disconnected people moves to the fringes of social networks.
“We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely,” said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, one member of the study team and one of the nation’s leading scholars of loneliness. “On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left.”
Other members of the study team were James Fowler, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California-San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Medical Sociology in the Harvard Medical School.
Before relationships are severed, people on the periphery transmit feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends, who also become lonely. “These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater,” said Cacioppo, the Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology.
Because loneliness is associated with a variety of mental and physical diseases that can shorten life, Cacioppo said it is important for people to recognize loneliness and help those people connect with their social group before the lonely individuals move to the edges.
The scholars’ findings were published in the article, “Alone in the Crowd: The Structure and Spread of Loneliness in a Large Social Network,” published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
For the study, the team examined records of the Framingham Heart Study, which has studied people in Framingham, Mass. since 1948. The original group, including more than 5,209 people, was originally studied for the risks of cardiovascular disease.
The study has since been expanded to include about 12,000 people, as the children and the grandchildren of the original group and others have been included to diversify the population sample. The Framingham study now includes more tests, including measures of loneliness and depression. The second generation in the study, which includes 5,124 people, was the focus of the loneliness research.
Because the study is longitudinal, researchers kept in touch with the subjects every two to four years and accordingly collected names of friends who knew the subjects. Those records became an excellent source of information about the people’s social networks.
By constructing graphs that charted the subjects’ friendship histories and information about their reports of loneliness, researchers were able to establish a pattern of loneliness that spread as people reported fewer close friends. The data showed that lonely people “infected” the people around them with loneliness, and those people moved to the edges of social circles.
The team found that the next-door neighbors in the survey who experienced an increase of one day of loneliness a week prompted an increase in loneliness among their neighbors who were their close friends. The loneliness spread as the neighbors spent less time together.
Previous work suggested that women rely on emotional support more than men do, and in this study women were more likely than men to report “catching” loneliness from others. People’s chances of becoming lonely were more likely to be caused by changes in friendship networks than changes in family networks.
Research also shows that as people become lonely, they become less trustful of others, and a cycle develops that makes it harder for them to form friendships. Societies seem to develop a natural tendency to shed these lonely people, something that is mirrored in tests of monkeys, who tend to drive off members of their groups who have been removed from a colony and then reintroduced, Cacioppo said.
That pattern makes it all the more important to recognize loneliness and deal with it before it spreads, he said.
“Society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective barrier against loneliness that can keep the whole network from unraveling,” he said.
The research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging. “Previous research has shown that loneliness and lack of social connection can have a significant negative effect on the overall health and well-being of older people,” said Richard Suzman, Ph.D., director of the NIA’s Division of Behavioral and Social Research, which funded the research. “This pioneering research into the connections of individuals within their social networks has important implications for the larger issue of social interactions and health.”
Source
University of Chicago
Source:Â http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/172557.php
 
Article Date: 25 Nov 2009 – 0:00 PST
Outrageous prices may not be the only thing causing anger at the petrol pumps. A new study, published in the open access journal BMC Physiology, has shown that rats exposed to fumes from leaded and unleaded gasoline become more aggressive.
Amal Kinawy, from Cairo University, Egypt, examined the emotionally incendiary properties of gasoline in three groups of male rats, each exposed to either leaded-gas fumes, unleaded-gas fumes or clean air. As well as observing the animals’ behavior, she studied any resulting neurological and physiological changes. She said, “Millions of people every day are exposed to gasoline fumes while refuelling their cars. Exposure can also come from exhaust fumes and, particularly in the developing world, deliberate gasoline sniffing as a means of getting high”.
The research demonstrates that rats exposed to either kind of fuel vapor showed increased aggressive behavior, such as more time spent in belligerent postures and increased numbers of actual attacks, in comparison to the clean air group. Examination of the animals’ brains after the experiment revealed significant differences between all three groups. According to Kinawy, “Rats exposed to unleaded gasoline showed indications of increased damage caused by free radicals and altered levels of neurotransmitters in the brain cortex region, in comparison with the control or leaded gasoline groups. Furthermore, inhalation of both fuels induced significant fluctuations in neurotransmitters in the hypothalamus, hippocampus and cerebellum”.
Kinawy concludes, “Heightened aggression may be yet another risk for the human population chronically exposed to urban air polluted by automobile smoke”.
Notes:
Impact of gasoline inhalation on some neurobehavioural characteristics of male rats
Amal A Kinawy
BMC Physiology (in press)
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcphysiol/
Source: Graeme Baldwin
BioMed CentralÂ
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/172002.php
New Discoveries About the Experience of Anger
ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2009) — Younger people, those with children and less-educated individuals are more likely to experience anger, according to new UofT research that examines one of the most common negative emotions in society.
Drawing upon national survey data of more than 1,000 Americans aged 18 and older, Professor Scott Schieman from the Sociology Department at the University of Toronto has published new findings about the experience of anger. In a chapter in the forthcoming International Handbook of Anger, to be released in January 2010, Schieman documents the basic social patterns and contexts of anger. His main findings include:
- Younger people experience more frequent anger than older adults. This is mainly due to the fact that younger people are more likely to feel time pressures, economic hardship, and interpersonal conflict in the workplace (three core stressors that elevate anger levels);
- Feeling rushed for time is the strongest predictor of anger, especially the “low-grade” forms like feeling annoyed;
- Having children in the household is associated with angry feelings and behaviour (i.e., yelling) and these patterns are stronger among women compared to men;
- Compared to people with fewer years of education, the well-educated are less likely to experience anger, and when they do, they are more likely to act proactively (e.g., trying to change the situation or talking it over);
- Individuals who experience more financial strain tend to report higher levels of anger. This relationship is much stronger among women and younger adults.
“The sociological analysis of anger can shed light on the ways that the conditions of society influence emotional inequality,” says Schieman. “Why do some people seem to experience more anger than others? And what does this say about social inequality and its impact in our everyday lives?”
The International Handbook of Anger is edited by Michael Potegal, Gerhard Stemmler and Charles Spielberger.
Source:Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130131326.htm
Bethany Carland-Adams – Wiley-Blackwell
A pet owner knows the enormous joy and comfort that an animal can provide, especially in troubled times. Most pets are considered important members of the family and irreplaceable companions.
A growing body of research now documents the value of the human-animal bond in child development, elderly care, mental illness, physical impairment, dementia, abuse and trauma recovery, and the rehabilitation of incarcerated youth and adults.
In two articles in a recent issue of Family Process – one focused on the benefits of companion animals and the second on their role in couple and family dynamics and family therapy) – Dr Froma Walsh, a Moses & Sylvia Firestone Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago and Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Family Health, reviews and distills the essence of this cutting-edge research. She examines how a bond with a pet can strengthen human resilience through times of crisis, persistent adversity, and disruptive transitions, such as relocation, divorce, widowhood, and adoption.
The well-being and healing that a pet can provide include a range of relational benefits, from stress reduction and playfulness, to loyal companionship, affection, comfort, security, and unconditional love. Pets also can be drawn into couple and family conflict. Women often do not leave abusive partners because of threats of abuse to a beloved pet.
Dr Walsh says, “The powerful meaning and significance of companion animals is underestimated.” Mental health professionals rarely consider these bonds in clinical assessment and intervention, with focus limited to human relationships. Profound attachments with pets-and grief in their loss-are often marginalized, seen as abnormal, or altogether ignored in theory, training, and practice.
The two articles provide an essential overview to inform clinical scholars and practitioners of the potential benefits in facilitating positive growth for individuals, couples, and families when companion animals are included as members of the healing team-and even co-therapists.
Walsh F. Human-Animal Bonds I: The Relational Significance of Companion Animals Fam Process. 2009 Dec;48(4):462-80 Â [Abstract]
Walsh F. Human-Animal Bonds II: The Role of Pets in Family Systems and Family Therapy. Fam Process. 2009 Dec;48(4):481-99 Â [Abstract]