CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health articles from September 2005

CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health archives from September 2005

Note from the editor.
September 22, 2005... Patient/client-centred care has become an espoused rule for 21st-century health care. But this philosophy is sometimes honoured more in rhetoric than in practice. Patient/client-centred care is not simply providing care that the service...

A view from CAMH.(National Committee for Mental Hygiene)
September 22, 2005... One hundred years ago, a young man named Clifford Beers decided to recount for public consumption his harrowing experience of both psychiatric illness and psychiatric treatment. His gripping book, A Mind That Found Itself, was published in 1908...

Training partnership sets global health example.(profile)
September 22, 2005... The mental health and addiction training experience of a Canadian-Chilean partnership between the Office of International Health (OIH) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto and the Municipality of Puente Alto, Chile,...

New study examines risk factors for child sexual offences.(news)
September 22, 2005... What's the tipping point? In the past decade, the Internet has become an anonymous smorgasbord of child pornography for those who would feed such proclivities. The crucial issue is whether consumption of child porn triggers actual sexual...

When caring hurts: compassion fatigue strikes addiction workers.(news)
September 22, 2005... Leigh MacEwan knew something was wrong. "My soul felt weary," she recalls of the time in the early 1990s when she worked as an addiction counsellor at Lakeside Centre, part of the Northern Regional Recovery Continuum in Sudbury, Ontario, which...

Pain medication addiction more likely among young people.(research update)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2005... Young people are more likely than older people to want to rapidly increase their dosage of opioid-based medications such as morphine, methadone and oxycodone, thus raising risk of abuse, according to research from the University of California,...

Excessive Internet use linked with psychiatric disorders.(research)
September 22, 2005... Young people who use the Internet excessively experience more psychiatric symptoms than those who access it less often, according to researchers at Korea's Dong-A University College and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts....

Medication adherence linked to good therapeutic relationships.(research update)
September 22, 2005... Good relationships with clinicians during admission to acute treatment may improve attitudes toward and adherence to anti-psychotic medication, according to UK researchers. The study examined various factors that may influence medication...

Alcohol use during pregnancy ups infant infection risk.(research update)
September 22, 2005... Children born to mothers who drink during pregnancy are more likely to contract infections as newborns, according to a study at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Researchers examined data from 872 women who delivered single infants at 36...

Friendships help us live longer.(research update)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2005... Strong friendships may lead to longer life, according to researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Researchers used data from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing, which assesses how economic, social, behavioural and...

Antipsychotic drugs show quick effect.(research update)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2005... Antipsychotic medications begin to reduce psychosis within the first 24 hours of treatment, suggests research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and University of Toronto. In this multi-centre double-blind study, 311 individuals...

Successful anti-stigma campaigns target violence stereotype.(research update)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2005... Campaigns aimed at reducing stigma and discrimination toward people with schizophrenia would be most effective if they addressed perceptions of unpredictability and dangerousness, according to researchers at the University of Leipzig in...

Gambling and substance use issues share personality traits.(research update)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2005... Rebelliousness, anger and risk-taking are personality traits shared by compulsive gamblers and people with substance use issues, according to researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Researchers performed personality assessments on...

The triple whammy of acquired brain injury and concurrent disorders.(news)
September 22, 2005... Karl* is an artistic man who loves the Beatles and vintage clothing. He also has a substance use problem and a mood disorder, and has had three brain injuries. The first two, from beatings, left him with memory and concentration problems. As a...

Psycho, patient, person: perspectives on being labelled mentally ill.(focus)
September 22, 2005... Three writers were assigned the task of providing their perspective on the term "consumer/survivor." So cliche to say what's in a name. If you get to call me Helen and I have to call you Dr. Hook, there's a built-in power imbalance. That's...

Between two worlds: my prescription for culturally competent care.(focus)
September 22, 2005... I IMMIGRATED TO TORONTO IN 1974 FROM HONG KONG. I had studied in the United States, but I wasn't used to Western culture and my English was far from perfect. As a result of friction with my ex-husband and my parents, I was admitted to a...

Beyond therapeutic models: do therapists know what clients really want?(focus)
September 22, 2005... IF IT IS TRUE THAT "LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHILE you're busy making other plans" as John Lennon said, then it might also be true that therapy is what happens while the therapist is busy following various therapeutic models. According...

Common questions about intimate relationships and people with mental health issues.(q & a)(Interview)
September 22, 2005... This Q&A is based on an interview with Dr. Janos Botschner, chief researcher with the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), Waterloo Regional Branch and Wellington-Dufferin Branch in Ontario. Botschner is involved with the People Acquiring...

Homework in psychotherapy: creative ways for getting it done.
September 22, 2005... Homework (by any name) is still homework and is an integral part of psychotherapy. In this day of evidence-based care, time-limited, manualized therapies are popular. Typical treatment manuals are disorder-specific and include a section on...

Your story, my story, our stories.(downloaded)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2005... The Internet has opened up opportunities for people affected by addiction and mental health issues to share experiences and have a presence, a voice and sometimes even a face. Many health consumer organizations make personal narratives a part...

Ontario doesn't need a treatment advocate--we already have them.(the last word)
September 22, 2005... It is encouraging to see discussion regarding advocacy in the mental health system in Ontario and the recognition that it is an essential and integral component of care and treatment. Unfortunately, Dr. Richard O'Reilly's column in the summer...

Conferences.(Calendar)
September 22, 2005... CANADA Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention Annual Conference: "Out of the Darkness--Shining the Light Toward a National Suicide Prevention Strategy" October 16-19, Ottawa, Ontario Contact: DR Dunlop & Associates, 128 Powell...

Social class and religion.
September 22, 2005... This issue of CrossCurrents' focus on social class and religion is one that is overdue and difficult. This focus is overdue because we have too little comprehension of how and why religion and social class overlap, compete, or support one...

Class on Sunday.
September 22, 2005... Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls... (Luke 11: 17, RSV). Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, and it is still true, that 11:00 A.M. on Sunday is the most racially segregated hour of the...

Class, political conservatism and Jesus.
September 22, 2005... The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. (LK. 4:18). Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your...

Paul's confrontation with class: the letter to Philemon as counter-hegemonic discourse.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2005... The claim that the Pauline letters have been most useful to systems of domination and oppression, is clear, well documented and has garnered proficient and erudite response. (1) The cultural currency of the Letter to Philemon in that regard has...

The impact of the American Dream on evangelical ethics.
September 22, 2005... The Subscriber Report produced in 1999 by Christianity Today, a popular evangelical publication, describes "the typical CHRISTIANITY TODAY subscriber" as a "54 year old married man with a post graduate degree. He works full-time in a...

Building the new freedom church of the poor.
September 22, 2005... People in the United States have recently started to talk in terms of "class" again because of the polarization between rich and poor and the rise of poverty. (1) Poor people are harbingers of what middle-income people are increasingly...

The room where I work is a class-room.
September 22, 2005... When I walk into the room where I work I know it is a class-room. I know by how it looks. There are individual chairs for the students, lined up facing the front where there is a desk with a different kind of chair and a black board. What I am...

Fundamentalism: a theory.
September 22, 2005... The Problem of a Theory of Fundamentalism The term, fundamentalism, initially described a trans-denominational movement among conservative Protestant Christian groups in the United States which, in the first part of the twentieth century,...

All nations before God's throne: evangelicals in the interfaith world.
September 22, 2005... On May 16th, 2005, the 3rd National Conference on Interfaith Youth Work convened in the Cortelyou Commons of DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. The day began casually with participants from a variety of interfaith organizations and...

Just a closer walk with thee.(Lake Pontchartrain)
September 22, 2005... Through this world of toil and snares, If I falter, Lord, who cares? Who with me my burden shares? None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee. --"Just a Closer Walk with Thee" New Orleans funeral dirge The...

The devil made me do it.(The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Sam Harris The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason W.W. Norton, 2004. 336pp. $24.95 (cloth) With Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" raging away ever more apocalyptically, it's no surprise that...