Dr. Carol's Blog

Value of spending time wisely

Dr.CarolUtay — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:34:16 +0000

http://allianceforbusinessinnovation.org/2010/08/10/time-isnt-money-anymore -time-is-more-important-than-money/> Time isn’t Money Anymore. Time is more Important than Money!

Our society has changed. Students are involved in many activities and parents are over extended. For years we have said time is money but I do think it has changed to time is more important than money. Because of this, tutoring at Total Learning Centers has changed. Students and parents set the schedule that works for them. No longer are they tied into a 4pm Tuesdays and Thursdays schedule. Instead, TLC works with you to make your schedule work.

We want students to be involved in sports, dance, interactions with friends and to make that work we allow students to figure out the schedule that is most effective for them. Nowhere is this more important than with our students working on SAT/ACT prep. I believe this respect for the value of spending time wisely is one reason TLC has been voted best in Pittsburgh two years in a row.

Students Must Learn How to Learn

Dr.CarolUtay — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:37:36 +0000

This is great support to the growing body of evidence that it is most important for students is to learn how to learn. There is so much information available that it is not possible any more to memorize everything we need to know even though we know that a strong memory is part of being an excellent learner. Instead, it is vital we know how to solve problems, pull various bits of knowledge and information together to come to a reasonable conclusion, to learn how to test hypotheses and to learn.

It will be with great interest that we watch these unique medical school admissions and how they do as physicians. What is your thought? I think they will be excellent physicians with a more well rounded background.

Doesn’t it also remind you that it is never too late? If you don’t set your goals in high school OR you change your mind – you can still reach your goals.

http://www.nytimes.com/ The New York Times

. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/nyregion/30medschools.html?_r=2&ref=healt h&pagewanted=print> Reprints

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/nyregion/30medschools.html?_r=2&ref=healt h&pagewanted=print> here or use the “Reprints” tool that appears next to any article. Visit http://www.nytreprints.com/ www.nytreprints.com for samples and additional information. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/nyregion/30medschools.html?_r=2&ref=healt h&pagewanted=print> Order a reprint of this article now.

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July 29, 2010

Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences

By http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/anemona_hartoc ollis/index.html?inline=nyt-per> ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

For generations of pre-med students, three things have been as certain as death and taxes: organic chemistry, physics and the Medical College Admission Test, known by its dread-inducing acronym, the MCAT.

So it came as a total shock to Elizabeth Adler when she discovered, through a singer in her favorite a cappella group at Brown University, that one of the nation’s top http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics /medical_schools/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> medical schools admits a small number of students every year who have skipped all three requirements.

Until then, despite being the daughter of a physician, she said, “I was kind of thinking medical school was not the right track for me.”

Ms. Adler became one of the lucky few in one of the best kept secrets in the cutthroat world of medical school admissions, the Humanities and Medicine Program at the http://www.mssm.edu/ Mount Sinai medical school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The program promises slots to about 35 undergraduates a year if they study humanities or social sciences instead of the traditional pre-medical school curriculum and maintain a 3.5 grade-point average.

For decades, the medical profession has debated whether pre-med courses and admission tests produce doctors who know their alkyl halides but lack the sense of mission and interpersonal skills to become well-rounded, caring, inquisitive healers.

That debate is being rekindled by a study published on Thursday in http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/pages/currenttoc.aspx Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Conducted by the Mount Sinai program’s founder, Dr. Nathan Kase, and the medical school’s dean for medical education, Dr. David Muller, the peer-reviewed study compared outcomes for 85 students in the Humanities and Medicine Program with those of 606 traditionally prepared classmates from the graduating classes of 2004 through 2009, and found that their academic performance in medical school was equivalent.

“There’s no question,” Dr. Kase said. “The default pathway is: Well, how did they do on the MCAT? How did they do on organic chemistry? What was their grade-point average?”

“That excludes a lot of kids,” said Dr. Kase, who founded the Mount Sinai program in 1987 when he was dean of the medical school, and who is now dean emeritus and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology. “But it also diminishes; it makes science into an obstacle rather than something that is an insight into the biology of human disease.”

Whether the study’s findings will inspire other medical schools to change admissions requirements remains to be seen.

Because MCAT scores are used by U.S. News and World Report and others to rank schools, the most competitive ones fear dropping the test, admissions officials said. And at least two recent studies found that MCAT scores were better than grade-point averages at predicting performance in medical school and on the series of licensing exams that medical students and doctors must take.

“You have to have the proper amount of moral courage to say ‘O.K., we’re going to skip over a lot of the huge barriers to a lot of our students,’ ” said Dr. David Battinelli, senior associate dean for education at Hofstra University School of Medicine.

But, Dr. Battinelli added, “Now let’s see how they’re doing 5 and 10 years down the road.” The Mount Sinai study did not answer the question.

There are a few other schools in the United States and Canada that admit students without MCAT scores, but Mount Sinai appears to have gone furthest in eschewing traditional science preparation, said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the medical school accrediting agency.

The students apply in their sophomore or junior years in college and agree to major in humanities or social science, rather than the hard sciences. If they are admitted, they are required to take only basic biology and chemistry, at a level many students accomplish through Advanced Placement courses in high school.

They forgo organic chemistry, physics and calculus – though they get abbreviated organic chemistry and physics courses during a summer boot camp run by Mount Sinai. They are exempt from the MCAT. Instead, they are admitted into the program based on their high school SAT scores, two personal essays, their high school and early college grades and interviews.

The study found that, by some measures, the humanities students made more sensitive doctors: they were more than twice as likely to train as http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics /psychiatry_and_psychiatrists/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> psychiatrists (14 percent compared with 5.6 percent of their classmates) and somewhat more likely – though less so than Dr. Kase had expected – to go into primary care fields, like http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics /pediatrics/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology (49 percent compared with 39 percent). Conversely, they avoid some fields, like surgical subspecialties and anesthesiology.

But what surprised the authors the most, they said, was that humanities students were significantly more likely than their peers to devote a year to scholarly research (28 percent compared with 14 percent). They scored lower on Step 1 of the Medical Licensing Examination, taken after the second year of medical school, which generally correlates with scientific knowledge. But over all, they ranked about the same in honors grades and in the percentage in the top quarter of the class.

Humanities students were also more likely to take a leave of absence for personal reasons, which could reflect some ambivalence about their choices, the study authors said.

Typically, 5 percent to 10 percent of the class drops out before getting to medical school. Those students cannot handle the science or they have changed their minds about their intention to be a doctor, said Miki Rifkin, the program director. One who dropped out was http://www.jonathansafranfoer.com/ Jonathan Safran Foer, who became an acclaimed novelist.

Dr. Kase founded the Mount Sinai program shortly after a national report on physician preparation questioned the single-minded focus on hard science.

He began with a few students from five colleges and universities that did not have their own medical schools – Amherst, Brandeis, Princeton, Wesleyan and Williams – because, he said, “we did not want to poach.”

It has been going full tilt for the past 10 years, and received nearly 300 applications last year from more than 80 colleges across the country, though admissions heavily favor elite schools.

Among undergraduates accepted in 2009, the mean SAT math and verbal score was 1444, and the mean freshman G.P.A. was 3.74. About a third of the class had at least one parent who was a physician; among all medical schools, about one in five has a parent who is a doctor.

Among the current crop is Ms. Adler, 21, a senior at Brown studying global political economy and majoring in development studies.

Ms. Adler said she was inspired by her freshman study abroad in Africa. “I didn’t want to waste a class on physics, or waste a class on orgo,” she said. “The social determinants of health are so much more pervasive than the immediate biology of it.”

She added that her parents, however, were “thrilled when I decided to go the M.D. route, because they were worried about my job security.”

A classmate in the program, Kathryn Friedman, 21, graduated from the Chapin School in New York City, before going to Williams, where she is a senior, majoring in political science. Her mother and uncle are doctors at Mount Sinai; her father, Robert Friedman, who works in the entertainment business, is on the Mount Sinai Medical Center board.

The humanities program has allowed her to pursue other interests, like playing varsity tennis and going abroad, she said. When her pre-med classmates hear about the program, she said, “a lot of them are jealous.”

She added, “They are, like, ‘Wow, I wish I had known about that.’ ”

3 Ways to Prevent ADHD Dropouts

Dr.CarolUtay — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:57:00 +0000

Three Ways to Help Prevent those with ADHD from Dropping Out

This story highlights the need for interventions for students with ADHD – all types. The American Academy of Pediatrics came out clearly recommending three ways to help people with all types of ADHD: behavioral counseling CBT (including mindfulness), medication, and training. Rather than just hoping it will get better and go away, we need to intervene. Mindfulness is a simple concept and with intense practice it allows someone to begin to control the focus of their attention. Practicing the five types of attention including focused attention (increasing amount of focus) and divided attention (requiring paying attention to two different stimuli while ignoring background information) can make a difference. Medication may not be right for everyone but we recommend doing what we can to improve the symptoms of ADHD. As I look back on this paragraph, I do not know if it conveys the intensity of need for choosing interventions over wait and see. People with ADHD have many skills and interventions can help them realize their strengths. I encourage you to investigate research-proven interventions.

Orlando Sentinel

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/health/2010/07/27/teens-with-adhd-more-lik ely-to-drop-out-of-school-than-troublemakers/> Teens with ADHD more likely to drop out of school than troublemakers http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/health/category/uncategorized/ Uncategorized – posted by linda shrieves on July, 27 2010 4:48 PM

Teens with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – the most common childhood psychiatric condition in the United States – are less likely to finish high school on time than students with other mental-health disorders that often are considered more serious, according to a national study.

The study, conducted by researchers at the UC Davis School of Medicine, found that nearly one third of students with ADHD, twice the proportion as students with no psychiatric disorder, either drop out or delay high school graduation.

There are three types of ADHD: the hyperactive type, the inattentive type and the combined type. Symptoms include not being able to pay attention, daydreaming, being easily distracted and being in constant motion or unable to remain seated.

“Most people think that the student who is acting out, who is lying and stealing, is most likely to drop out of school. But we found that students with the combined type of ADHD – the most common type – have a higher likelihood of dropping out than students with disciplinary problems,” said Julie Schweitzer, an expert on ADHD at the UC Davis MIND Institute, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the study’s senior author. “This study shows that ADHD is a serious disorder that affects a child’s ability to be successful in school and subsequently in a way that can limit success in life.”

Published online in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the study found that 32.3 percent of students with the combined type of ADHD – which incorporates hyperactive and inattentive symptoms – drop out of high school. Fifteen percent of teens with no psychiatric disorder drop out.

The study also found that among students who engage in substance use, including alcohol and other drugs, teens who smoke cigarettes are at greatest risk of dropping out.

In 2006 an estimated 4.5 million children in the United States between 5 and 17 years of age were diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 9.5 percent of boys and 5.9 percent of girls are diagnosed with the condition.

The next most at-risk teens are students with conduct disorder, whose symptoms include aggression, lying, stealing, truancy, vandalism and a general pattern of rule-breaking. Thirty-one percent of students with conduct disorder drop out, said Joshua Breslau, associate professor of internal medicine and the study’s lead author. Breslau said the research shows there are different pathways to poor high school performance.

“Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder impacts achievement because it affects how well students are able to perform basic classroom tasks from paying attention to turning in their homework,” said Breslau. “Students with conduct disorder are able to do just as well as everyone else academically, but disciplinary issues and dealing with the routines of school life may cause them to drop out.”

Diet to Help ADHD

Dr.CarolUtay — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:18:41 +0000

New study connecting diet to ADHD: “We found a diet high in the Western pattern of foods was associated with more than double the risk of having an ADHD diagnosis compared with a diet low in the Western pattern.” And yet another reason to add Omega 3 to our and our children’s’ diets and cut down the junk food!

Science News

Western Diet Link to ADHD, Australian Study Finds

Science Daily (July 29, 2010) – A new study from Perth’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research shows an association between ADHD and a ‘Western-style’ diet in adolescents.

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Exciting Research with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Dr.CarolUtay — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:39:13 +0000

This is an exciting time for the research with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. We are beginning to understand where and why AND what to do about it. We are having great success with helping students learn control over their attention.

Enjoy the article – I am interested in what you think.

Dr. Carol

What’s the Real Deficit in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder?

By Brenda Patoine

BRIEFING PAPER

Ann Whitman

Despite its moniker, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) might be better considered as a problem in the willful control of attention as opposed to a pure deficit in the ability to pay attention. That distinction, supported by a growing body of neuroscientific evidence aimed at rooting out the core physical basis of ADHD, is often lost on the lay public, including the parents and teachers who deal with the effects of the disorder in the home and classroom.

Parents of children with ADHD, for example, may find it hard to fathom that a child who can spend hours engrossed in a video game has a problem with attention. Teachers may be confounded by a student who is fully engaged in a music lesson but is distracted or disruptive in other classwork.

Martha Bridge Denckla, M.D., a clinician and scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins University, says she faces these kinds of questions regularly from parents who bring their children to the ADHD clinic where she practices. “I am constantly having to explain to parents that ADHD is not a deficit in the sense of say, a budget deficit or a thyroid deficiency, where you don’t have enough of something. Rather, it’s the control over attention.”

Denckla, who is a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, has found it useful to speak in terms of the allocation of attention when communicating with parents about ADHD, particularly those who argue that their child is, if anything, excessively attentive when it comes to something that they really enjoy, like playing a video game. The question, Denckla says, is: “Where is the child’s attention being allocated? Is it where it needs to be to meet the demands of home, school, and society?”

Allocating one’s attention appropriately for success in school requires a degree of willful control-what might be thought of as will power-to turn away from a preferred activity and focus on an activity that may not be as compelling or immediately rewarding.

This concept of attention allocation as it relates to ADHD is not new. Dana Alliance member Judy Rapoport, M.D., chief of child psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health, points out that a decades-long literature in the field of experimental psychology has used the term as a basis for understanding attention generally. But linking attention allocation as a behavioral construct to a specific locus or network in the brain is another matter entirely.

“One can talk about allocation of attention at the behavioral level, and we know what we are communicating, but for me, understanding attention requires linking behavior to brain,” says Dana Alliance member Michael Posner, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of Oregon and a leading expert on the neural pathways underlying attention. “It doesn’t look like the brain has an ‘attention allocation’ network; that’s just not how the brain organizes attention.”

The Neural Networks of Attention

At the brain level, attention is not a unitary construct-you cannot point to a specific locus on a brain scan and say this is where attention is located. Scientists have identified at least three major components of attention that are served by discrete but integrally connected neural networks. The “alerting network” handles initial arousal to some sensory stimuli in the environment that signals the brain to pay attention-akin to a warning system. The “orienting network” enables the brain to attend quickly to the source of the incoming stimuli. These two networks involve both cortical and subcortical parts of the brain, and are not unique to humans.

The third network, often called executive attention, enables the individual to decide which things to attend to among competing brain activity. It connects to areas of the brain associated with higher-level cognitive processes and serves as a kind of command and control center for the brain’s attentional resources. Centered in the brain’s prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, the executive attention network is activated when performing tasks that require attention to one thing in the face of conflicting choices (homework vs. video game, for example), or when a nonhabitual response is involved. It is the system involved in the conscious control of attention, a cognitive function variously termed “effortful control” or “self-regulation.”

An inability or reduced ability to exercise willful control over the brain’s more primitive basic attentional resources is one of the leading theories about what goes wrong in ADHD. “It’s not that children with ADHD somehow don’t have the same amount of attention floating around in the brain,” says Philip Shaw, Ph. D., a scientist who studies ADHD at the National Institute of Mental Health. “A child who is not staying on task in school could be paying attention to what’s going on outside the classroom. So it’s not that they are not doing something that is attention-demanding; it’s just that their focus is on something other than what they’re meant to be doing.” From that perspective, he says, thinking about ADHD as a problem with the allocation of attentional resources makes sense.

The ability to self-regulate one’s attention relies heavily on the ability to consciously inhibit what might be a habitual or more immediately rewarding response and choose another that is more socially appropriate to the situation at hand. This concept of “response inhibition” is in fact widely recognized as one of the core deficits in ADHD, says Shaw, and is especially relevant to understanding the impulsive behavior that is a hallmark of ADHD.

Theories Abound on the Causes of ADHD

A failure of response inhibition, however, is by no means the only theory about what goes wrong in ADHD. Various other hypotheses have emerged recently in the ADHD literature, Shaw says. One theory holds that the disorder is primarily a problem with working memory-the ability to hold information in temporary storage long enough to act on it appropriately, while another group of theories centers around how information is processed in time.

“There are lots of psychological tests that show that ADHD kids just don’t get the timing of things quite right,” he says. “This would explain very nicely the impulsivity that is seen in ADHD; where they are not getting the very fine-grained timing of social interactions, for example.” In the classroom, this might manifest as blurting out the answer to a teacher’s query before one is called upon.

Another theory, championed largely by F. Xavier Castellanos, M.D., an ADHD researcher at New York University, postulates that the brain’s “default” or resting state, which is characterized by particular patterns of neural activity, may erroneously be in play during non-resting states in people with ADHD and these patterns interfere with normal information processing.

Each of these theories offers tantalizing clues about what might be going wrong in the brains of children with ADHD, but they do not answer all of the questions. “Our present state of knowledge is that there is no one core psychological deficit that we’ve been able to identify as yet that is at the heart of ADHD,” says Shaw. Part of the problem, he and other experts say, is that there is so much individual variability in the symptoms and behavioral manifestations of what is broadly labeled as ADHD. “As with other psychological disorders, there is no brain, blood, or psychological test that definitively identifies ADHD. We just don’t know what the core deficit is.”

Childhood Bullying

Dr.CarolUtay — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:39:57 +0000

New research explains why some children react so much more significantly to bullying than others. It is imperative that we intervene and stop the bullying. Programs that teach students how to deal with bullying are important but stopping bullying is even more important.

Gene Causes Victims of Childhood Bullying Suffer Aftermath Through Emotional Problems

by Rathi Manohar on July 25, 2010 at 11:46 AM

Child Health New

Description: Gene Causes Victims of Childhood Bullying Suffer Aftermath Through Emotional Problems

Besides the immediate physical and http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> emotional distress that child victims of http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> bullying face, researchers state that a http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> genetic variation could cause the development of emotional problems later on.

Not all children who are bullied go on to develop such problems.

In the study conducted by Dr. Sugden and colleagues from Duke University and Kings College London, results showed that genetic differences in the 5-HTTLPR http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> genes interact with bullying victimization to exacerbate emotional problems.

Second, the http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> gene and environment interaction was strongest for frequently bullied children.

In the article, Sudgen and colleagues state, “This genetic moderation persists after controlling for children’s pre-victimization emotional problems and for other risk factors shared by children growing up within the same http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> family environment.”

The study is reported in the August 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> Adolescent Psychiatry

http://www.medindia.net/news/Gene-Causes-Victims-of-Childhood-Bullying-Suff er-Aftermath-Through-Emotional-Problems-71813-1.htm?utm_source=feedburner&ut m_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allhealthnews+%28Medindia+Health+News%29& utm_content=Twitte> Description: http://kona.kontera.com/javascript/lib/imgs/grey_loader.gif

(JAACAP).

There may be more to dyslexia than trouble with reading.

Dr.CarolUtay — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:10:54 +0000

Check out this study published in the journal Neuron.

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=153030#.TwXXoE jQhfw.email

Marcie Hoffman

Education Coordinator

Total Learning Centers

724-940-1090

Does Homework Really Affect Grades?

Dr.CarolUtay — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:52:48 +0000

Is homework affecting grades? According to neuropsychologist Dr. Dana Luck a student with an executive functioning disorder will have a tough time in school. They often seem disorganized. Homework, books, even personal items make it home some and not other nights. Even more frustrating is the nights they get all homework home but don’t get it back to school and turned in at the right time to the right class. That is often extremely difficult for the student with executive functioning issues.

Long term projects – those projects that are not due for three or four weeks can be the biggest challenges. Often just deciding on a topic seems like a huge stumbling block to the student. Once their topic is chosen, establishing a time frame to get all the pieces taken care of and actually completing them within the right time frame can be overwhelming.

Often students with executive functioning disorders have difficulties with all aspects of timing, figuring out how long something might take, getting starting, and following through in the right order. Initiation or just getting started can be a part of the problem. Part of the reason students have difficulty with initiation is they do not know where to start. Teachers and parents can view this as lazy and procrastination rather than a challenge with managing time. These tasks however seem so overwhelming and unmanageable students don’t even know where to begin.

When students find ordinary tasks take great effort it takes a toll on them. They can become irritable, hyperactive, forgetful, and fatigued. They learn to give up before they begin.

As homework is almost always a hot subject, students with executive functioning disorder should learn that setting up the homework is just as important as doing the work. Ten minutes in planning is time well invested to make it go more smoothly.

Mental Disorder Management

Dr.CarolUtay — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:37:34 +0000

Did you know that most mental disorders start before age 14? It makes it even more important to help our students as soon as any symptoms are shown. The following are valuable tips from Victoria Costello. She is a great author and has many good articles out there. This one was on the Psychology Today website, December 2011.

So what can we do to be proactive about mental illness?

1. Create a “tree” of your family mental health history going back three generations, and record all known or suspected mental disorders and addictions. If relatives baulk at your digging into the past, point out that it’s for the safety of your children, and future grandchildren. Use the https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/fhh-web/familyHistory/familyHistory.action US Surgeon General’s online form for recording and storing your family mental health (and medical) history. It may be scary to see everything laid out but remember there is often a genetic link for addictions and mental disorders.

2. Learn about environmental agents that may cause miscarriages, birth defects or developmental problems later in http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/child-development childhood. The source may be a disease such as chickenpox, a prescription drug, or a household chemical.

3. Treat Yourself First. Think of your actions as an act of prevention for your child’s mental health. Recent research from Columbia University demonstrated that by treating a mother for depression her depressed or anxious child’s symptoms dramatically improved—without direct treatment!

4. Monitor your Child’s Behavior for Early Symptoms Most adult mental disorders start before the age of fourteen. If there is a high density of any single mental illness among your relatives, learn about its early signs; for example, social withdrawal for depression, or extreme http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/anger anger and aggression for conduct disorder, which can predict adolescent psychosis. Bring a child for a mental health evaluation as soon as symptoms linger for a month or more. Especially if there’s a family mental health history of depression, or a possible http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/suicide suicide, use any means necessary to stop your teenager’s use of http://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/cannabismarijuana marijuana, as it can trigger psychosis.

5. Talk About Thoughts and Feelings – As soon as your child begins to recognize her own thoughts and feelings and those of others, start an age-appropriate conversation about how emotions and minds work. Compare the spectrum of possible feelings and thoughts to the colors of a rainbow. This “normalization” of differences makes it more likely that your child will confide any future psychological problems to you and be less inclined to stigmatize others.

6. Have Zero Tolerance towards http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bullying Bullying – Bullying of any kind is not okay. Sometimes children say they can handle it but really they are embarrassed. Remember that the abuse is much worse than embarrassment. Most schools have bullying policies. There are even laws against harassment. Stop the bullying!

7. Make http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/self-esteem Self Esteem a Priority – Remember this does not mean just saying nice things. It means finding strengths in your child. Consider renewing a commitment to family dinners; give everyone a role, which will help teach http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/teamwork teamwork.

http://alethalinheritance.com/about-the-book/ A Lethal Inheritance, A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Decades of Mental Illness,

Psychology Today

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche/201112/getting-happy http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche/201112/getting-happy

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche Awakening Psyche

Integrating body, mind and spirit in our collective consciousness.

by Victoria Costello

Getting to Happy

Leading psychology researchers offer tips for mental wellness.

Published on December 2, 2011 by http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/victoria-costello Victoria Costello in http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche Awakening Psyche

Training peers improves social outcomes for some kids with ASD

Dr.CarolUtay — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:09:21 +0000

NIH-funded study finds engaging peers in social skills intervention may be more helpful than training children with ASD directly…read more here:

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/nov2011/nimh-28.htm