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Placebo Effects

16 Mar

Researchers at the Universities of Michigan, North Carolina, and Maryland found that placebos used to decrease physical pain have greater benefits for positive than negative people. (Scientific American Mind, 2013, 24, 1, p.9).

Time with Teens

12 Mar

Recent research in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that it isn’t the family dinner per se that helps prevent teen adjustment problems. What does is parents building relationships with their kids at any opportunity, like riding in the car. (Scientific American Mind, 2013, 24, 1, p. 8)

Wall Street Then and Now

9 Mar

Edith Wharton’s “Age of Innocence” (1920) told of a time when “unblemished honesty was the noblesse oblige of old financial New York.” If a financier did harm to clients, even if no law had been broken, he became a social and business outcaste. Oh, how things have changed on Wall Street in the early part of the 21st century!

False Self in Wharton’s “Age of Innocence”

5 Mar

Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence (1920) depicted the false self as manifested by the majority of New York City’s upper crust in the late 19th Century. In this society, as she saw it, the unspoken rule was never to acknowledge unpleasantness and better yet never even to know it was there at all. Devoted to superficial, its denizens experienced that “real loneliness is living among all theses kind people who only ask one to pretend.”                  i

Drama

3 Mar

The Broadway musical “Next to Normal,” music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, played recently in Indy. It was a moving portrayal of a bipolar disorder and its effects on the person with the disorder, her family, and those trying to provide treatment.

Tips: Test Anxiety

28 Feb

To reduce test-taking anxiety, study the material and then practice what you’ll be using on the test itself. Writing about the anxiety shortly before taking the test decreases the fear by facing and expressing it. Before and during the test, use relaxation techniques for calming. (Time, Relax, it’s only a test, 2013, 181, 5, 42-45)

Tips: ADHD

24 Feb

If your child has ADHD, consider that there are behavioral interventions at home and at school that can be helpful. Medication effects can be augmented by these interventions. (Monitor on Psychology, 2013, 44, 2).

Obesity Epidemic

23 Feb

Actually, The American Psychologist (2013, 68, 2) reports a pandemic. In the United States, over two thirds of adults are obese or overweight with the prevalence having doubled since 1980. Other countries are reporting similar upswings and trends are particularly alarming in children.

Teen Substance Abuse

20 Feb

The abuse of prescription drugs, often from the medicine cabinet, is second only to marijuana for adolescents.. (Monitor on Psychology, 2013, 44, 2, p. 18)

Tips to Maximize Focus and Memory

17 Feb

5 tips to maximize focus and memory: 1) Meditate at least 20 minutes a day, 2) Deliberately focus  when paying attention is needed, 3) Resist multi-tasking, 4) Reduce extraneous physical distractions, and 5) Sleep 7 to 8 hours a night. (Mind, Mood & Memory, March 2013, p. 5)

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