(MadInAmerica.com) – Past research has shown that parent behavior influences the development and trajectory of childhood anxiety. Recently, research has been done to examine the impact of providing training for parents in combination with therapy for the child to reduce childhood anxiety. Now, a new study conducted at Yale University suggests that parents training alone may be just as effective at reducing childhood anxiety as interventions that provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to children.

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Cannabis use is extremely common among adolescents and young adults, with an estimated 14% of students in the 10th grade, 23% of students in the 12th grade, and 22% of college students and young adults engaging in at least monthly use in 2016.1 In 2015, 1.8 million adolescents (aged 12-17 years) and 6.9 million young adults (aged 18-25 years) were current users of cannabis.2 Moreover, the problem is increasing: 30-day prevalence of use among students in the 12th grade rose from 19% in 2007 to 23% in 2017.3 There is even higher use in Canada: In 2013, an estimated 28% of youths aged 11 to 15 years admitted to using cannabis at least once a year, and a high number reported weekly or daily use.4

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By Sophia Vinogradov, MD

Over the last decade or so, our field has experienced a radical shift in our understanding of schizophrenia and other serious psychotic disorders, such as schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder with psychosis. We now understand that these are neurocognitive disorders (ie, how neural systems in the brain represent and process information). We also understand that they are neurodevelopmental disorders with genetic components and antecedents during gestation. The developmental course unfolds with increasing signs, symptoms, and cognitive dysfunction, until the onset of the first episode of psychosis during adolescence or early adulthood. Cognitive deficits are more significant determinants of functional outcome than are symptoms, although most current psychiatric treatments focus only (or mostly) on symptom management.

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By Nev Jones, Ph.D.

In an important and provocative study reported in this issue of Psychiatric Services, Cook and colleagues detail findings stemming from a rigorous and well-powered investigation of self-directed care for adults with serious mental illness living in Texas. The investigators found significant improvements in multiple key domains, including recovery, self-esteem, coping, autonomy support, and employment and education, all at no additional cost.

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Corinita Reyes has been knocking down barriers for most of her young life.
“My mother had me at age 17 and my biological father wanted a son, not a daughter, so I never met him,” Corinita said. “At the age of 10, many life changes happened at once from moving out of a community where I felt at home, to losing a father figure, to my mother’s boyfriend moving in with us and taking the role of my stepdad.”
Corinita, now 27, described how she struggled with these changes, but buried those struggles deep inside, sharing them with no one.

Full Article here

Charlie is a well-spoken psychologist from England who specializes in Compassion for Voices and Compassion Focused Therapy for Psychosis.

Please see the interview Psychosis Summit did with him last year: 
https://www.psychosissummit.com/charlesmaitland

This is his office website: http://compassionatementalhealth.co.uk/speaker/charlie_heriot_maitland

Here is a link to a 5 minute film on Compassion for Voices: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=VRqI4lxuXAw

SBPR is co-sponsoring an all day workshop at Stanford for voice hearers, family members, and clinicians on Oct 13.

There will also be a Psychosis Education Day at Stanford on Oct 19 .

Register today for NAMI’s Ask the Expert Webinar: Skills You Can Use to Support a Loved One Experiencing Psychosis on Friday, March 22 from 4:00–5:30 p.m. EST

Speaker: Dr. Kate Hardy, Clin.Psych.D

This webinar will explain how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp) can effectively support loved ones experiencing psychosis. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp) is an evidence-based intervention recommended as a complementary treatment for psychosis. This webinar will provide an overview of this therapy, discuss its key skills and explore how family members may draw upon these skills to support their loved one.

To read more and register here

If you missed it search for it in the NAMI Ask the Expert archive here

produced by Tom Jennings • Joaquin Sapien, In partnership with: ProPublica

Thousands of New Yorkers with severe mental illnesses won the chance to live independently in supported housing, following a 2014 federal court order. FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate what’s happened to people moved from adult homes into apartments and find more than two dozen cases in which the system failed, sometimes with deadly consequences.

See full film here

By Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Vaughan Bell, Josef J Bless, Philip Corlett, Kenneth Hugdahl, Nev Jones, Frank Larøi, Peter Moseley, Ramachandran Padmavati,
Emmanuelle Peters, Albert R Powers, Flavie Waters

That trauma can play a significant role in the onset and maintenance of voice-hearing is one of the most striking and important developments in the recent study of psychosis. Yet the finding that trauma increases the risk for hallucination and for psychosis is quite different from the claim that trauma is necessary for either to occur. Trauma is often but not always associated with voice-hearing in populations with psychosis; voice-hearing is sometimes associated with willful training and cultivation in nonclinical populations. This article uses ethnographic data among other data to explore the possibility of multiple pathways to voice-hearing for clinical and nonclinical individuals whose voices are not due to known etiological factors such as drugs, sensory deprivation, epilepsy, and so forth. We suggest that trauma sometimes plays a major role in hallucinations, sometimes a minor role, and sometimes no role at all. Our work also finds seemingly distinct phenomenological patterns for voice-hearing, which may reflect the different salience of trauma for those who hear voices.

Link to Full Article