Psychedelics Can Help Patients Face Death

Psychedelics in Palliative Care: 

How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death

From the New York Times, August 19, 2012

To help address the crippling, intoxicating fear of death, its anxieties and uncertainties, researchers are opening their minds: "a study being conducted by Charles Grob, a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center who was administering psilocybin — an active component of magic mushrooms — to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death. Twenty-two months before she died, Sakuda became one of Grob’s 12 subjects. When the research was completed in 2008 — (and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry last year) — the results showed that administering psilocybin to terminally ill subjects could be done safely while reducing the subjects’ anxiety and depression about their impending deaths."

'Alive Inside' explores the hidden lives of people with dementia and how to unlock them

Alive Inside

Watch this! See how a man nearly incapacitated by dementia is revivified by music.

StoryCorps listens to a Trans couple

“You said that you were in the wrong body, that you should be a man.”

In 1997, Les (L) and Scott (R) GrantSmith’s marriage was on the rocks. They had been together for 10 years and were raising two children. But Les was hiding something.

Read more and listen to the interview here. 

A nice, short piece from the NYT about what contributes to the successes and the complexities of couples counseling. And the challenges it poses to therapists attempting to do it well.

Does Couples Therapy Work?

"WE’VE all had that horrible experience: you throw a party or invite a couple over for dinner, and they start fighting, right there in front of you — the character assassination, the barely controlled anger, the neurotic transference of their cooled sexual attraction onto, say, the hygiene of the family dog, all of which makes you want to fake choking and hide. Surely bearing witness to couples’ quarrels feels less bad to the pros, those credentialed and compensated marriage and family therapists whose job it is to help significant others work through issues and pain?"

By ELIZABETH WEIL

Published: March 2, 2012

Beware: Individual Therapy Can Harm Your Marriage

How a therapist's error led her to better treatment methods.

Published on February 24, 2012 by Susan Heitler, Ph.D. in Resolution, Not Conflict

Psychological Diagnosis: Dangerous, Desirable, or Both?

How do labels hurt and how can they be helpful?

Published on February 3, 2012 by Susan Heitler, Ph.D. in Resolution, Not Conflict

Corporate Psychopaths the root of the Financial Crisis?

Interesting theory on those responsible for Wall Street's crisis.


Intro to the academic journal piece, which can be downloaded here. 


From the Intro: "How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the “relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation,” including “rapid change, constant renewal” and high turnover of “key personnel.” Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of “charm” and “charisma,” which makes “their behaviour invisible” and “makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders.”"


Abstract from the Journal: "This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for."