With Betty Ford’s passing, we are again reminded that there is a great deal of work to be done in the field of alcohol and substance abuse. Margarita Alegria, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research and full professor at Harvard University’s Medical School in psychiatry. In her work she examines […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.In Chicago, on June 20, 2011 Vice President
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Time magazine on June 20, 2011, reports that a certain Misery Index has reached a 28-year high. This survey tool, when it was concocted in the 1960s, wasn’t meant to be a scientific and comprehensive measure of human behavior. Rather, it is a shorthand measure combining unemployment and inflation to gauge the effect of both […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Over on The Corner at National Review, Jack Fowler (AMHF Board Chairman), shows protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, disrupting a Special Olympics visit to the state capital. Special Olympians rarely if ever disrupt or protest the peaceful activities of others, as they are so absorbed in their sport and the joy and fellowship accompanying this. They […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Since part of the mission of AMHF is to keep continual focus on the mental-health needs of the developmentally disabled, a recent article deserves our attention. On June 5, 2011, the New York Times reported that Jonathan Carey, a thirteen-year-old boy who has autism, was asphyxiated and died in the back of a NYS-owned van […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.As part of the AMHF series on Bullying, we call your attention to the American Psychological Association (APA) new video by Dr. Norman B. Anderson, CEO of the APA. Dr. Anderson states… The problem of bullying has received a great deal of media attention recently, and for good reason. Bullying can lead to lasting psychological […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.This month marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to bring Americans to the moon within the end of that decade. The goal was met. Now his nephew, former Representative Patrick Kennedy (D., R.I.) is using one of what was arguably his uncle’s greatest achievements as a metaphor in fighting mental illness, […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Piers Morgan hosted the Axelrods who eloquently and movingly diagnosed the sorry state of epilepsy research in the United States and their 29-year-old daughter’s battle (along with her family) against this condition. Epilepsy is a so-called orphaned disease in the United States. (Two new anticonvulsants are currently available in Canada, finally set for FDA approval […]
By: Evander LomkeJudi Chamberlin, international activist for people with mental illnesses, died sixteen months ago at age 65. Chamberlin was a board member of MindFreedom International, and in the 1970s she established the then-fashionably named Mental Patients’ Liberation Front. She helped found the Ruby Rogers Advocacy and Drop-In Center, which is staffed by people who have had […]
By: Evander Lomke“We are happy to join 54,000 other Americans in pledging to end the use of the R-word at www.r-word.org….including pending legislation in Congress to remove the R-word from federal law.”…I do not attribute this quote since there is no need. Does such “removal” of “a derogatory word” in any way help individuals that truly need […]
By: Evander LomkeFrom New York Able Newspaper May 2011: Manhattan’s first Mental Health Court, which recently opened at 100 Centre Street, is dedicated to keeping defendants with mental illness from engaging in further criminal behavior. This special court will handle nonviolent cases of defendants with serious and continuing mental illness. It is part of the New York […]
By: Evander LomkeAll the flowers in bloom and their reflections made the Hudson River Valley look like a giant impressionist painting Friday and Saturday April 29 and 30. AMHF, along with Marist College School of Management, sponsored the Conference “Small Family Business, Big Family Stress” at the Dutchess Country Club in Poughkeepsie, New York. On Friday night […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Last year when my physician was away, I visited another doctor. It was a minor problem, but because of insurance regulations the new doctor was required to do a complete intake on me. This took roughly forty-five minutes, and throughout the entire interview he typed my answers onto a standard form that was on a […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Catherine Zeta Jones, glamorous wife of actor Michael Douglas, suffers the painful effects of bipolar disorder. As this ABC News article and video explain, bipolar disorder, a cause also closely associated with actress and well-known advocate Glenn Close (whose sister, Jesse, is diagnosed with bipolar disorder), can be brought on during any stage of life, […]
By: Evander LomkeFORTHCOMING WORKSHOP Saturday, April 30, 2011, with Marist College in Conjunction with the Hudson Valley Family Business Institute, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., AMHF is holding a free one-day workshop, Small Family Business, Big Family Stress, at the Dutchess Golf and Country Club, 2628 South Road, Poughkeepsie. The event will include a hot breakfast […]
By: Evander LomkeOver at AMERICA we are having a discussion on National Day of Silence. Regina Sewell is a group therapist who, like Stefan de Schill, has kept the art and craft of group therapy alive and prosperous in times when most therapists have shifted over to the individual therapy model. She has these thoughts on National […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.It has become a tradition where I teach for the students to make “National Day of Silence” a part of the year. This is national youth movement where silence is used as a tool to make others aware of the silence, often a quietude of contempt or ignoring, faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Mental-health issues with and among gay teens include coming-out and bullying. Now, these issues will be portrayed in the perennial Archie comic-book series. Kevin Keller is a gay teen who made his debut in the Veronica comic book last year. Now Kevin will debut in a four-part series, the first from a major comic-book publisher. […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Alyssa Moirano, a student, writes in response to a recent blog: With the current war, I am well aware of the high number of soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder upon returning home to the United States. However, I was unaware of the long-term implications. It is scary to know that they are living each […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.In the fourth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR), there are separate categories for substance abuse and substance dependence. Writing in Counseling Today, the magazine of the American Counseling Association, K. Dale Jones notes that in the upcoming DSM V it is likely that these two categories will be eliminated […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.E. Fuller Torrey, psychiatrist and author of Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual, writes in the Wall Street Journal about the necessity of mandated treatment and the responsibility of public-health authorities to monitor those severely mentally ill persons who need this. Torrey writes… “The killing of six people in Tucson is one more sad episode in […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Tragic events this past week in Arizona, involving Jared Lee Loughner, have once again brought to public awareness the question of treatment for seriously disturbed people who live in our midst, and in particular the issues concerning what to do when one of them is a college student and his or her behavior is a […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.The New Yorker has run a fascinating article by Evan Osnos. Osnos covers China for the magazine, writing on other subjects like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The article under review is about the Chinese meeting Sigmund Freud. As Dr. Stefan de Schill correctly predicted, there has been a resurrection of psychoanalysis. But it is […]
By: Evander LomkeOne of the readers of CNN.com wrote in and asked how one goes about finding good mental-health care if one is on SSI and Medicaid. This particular respondent also is limited in transportation. Following is the helpful response. “I have been thinking for a number of weeks about your question. I wish I could tell […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Most readers here probably acknowledge the existence of ADHD: as something they themselves suffer from or as something they know as “true” from its presence in a family member or close friend. Yet it is interesting that a case needs to be made for the existence of this problem. Dr. Perri Klass does so in […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Another recent article in the Huffington Post reports on mental-health problems suffered by children who are from military families. “The latest study on military children, published this month in the Journal Pediatrics, looked at more than a half million military children ages 3 to 8 whose parents were deployed. Researchers found that behavioral disorders, such […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Below is from the New York Times of November 10, 2010: “The agencies that run prisons and mental health facilities also employ the largest number of state workers of any departments of government under direct control of the governor, part of a work force that Mr. Cuomo may be forced to trim, or demand significant […]
By: Evander Lomke
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