Here are some of the best books I have been exposed to this year. Obviously, I cannot read everything, so this is a partial list at best. They are listed in alphabetical order. Descriptive text is from the publisher’s blurb on Amazon. A few of these books warrant the RECOMMENDED READ classification. Adult Attachment Patterns … Read more
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, working in Richard Davidson’s lab, have found that Sudarshan Kriya Yoga can help reduce the symptoms of PTSD and allow them to better manage the condition. The original article is paywalled at the Journal of Traumatic Stress, so here is a summary from the British Psychological Society, followed the … Read more
A recently developed model (late 1990s) for assessing early childhood experience as it relates to adult physical and mental health is the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) assessment (Felitti, et al., 1998; get your score here). The ACE scale identifies ten forms of adverse childhood experience (occurring before the age of 18): (1) verbal and emotional … Read more
From PLoS ONE, this is an interesting article on how emotional numbing in those experiencing PTSD reduces neural activity in exposure to happy faces. This study provides initial evidence that individuals with PTSD have lower reactivity to happy facial expressions, and that lower activation in ventral striatal-limbic reward networks may be associated with symptoms of … Read more
I fully agree with Dr. Stolorow right up until the last couple of sentences, where he invokes Obama as a great leader. Obama has done more to perpetuate the security state than George W Bush – and in him as symbol and embodiment of the American psyche, it is clear we have NOT learned the … Read more
Via Scientific American Mind. Dr. Pace studies biological mechanisms linking psychological stress to illness, and novel ways to combat stress to promote optimal health. He is Assistant Professor in the Colleges of Nursing and Medicine (Department of Psychiatry) at the University of Arizona, and also the director of the Arizona Stress and Health Collaboratory (based … Read more
The two articles below are complimentary in their description of the impact of childhood maltreatment (CM: abuse and/or neglect). The first is only available as an abstract (paywall, of course) and the second comes from Psych Central, a nice resource for lay readers in psychology. Together these articles show the impact of CM on the … Read more
Below is another of the articles from the Epigenetic pathways in PTSD: how traumatic experiences leave their signature on the genome, a research topic collection from Frontiers in Molecular Psychiatry. One of things therapists see often, and survivors of trauma are no doubt aware, is that memories of stressful events seem to be more powerful … Read more
In his early work, when Sigmund Freud still favored the “seduction theory” of neuroses, which was based in suppressed and/or repressed childhood experiences of sexual trauma, Freud often credited Pierre Janet for creating ideas such as dissociation and the subconscious. Freud soon dropped his seduction theory model in favor of an unconscious drives theory (wish … Read more
I don’t like “trigger warnings” in general, but this feels like an exception. This documentary is likely to be triggering to anyone who has been through childhood sexual abuse. Please be aware of your own feelings and avoid this if necessary. This documentary is based in Phoenix, AZ, a couple of hours north of Tucson. … Read more