Freudy-cats
Have you heard of “Freudy-cats”? One of our AMHF board members, the distinguished publisher Jack Fowler, filled me in. These are people afraid of going into therapy. Why? And do you know any Freudy-cats?
By: Evander LomkeWelcome to the AMHF Blog
National Health Care and Mental Health
As everyone is just beginning to sort out what exactly is in the new health-care laws, how they will apply, and whom they will affect, and when, AMHF is monitoring this legislation with a special interest with respect to mental-health care. More to come as the politicizing dies down and the implications become manifest.
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Stuff
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy Frost and Gail Skeketee, is a book of interest to many, a cautionary tale in some respects, and a message of help for a group of others. The latter are those who suffer from one of the varieties of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): compulsive hoarding. For […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Pilots and Antidepressants
The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) now allows pilots to continue their in-air responsibilities if they are on certain antidepressants. Historically, pilots have not been allowed to fly while taking antidepressants as many of the original antidepressants had side effects which could be extremely serious if they occurred in flight. Side effects such as seizures or […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar: A Factitious Death?
In 1953, the year the Rosenbergs were convicted in the electric chair, Esther Greenwood (a.k.a. Elly Higginbottom), poet Sylvia Plath’s alter ego (further complicating the picture, Plath wrote under the pen name “Victoria Lucas”), underwent electroshock therapy. Electricity, neurological connections, high-strung emotion, madness, suicide (which the real-life Plath committed ten years after the setting of […]
By: Evander LomkeLoneliness, Sadness, Depression: Do We Have It Backward?
Emily White is a lawyer who lived alone for six years in her 30s and said those were years of “savage loneliness.” She has written a book about this, “Lonely: A memoir”, just published by Harper Collins. Ms. White describes many of the pop psychology attitudes that even serious therapists adope. “Living alone gives you […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.OCD…as Viewed by Ashley Dupre
The New York Post recently hired Ashley Dupre to write a column on relationships, “Ask Ashley”, and it appears each Sunday. Recently, Cara, age 35, residing in Park Slope, asked Ashley the following: “My boyfriend and I recently moved in together. I’m anal about keeping a straight apartment. How can I approach this so I […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Spirituality and OCD: Part 4
How might Eudes’ views be judged by others who are knowledgeable about psychology, psychiatry, and spirituality? Robert Coles, M.D., psychiatrist at Harvard University has for four decades emphasized the need for modern mental-health workers to combine spirituality with mental-health therapy. John Cardinal O’Connor, while known for his strong and formidable presence, also had a master’s […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Spirituality and OCD: Part 3
“The problem with OCD,” John Eudes says, “is that it leads to a mode of perception and thinking that is too abstract, too narrow. God is life-giving, not a taskmaster or harsh judge of solitary behaviors, as OCD or scrupulosity suggests. To fight OCD, one has to develop other images and thoughts based on reality […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Spirituality and OCD: Part 2
As professionals in the mental-health fields try harder with cognitive behavior therapy and medications, over and over, one might imagine that this is a manifestation of the same mechanism of OCD. Where might other sources of help be found, especially for those suffering with scrupulosity? Can a Trappist monk, who is also a Georgetown-trained physician […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.
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