Policy and Advocacy Articles

Listed by most recent articles first.

• Community, Libraries and Mental Health
  Unlike his colleague Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler -- another early 20th century psychologist -- wasn’t interested in analyzing ...
• Losing Our Moral Compass: The Negative Effects of Overstressing Academic Achievement
  I look at the story headlines in various magazines and newspapers. “Gotta Start ...
• Revisiting a School Program that Rescued ‘Losers’
  A few years ago, I read Dr. Bob Brooks’ monthly article which focused on one of his favorite themes: schools ...
• Reflections on Grass Root Changes in Educating Children
  A few years ago, I was sitting at my desk this morning and reviewing several articles ...
• Schools Fail to Educate at Least 30 Percent of Our Students
  “No Child Left Behind” is a joke. Most of the ...
• Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism
  Diane M. Kennedy and Rebecca S. Banks, the authors of Bright Not Broken, and the contributor, Temple Grandin, all have a combination of personal and professional experience with learning and developmental disabilities. Kennedy and Banks are ...
• ERP Therapy: A Good Choice for Treating OCD
  During OCD Awareness Week in October, I sat in front of my computer, mesmerized, as I watched a live ...
• The Media and Mental Illness: The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous
  When portraying mental illness and psychotherapy, the media tends to get it wrong -- ...
• The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time
  David Sloan Wilson’s The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, sports a misleading title. While it does contain teachings that hint at ways we might improve our municipalities, ...
• October is Domestic Violence Month
  Domestic violence remains a huge and largely hidden problem. The purple ribbons you may have seen recently on car bumpers and people’s ...
• Mental Health Professionals: US Statistics
  According to the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 552,000 mental health professionals practicing in the ...
• Talking to Families about Mental Illness: What Clinicians Need to Know
  When an individual is diagnosed with a mental disorder, that person's family begins what is often a lifetime of decisions about treatment and care affecting everyone. "Finding the balance between the sometimes conflicting needs of ...
• Home-School Collaboration for Children with Learning Disabilities
  The transition into elementary school can be especially tough for our children with learning disabilities and challenging behavior. Whether ...
• Responding To Mental Illness in Your Workforce: Following the Law
  In Part 1 of this series, Leading a Culture Change, we talked about specific steps ...
• Higher Death Rates for the Mentally Ill
  Researchers have found higher-than-expected death rates from physical health problems for people with mental illness. Dr. Alex Mitchell of ...
• Responding To Mental Illness in Your Workforce: Leading a Culture Change
  As a leader in your organization, you’ve undoubtedly had to handle situations when you’ve been ...
• Black and Depressed: Two African-American Women Break the Silence
  According to Raymond DePaulo, Jr. M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, African American ...
• Changing Media Depictions of Mental Illness
  The perceptions of mental illnesses have come a long way from their characterization as untreatable maladies, thus forcing the suffering ...
• The Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry
  The Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry by UK-based journalist Jon Ronson (famous for the book-turned-movie The Men Who Stare at Goats) starts out with a mystery. Someone has sent a bunch of ...
• Myths About Suicide
  In May 2007 a young woman in Oklahoma died of a gunshot wound to the head. Whether it was self-inflicted or not was not apparent. Her family hoped to prove that it wasn’t self-inflicted and ...
• Lack of Safety Net for LGBT Couples Causes Stress
  The "straight safety net" involves both hetero-normative assumptions and heterosexual privilege (defined below). These create often-unacknowledged ...
• Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories About Mental Illness
  Before beginning a review of Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories About Mental Illness, this reviewer feels that it is necessary to disclose that it is the very first graphic novel she has ever read.  Keeping ...
• The Preference for “Natural”
  It will probably come as no surprise that many Americans prefer "natural" to "artificial" when it comes to ...
• Suicide and the Military
  When someone commits suicide, it’s a tragedy. When we are losing more soldiers to suicide than to ...
• Eliminate Outdated Attitudes on Mental Health
  Spring is a time for new beginnings. This year, let’s celebrate the season with a new approach to America’s mental health -- one that will save Americans much shame and suffering even as ...