There will be no rapture on Saturday, May 21st.

And I can’t wait to see how Harold Camping reacts on Sunday when he’s still alive, on …

Psychology has spilled over into pop culture in many ways throughout the years.

For instance, in 1911, one psychologist saved Coca-Cola by conducting rigorous studies into caffeine’s effects on cognition and sensory and motor abilities.

In 1929, another inspired his nephew’s successful public relations campaigns, which linked smoking cigarettes with female empowerment, if you can believe it.

Since 1895, other psychologists were directly involved in advertising, using surveys and other new ploys to get us to buy their products. (You didn’t need toothpaste to clean your teeth; you needed it to make you sexier.)

One psychologist even changed the comic book world and influenced an entire movement (that would be the feminist movement).

In the early 1940s, Harvard psychologist William Moulton Marston (May 9, 1893 – May 2, 1947) created Wonder Woman.

Dear readers, I owe you all an apology. I was wrong in my post about Catherine Zeta Jones’s diagnosis of bipolar II to compare bipolar II to Diet Coke. It was flip, inappropriate, and a lame attempt at humor. I hereby admit that I was wrong. So there is no need to further bash me.

I was wrong because it suggests that bipolar II is not as serious, not as painful, not as debilitating as bipolar I. But, as a person diagnosed with bipolar II myself, I certainly know that isn’t the case. I realize that the depressive cycle for someone with bipolar II can actually be more severe than the depressive cycles of folks with bipolar I. And sometimes the depression can be psychotic.

I was there myself, although I’m not sure if it was the illness that made me psychotic or the drug cocktail of about 20 pills that my psychiatrist at the time, who was in bed with big Pharma, prescribed for me.

And I’m very aware that a person with bipolar II can cycle much more rapidly than someone with bipolar I, which makes bipolar II more dangerous in some regards, and definitely more difficult to diagnose.

In one of the myriad interviews he gave over the last week, Charlie Sheen said clearly that he hates AA.

A lot of people have trouble with Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is full of people and people can be messy and flawed.

The human train wreck formally known as Charlie Sheen is a common sight in the AA meeting halls. The only difference between Mr. Sheen and other self-absorbed, delusional, frantic addicts is the size of the audience to which they rant. These people do not last long in AA. They mock the Fellowship and the 12 Steps (PDF) as too religious or simplistic. AA is beneath them.

Here are a few possible reasons why Charlie Sheen might hate AA so much.

On Wednesday, Howard Stern and his cohorts on his popular morning radio show discussed the results of their psychological testing (or “psych testing” as they kept referring to it on the show).

The results made for some great radio. But it also highlighted some of the pros and cons of psychological testing. And perhaps inadvertently raised the question — should scientific or medical tools be used for entertainment purposes?

The test they took — the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III) — is not meant to be taken by ordinary people who have no obvious psychological concerns. It was developed with a focus on personality and psychopathology — to help a psychologist better identify the areas of personality that are contributing to a person’s maladaptive behavior.

I’m pleased to introduce Movies and Mental Health with Joseph Burgo, Ph.D. This …

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
~ John Lennon

On Dec. 8th, 1980, I was in bed listening to the radio when suddenly, in a voice labored by heavy breathing and halting words, the disc jockey broke the news that John Lennon had been shot and killed in front of his New York City apartment building. The news ransacked my brain.

The Beatles weren’t just a rock band; they gave us an identity. Their songs weren’t simply catchy tunes or stray memorable lyrics. The music told us who we were. It pointed us in a whole new direction. The simplicity and clarity of their message pierced the fog of the Vietnam War, drugs, the environment, and politics. “Love is all you need” not only made sense, it gave us something to work toward.

Collectively the Beatles offered hope. But it was John Lennon who offered inspiration.

“If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane,” sings Jimmy Buffett. “Time spent laughing is …

Last week, I had the opportunity to report from SAMHSA’s annual Voice Awards in Hollywood and to interview one of the consumer leadership award winners. Frederick Frese, Ph.D. is a psychologist with more than 40 years experience in public mental health care. Until 1995, Frese was Director of Psychology for 15 years at Western Reserve Psychiatric Hospital. Now he is the Coordinator of the Summit County Recovery Project, serving recovering consumers in and around Akron, OH.

Dr. John M. Grohol: So you’ve had a distinguished career, but it all seemed to start with your diagnosis of schizophrenia when you joined the Marines.

Dr. Frederick Frese: Actually, I was in the Marine Corps for about four years when I had the diagnosis and was discharged. Then spent 10 years, in 10 different hospitals, being hospitalized and re‑hospitalized, at one point being committed as insane. Then I went back to school, got my doctorate, became a psychologist functioning in a state hospital. I was actually director of psychology. I was being told not to tell anybody about my condition.

But one day, and thanks in large part to the last lady you just interviewed, Pam Hodge… She changed the laws in Ohio and encouraged persons in recovery to sit on mental health boards and become open about their conditions. So I did.

Since then, I’ve had quite a career. I’ve given over 2,000 talks. I’ve had movie contracts. No movie, but I’ve had a couple contracts!

While at the Voice Awards, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat for a few minutes with the head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Administrator Pamela Hyde, JD.

Ms. Hyde is an attorney and comes to SAMHSA with more than 30 years experience in management and consulting for public healthcare and human services agencies. She has served as a state mental health director, state human services director, city housing and human services director, as well as CEO of a private non-profit managed behavioral healthcare firm. You can learn more about Ms. Hyde here.

Dr. John Grohol: So I wanted to understand a little bit better how the Voice Awards originated. What was the motivation behind coming up with this novel sort of way of recognizing both consumers and Hollywood contributions to mental health and substance abuse issues?

Pamela Hyde:  Well, let me start by just saying SAMHSA’s role in the federal government is to be the voice for people with mental health and substance abuse service needs and for people who might be at risk of those needs. So that means that part of our job is to try to educate the public and to try to provide information, provide materials, and just get the right information out.

So, as a part of that effort over the last many years, I think there’s been a variety of ways of trying to do that, and there’s no question that the entertainment industry has a profound impact on people’s understanding and perceptions of lots of things.

It was an honor and a pleasure to attend the 2010 Voice Awards, hosted by SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. SAMHSA is the agency responsible for helping to get the word out about substance abuse and mental health issues, so their focus is much aligned with ours.

This year’s theme was focused on honoring portrayals of men and women who serve in the military but come home to grapple with mental health issues and friends and family who often just don’t understand how to help. It also featured a lifetime achievement award given to Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter for her decades’ long work on helping advance mental health care in the U.S.

The annual ceremony is held to honor the realistic and often-poignant depiction of people struggling with mental health issues on the big screen, in documentaries and on television. Actors Sandra Oh, Julia Ormond, America Ferrara, Brian McNamara and Peter Krause were among the many who attended and helped to present at this year’s event, which was co-hosted by Emmy Award-winning actor Hector Elizondo and Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr.

I had the opportunity beforehand to hang out on the red carpet and talk to a few of these actors before the ceremony started.

Howard Stern, the ubiquitous satellite radio talk-show host, is a big proponent of psychotherapy. He has noted how he’s been in psychotherapy three times a week for the past few decades, much like Woody Allen. But what kind of psychotherapy is Howard Stern in? And why does it seem endless?

This type of intensive, long-term psychotherapy is almost always psychoanalysis — a specific type of psychotherapy that focuses on how a person’s unconscious conflicts impact a person’s everyday functioning. People who undergo psychoanalysis almost always meet with their analyst 2 to 3 times a week, every week, for years on end. Howard Stern has said he sees his analyst 3 times a week, but sometimes feels like he would like to cut down to twice a week.

Psychoanalysis is considered a specific form of psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapy and is far more popular in European countries than the U.S. And it’s no wonder — it’s the form of treatment invented by Sigmund Freud himself. Contrary to popular belief, there’s been a fair amount of empirical research conducted on psychodynamic therapy demonstrating its general effectiveness (see, for example, Shedler, 2010). Psychoanalysis is indeed a valid, effective form of therapy.

But at three times (or more) a week, who can afford such intensive therapy (other than celebrities like Howard Stern or Woody Allen)? And why would you bother if other forms of less intensive psychotherapy can be just as effective?