New York State bans mental health professionals from providing "conversion therapy." in 2019.

From New York Times on 01/19/19

Between 2012 and 2018, 14 states and Washington, D.C., passed laws prohibiting “conversion therapy” for minors. Deep-blue New York was not among them.

That finally changed this month when the State Legislature voted overwhelmingly to bar mental health professionals from working to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

For more click here.

Editor's note. I have practiced in the mental health field for over 50 years and have seen great changes in professional and public attitudes towards homosexuality. As a Professional Social Worker I have worked with my colleagues to diminish and eliminate the homophobia in our society. I have worked with many clients who have been harmed by homophobia and have striven to provide acceptance and unconditional positive regard for the worth and dignity of every person. It is a great joy to see this law passed in the New York State legislature at a very fittiing time in the calendar year when we also celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day.

In our contemporary society do we have two adulthoods?

Psychotherapy Stories

Episode 11, Two adulthoods

With our expanded life expectancy in contemporary times, people are faced with two adulthoods: the period of 20-50, and 50 - 80. The first adulthood we are biologically programmed by Mother Nature to mate and procreate and assure the continuation of our species. The second adulthood engenders all kinds of existential anxiety because Mother Nature doesn't help us at all. How have you, are you, or will you negotiate this transition from adulthood number one to adulthood #2?

Books - Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

What happens when parents suddenly die in a car crash and leave a 17 yr. old son, a 16 yr. old son, a 7 year old daughter and a baby daughter in a rural farming community in Northern Ontario, Canada?
Grown up Kate, now in her 20s tells most of the story.

It is a narrative full of love, sacrifice, loyalty, persistence, projection, and descriptions of attachment styles that are fascinating.

Kate certainly has become avoidant although she had been every attached to her brother, Matt the youngest son. This attachment dynamic is the plat of the book. While Luke the oldest, and Bo the youngest are interesting characters, the primary creative tension revolves around Matt and Katie, 16 and 7 when tragedy strikes the family.

This novel is an extraordinary description of sibling relationships and the significant role they play in our growth and development.

I give Crow Lake a 4/5 and recommend it if you are interested in family dynamics especially those between siblings who are thrown upon their own resources to care for one another.
I would recommend this book to students entering the helping professions especially for its depiction of attachment styles.

Books - The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

There are plenty of slave narratives. Do we need any more?

Colson Whitehead's novel, The Underground Railroad, tells the story of a young slave woman, Cora, who escapes the Randall plantation in Georgia with a male companion Caesar and makes her way north and west on a literal underground railroad whose tunnels have been dug by abolitionists committed to undoing the bonds of slavery.

The scenes about slave torture and killings are terrible and offset to some extent by the kindness of strangers who help and conduct the slave escapees to freedom.

This is a story about the tenacity and perseverance of the human spirit against the evil of economic forces and power which exploit, subjugate, oppress, and terrorize to maintain power and dominion. It is a more extreme story of what is happening in America today with Trumpism and the championing of racism, mysogony, xenophobia, deceit and using fear and terror to undue civil liberties and the rule of law.

The Underground Railroad is an old narrative going back 300 years in the United States and continuing on in more subtle and insidious forms in our country today.

Cora and her companions seeking freedom and human development in the face of life threatening terror and domination is a souce of inspiritation and hope. The people who help her and her companions are the unnamed saints and martyrs for the cause of human dignity and respect. While a difficult book to read because of intentional pain and suffering deliberately inflicted to dominate and subjugate human beings, it is more importantly a book not only of resistance, but of endurance, hope, and triumph.

I give The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead a 4.5 on the Markham Behavioral Health 5 point scale.

Fentanyl is a killer drug in 50% of opioid overdoses.

Fentanyl is 10 times more powerful than heroin. Gets mixed into street heroin and kills users by unintentional overdoses.

 

What is the importance of mentalizing in attachment informed psychotherapy?

In psychotherapy, the activity of "mentalizing" is where the most benefit accrues.
"Mentalizing" is the making sense of things. Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. This examining, to which Socrates refers, is what contemporary psychologists call "mentalizing."
Mentalizing is intimately linked to self understanding, the understanding of others, a sense of agency, and enhancement of social skills.
Mentalizing is a key feature of emotional intelligence which is made up of self knowledge, self regulation, empathy, motivation, and constructive and satisfying interactions with others.
In the model of narrative therapy, the narrative operates at three levels: the landscape of action, the landscape of meaning, and the landscape of identity.
The the landscape of action describes the cast of characters involved in certain activities and events over a period of time. The landscape of action is the plot line.
Superimposed on the landscape of action is the landscape of meaning. After the landscape of action is described, the story is told, one can ask, "What does it mean? What's the moral of the story? What's to be learned from this story? What do you make of it?" This is the therapeutic pay dirt.
At the third level, the landscape of identity, one can consider if this is what happened (the landscape of action), and this is what it means (the landscape of meaning), what, then, am I to think about myself and the kind of world I am living in?
Homo  sapiens are meaning making animals. We have a consciousness. This consciousness is more developed in some than in others. It is more highly developed in people with a secure attachment style. It is less developed in people with an anxious and avoidant styles, and least of all, in people with a disorganized style.
As I like to share with clients in my therapy sessions, "If you can't name it, you can't manage it. So what do you call the phenomenon (thing) we are talking about here." People with a secure attachment style can name it without much trouble. People with an anxious attachment style become flustered and bounce around looking for the right word. People with an avoidant style freeze, ponder, and have a great deal of difficulty finding the right words. People with a disorganized style often panic and become incoherent, change the subject, or rattle on about something unrelated to the topic under discussion.
The ability to reflect on one's own functioning, and the functioning of others, and to learn from the experience and adjust one's way of managing oneself and the interactions with others, is a sign of growth and what is often called "maturity." This ability to reflect and make meaning of one's experience is one of the major benefits of good psychotherapy.
This is article #2 in a series on attachment theory.

SNAP (Food stamps) works

Congress just cut back on SNAP and instituted work requirements. But what about people who are already working and not making a living wage? America can afford a safety net to maintain people's dignity. We owe it to one another.