________________________________________________________________ VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 THE INTERPSYCH NEWSLETTER NOV, 1994 ________________________________________________________________ SECTION F: ANNOUNCEMENTS ********* * INDEX * ********* 1: STUDY OF MALE SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVORS 2: NIMH STUDY ON BORDERLINE PERSONALITY 3: EUROPEAN MULTICENTRE EPIDEMIOLOGY STUDY 4: MENTAL HEALTH VIDEOS IN HEALTH CENTRES 5: US HUD FORUM 6: ESSAY CONTEST 7: STUDIES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Dr. Yves Chesni 8: CENTER FOR THE EVALUATIVE CLINICAL SCIENCES AT DARTMOUTH MEDICAL SCHOOL 9: CALL FOR PAPERS:THE JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH ADMINISTRATION 10: CALL FOR PAPERS: CLINICAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY 11: MEMBERSHIP TO ADVANCED FEMINIST THERAPY INSTITUTE ************************************************************* 1: STUDY OF MALE SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVORS ************************************************************* I am currently conducting a study of male sexual abuse survivors. The research proposes to discover how adult male survivors understand their experience. There will be several rounds of questions given to each subject after initial demographic questions are answered. The actual topics and questions to be discussed cannot be revealed at this time. If you are interested in participating or finding out more information about the study, please contact me (Mark R. Halcomb) at (holcomb@holonet.net). ************************************************************* 2: NIMH STUDY ON BORDERLINE PERSONALITY ************************************************************* The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is accepting women with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder who are in treatment with a mental health professional and who are between the ages of 18 and 45 for a two week, inpatient, clinical research study of this disorder. For admission criteria, a description of the medication- free evaluation study at St. Elizabeth's in Washington, D.C., and application materials, call Kathleen O'Leary, M.S.W. at 202/373-6068 or send e-mail inquiries to Eric Watsky, M.D. at watskye@dirpc.nimh.nih.gov (not to psycho-pharm@netcom.com) ************************************************************* 3: EUROPEAN MULTICENTRE EPIDEMIOLOGY STUDY ************************************************************* We are planning to start an European multicentre epidemiological study on the impact of the current political, economic, and social changes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe upon general psychological health, minor psychiatric morbidity and the prevalence of culture-change syndromes, and on cross-cultural aspects of eating disorders. At present, centres from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Georgia and Austria are cooperating. Any other participants from Eastern, Central and Western Europe are welcome to join. For further information please contact the study co-ordinator: Dr. Guenther Rathner, Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria. Fax +43-512-504 3444. E-mail: Guenther.Rathner@uibk.ac.at ************************************************************* 4: MENTAL HEALTH VIDEOS IN HEALTH CENTRES ************************************************************* My colleagues and I are interested in using short video-tapes, played in waiting rooms in a community health centre, as a means of identifying people with mental health problems. We intend to focus on depression, addictions and anxiety in a pilot study. We hypothesize that videos, featuring actors in a mini-soap setting, will help people recognize mental health problems, and will serve as a non-threatening conduit for self-referral to a community-based support team. We would appreciate any information from list members regarding either the use of video-tapes featuring mental health issues, in a family health centre/community health centre; or any similar approaches to identifying and 'enrolling' people in a primary-care based support service. Phil Barker RN PhD, Professor of Psychiatric Nursing Practice, Department of Psychiatry, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 4LP, UK, (+44)091 232 5131 EXT 24473 ************************************************************* 5: US HUD FORUM ************************************************************* On December 1-2, 1994, the US Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is convening the first National Consumer Forum on Section 202 and Section 811 housing programs for persons who are elderly or disabled. HUD is interested in receiving input from residents and eligible (both current and previous) participants of the above federal housing programs. HUD is seeking recommendations for changes in the programs so that housing needs are better addressed. Some areas for dialogue may include: ** Segregation (elderly and disabled residents) ** "Linking" services with housing ** Set-asides If there are issues which you would like to see addressed at the forum or have comments on the above topics, please contact: Laura V Tosh, 703 739 9333 x31, or at NASMHPD, 66 Canal Center Plaza 302, Alexandria VA 22314, or c/o 773374.1051@compuserve.com by Monday, November 28, 1994 ************************************************************* 6: ESSAY CONTEST ************************************************************* The ASCAP Society is sponsoring a competition for residents and fellows in psychiatry and related fields, and for graduate students in psychology, biology, anthropology and related academic disciplines, and for recent graduates of such programs (within seven years of terminal degree). Our award, The Aaron T Beck ASCAP Award, will be given for the best previously unpublished paper related to the subjects of evolutionary biology and psychopathology. The ASCAP Society is an international group of clinicians and academics who are linked by a common interest in evolutionary biology and how this perspective might inform our work and research (ASCAP refers to Across-Species Comparisons and Psychopathology). One of our members, Dr Beck, whom we are honoring with this award, suggested that we focus on how an evolutionary approach can be used to integrate various levels of understanding and thereby generate new or broadened perspectives in psychopathology. There are many possible topics including, to name a few, comparative psychology and psychiatric illness, comparative brain anatomy and behavior, relations of attachment processes and social rank hierarchy, psychiatric drugs as probes of system function, psychotherapy from an evolutionary perspective, and contemporary evolutionary theory and psychoanalysis. The Aaron T Beck ASCAP Award will be presented at our annual meeting in Santa Barbara, California, on June 27, 1995. The award carries with it a cash prize of $1000 (to support trip expenses). Our meeting will be held the day before the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara. We take this opportunity to submit an essay yourself if qualified and to notify residents, graduate students, fellows, and recent graduates of your department about this competition. Please post a printout of this as a notice. All participants should send three copies of their paper to: Mark Erickson, M.D. -- ASCAP Beck Award c/o Russell Gardner, Jr., M.D., Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 4.450 Graves Building (D28), University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555-0428. The postmark deadline for entries will be March 31, 1995. Do not hesitate to call (409-772-7029) or make e-mail requests (rgardner@utmb.edu) for further information about the ASCAP Beck Award or the ASCAP Society. ************************************************************* 7: STUDIES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Dr. Yves Chesni ************************************************************* STUDIES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Dr. Yves Chesni, former director of the Service Medico-Pedagogique (Geneva, Switzerland), Vice President, International Stress Management Association, and member, New York Academy of Sciences, has been translated from the French and is now available in English. Preface to the American Edition In the five conferences here reproduced, the author has treated some selected points in the development of consciousness, with special emphasis on the perspectives of critical philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, and spirituality. The first conference situates the study of consciousness. Contrary to Descartes and Husserl, the realist philosopher does not cast doubt on the existence of the world, other people, his own body, and a large part of his own consciousness. Contrary to Kant, he does not believe that he is separated from things by his own sensorial and intellectual structures. Like Aristotle, he sees in knowledge the common act of a subject capable of knowing and an object capable of being known, but for all that he does not despair of his ability to determine the respective parts played by each of the two factors. Contrary to physiological reductionism, he does not pretend to understand a system that is endowed with consciousness and yet abstracts from consciousness. Contrary to the absurdity of solipsism, he infers a consciousness more or less analogous to his own among his peers and a number of other animal species. In consciousness he perceives simultaneously a sign, a consequence, and a factor of differentiation and correlation, a higher form of unity requiring, respecting, and promoting the originality of the parts. The second and fourth conferences deal with the fetters of neurosis in human development and their suppression, through psychoanalysis--which is a part of "cognitive therapy"--behavioral psychotherapy, or through the one and the other conjointly. These neurotic automatisms, repetitive, unconscious, involuntary and coercive--the contrary of free behavior--result from the unfortunate conjunction of an inadequate environment during infancy and from certain hereditary virtualities, particularly the tendency to react totally to signs isolated from context, as new-born children and instinctual animals do, who still have only minimal intelligence and are adapted by means of innate behaviors served up whole and entire by the evolution of species. While shedding light on their prevention or treatment, the understanding of neurotic mechanisms contributes at the same time to that of normal development: i.e., the growth within us of the power to grasp the whole, to situate the parts in their relationships with each other and in respect to the whole, to be neither blinded nor bound by any of them; the power within us, to put it succinctly, of expanding that inner freedom that penetrates, humanizes, and enlarges our humblest joys. The third conference speaks of spirituality. In every age throughout the entire world, spiritual men and women have desired to wipe out the obstacles, and not only the neurotic ones, to inner freedom: "If you stop at something," St. John of the Cross counsels us, "you fail to push forward towards the All." It is the purgative way that attempts to rid us of all pettiness in order that we might be attuned to the essential, to the All, that we may even, as Christian mystics believe, be rendered "divine by participation." But opinions differ regarding the nature of the All, the place of man within and in respect to the All, and the possibility of knowing the All--which is not the same as knowing all. Thought has a neuro-motor aspect. It disappears, completely or selectively, as the eye and speech muscles relax. This "relaxation of the mind," this putting to rest of the spirit, is, according to Jacobson, the essential element of progressive relaxation. It is not foreign to the technics of spiritual disencumberment, purification, and perfecting at issue in the following chapters. Such is the object of the fifth conference. The book is available from The Live Oak Press, PO Box 60036, Palo Alto, CA 94306, at $37.50. Inquiries to mhamilton@aol.com. ************************************************************* 8: CENTER FOR THE EVALUATIVE CLINICAL SCIENCES AT DARTMOUTH MEDICAL SCHOOL ************************************************************* The Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences (CECS) at Dartmouth Medical School offers master's and doctoral degrees in a program oriented toward mid-career professionals. The Center is directed by Jack Wennberg, whose seminal work in small area variations, claims analysis, and exploration of patient preferences is internationally recognized. The M.S. program's interdisciplinary curriculum is very flexible, and features opportunities for mentored research and practicum work in topical areas. Students take six courses in health policy, medical decision making & health behavior, and medical care epidemiology. After completing these core courses, they either (1) carry out research in areas of their choice, under the guidance of CECS faculty, or (2) enroll in practicums taught by Jack Wennberg and his associates. Remaining requirements are satisfied through electives and directed readings. The readings/research can be done at the student's home base and may involve institutional collaboration between Dartmouth and an employer. One such collaboration this year involved beta testing of medical mapping technology. The master's program structure can accommodate students' professional commitments, to some degree. As little as one Dartmouth term at a time--ten weeks--need be spent in Hanover (i.e., on campus). Only two terms in residence are required. The admissions process involves an application, references, and official transcripts or equivalent. Students may apply any time for the program, but all students begin in mid-September. Applicants are admitted until the class is filled. Late applicants may be placed on a waiting list, if they wish. Detailed information about the program can be obtained by contacting Patricia Read-Hunter, the Coordinator of Educational Programs, by e-mail or telephone. Tel. no. (603) 650 1782; e-mail, patricia.read-hunter@dartmouth.edu. ************************************************************* 9: CALL FOR PAPERS:THE JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH ADMINISTRATION ************************************************************* DEADLINE FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS: FEBRUARY 1, 1995 The Journal of Mental Health Administration (JMHA) is seeking manuscripts on the organization, financing, and delivery of behavioral health services (including mental health, alcohol, and drug abuse services). Specific topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following: Law and Mental Health Policy Comorbidity of Mental Disorders with Substance Disorders Mental Health and Substance Abuse Outcomes Research Children's Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services JMHA also publishes articles on mental health planning, policy analysis, marketing, financing, organizational structure, program evaluation, and the entire spectrum of mental health management and service delivery issues. A detailed "Information for Authors" may be acquired by contacting Carolyn Martinez, Editorial Associate, Internet: cmartine@hal.fmhi.usf.edu; 813/974-6407; or fax: 813/974-4406 Manuscripts should be approximately 15-25 pages in length and contain an abstract preceding the text. Send manuscripts to Bruce Lubotsky Levin, Dr.P.H., Editor, Journal of Mental Health Administration, Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida, 13301 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., Tampa, Florida 33612, or call 813/974-6400; fax: 813/974-4406; Internet: levin@hal.fmhi.usf.edu ************************************************************* 10: CALL FOR PAPERS: CLINICAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY ************************************************************* In 1996 SAGE Publications will be launching Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry - a major, new journal to bring together clinically oriented work of the highest distinction from an international and multi-disciplinary perspective. The journal will be edited by Bryan Lask from Great Ormond Street Hospital, London. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry will provide a high quality forum for papers which focus on clinical and therapeutic aspects of child and adolescent psychology and psychiatry. Contributions should be sent to: Dr Bryan Lask, Department of Psychologal Medicine, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3JH, UK. Contact: Jane Makoff (makoff@sageltd.co.uk). ************************************************************* 11: MEMBERSHIP TO ADVANCED FEMINIST THERAPY INSTITUTE ************************************************************* The next meeting of the Advanced Feminist Therapy Institute is being planned for November, 1995 in Albuquerque, New Mexico (more details as they become available). This is a limited attendance, members only conference. Women who are interested in attending should apply for membership now. Write to Polly Taylor, Administrator, 904 Irving Street, #258, San Francisco, CA 94122 to request a membership application.