Child in Mind

To CDC on children's mental health: consider office of homeland attachment security

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:04:00 GMT

Change is in the air for children's mental health care. The latest CDC (Center for Disease Control) special supplement to the MMWR (morbidity and mortality weekly report) is titled Mental Health Surveilance Among Children-United States 2005-2011. The report overview states:Approximately...

To CDC on kid's mental health: consider office of homeland attachment security

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:04:00 GMT

To CDC on kid's mental health: consider office of homeland attachment security

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:04:00 GMT

DSM, NIMH on mental illness: both miss relational, historical context of being human

Thu, 09 May 2013 02:00:00 GMT

It seems that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) may have dealt a death blow to the recently published Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5) when the organization declared they would no longer fund research based on the...

Using media to promote change while celebrating Brazelton's 95th

Sun, 05 May 2013 03:03:00 GMT

I had the privilege this week to participate in the 95th birthday celebration of pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton on the occasion of the annual Touchpoints National Forum. I even got to sit at the table with Dr. Brazelton for...

Grieving for Boston

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:16:00 GMT

It was a heartbreakingly beautiful day. I work at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and as I live in Western Massachusetts, I had not yet had reason to come in to Boston.Though I grew up in New York City, I have felt a...

Music, mourning, and family narrative

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:56:00 GMT

(I wrote this post before we learned of the complex family and historical background of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers. I was again going to postpone publishing it. But I wonder if these ideas of mourning and family narrative have...

Mourning and music: a song for Boston

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:54:00 GMT

I had been working on a post on the subject of mourning and music. But with the trauma of the Boston Marathon bombing still so fresh, it did not seem appropriate to write about any other subject. I wondered, what...

Lost child psych beds at Cambridge Health Alliance: now prevention is essential

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:18:00 GMT

In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, many people, myself included, wrote about the need to address both gun control and mental health care. So it was rather jarring, on the same day that Connecticut's governor signed comprehensive new gun...

What is children's mental health care?

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:37:00 GMT

Patricia Wen's front page story Children's Access to Mental Health Care is Growing, in which she describes the "co-location" of mental health care services in pediatric practices, brought me back to the summer of 2011 when I attended a meeting of...

Ode to joy: moments of parent-child connection

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:13:00 GMT

A friend and colleague recently asked if I thought joy was an emotion or a state. Without pause, I responded that it was a way of being fully present.Early the next morning I was at Starbucks writing to another colleague about a...

Connecting the dots to discover the cause of "ADHD"

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:18:00 GMT

A reader of my previous post asked how I "connect the dots" from supporting newborns and parents to "ADHD" treatment. He states that, "trying to figure out the cause will not help any kid today." This comment motivated me to...

Evidence mounts that our current approach to "ADHD" is way off base

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 03:36:00 GMT

An NIH funded study published last week in the Lancet revealed that five major mental health disorders- ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia- share genetic roots. The authors state that their findings blur diagnostic categories. They write:These results provide...

What is psychoanalysis?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:29:00 GMT

Five days a week on the couch may be a rarity, but in our quick-fix culture, where we are more inclined to "manage" behavior than to understand it, psychoanalytic thought is more important than ever. There is an ongoing discussion in...

Preschool ADHD, preterm babies, and T. Berry Brazelton

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 03:36:00 GMT

There are two important studies published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. First, the PATS (preschool attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder treatment study) showed that at 6 year follow-up the treatment, consisting...

ADHD treatment gone wrong: when prescriptions replace listening

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:20:00 GMT

Now that the letters to the editor in response to the New York Times article Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions have been published, I am going to take advantage of this blog to publish mine. There is one glaring...

Is ADHD a real disorder? Part 2

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:52:00 GMT

A number of people commented that my previous post seemed unfinished in that I did not offer an alternative approach. This is a valid point, and in part due to the fact that my household has been under siege by...

Is ADHD a real disorder?

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:22:00 GMT

I have deliberately given this post a provocative title to offer a counter weight to the outpouring of news covering the California study demonstrating a close to 25% increase in ADHD diagnosis from 2001 to 2010. I will say at the...

Hope for mothers and babies at Boston's State House

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:17:00 GMT

Attending a meeting of Representative Ellen Story's Postpartum Depression Commission is always an uplifting experience. Talented, motivated, creative and hardworking people from a wide range of disciplines gather to figure out how to best address this significant public health problem. There...

Towards a new (or return to an old) paradigm of finding meaning

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:58:00 GMT

I am fortunate that my father is my greatest fan, although, perhaps because his original language was German, it has taken me years of patient listening and translation to recognize this fact. Recently, after receiving a biography of Charles Darwin...

Adam Lanza and preventive mental health care

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 18:45:00 GMT

In keeping with my wish for continued meaningful dialogue in the wake of last week’s horrific events, I would like to expand upon what I mean by "preventive mental health care." I am referring to relationship-based care that focuses...

Gun control and preventive mental health care to honor the lost children of Newtown

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:32:00 GMT

For the families who lost children, their world as they knew it has effectively ended. Yet somehow the sun rises again and the next day is here. For the rest of us grieving along with these families, the only way...

Where is the media coverage of the DSM V vote?

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 03:30:00 GMT

Last Sunday I awoke to a news story in our local paper, The Berkshire Eagle, about the vote by the American Psychiatric Association the previous day approving massive revisions for DSMV, the newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual...

A relational view of DSM V: a care-rationing document?

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 19:33:00 GMT

Because DSM V, the newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical manual, sometimes referred to as the "bible of psychiatry" set to come out in May 2013, makes no mention of relationships, the relational perspective is that it is a...

Yale lab calls babies bigots- a worrisome interpretation

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 19:00:00 GMT

A CBS 60 minutes segment: Born good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality is getting a lot of attention. The opening observation that babies are in fact not blobs is certainly apt. Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton has been telling...