Psychiatric Times Vol 15 No 3

Nothing is sacred in America's pop culture. So when it embraces any topic, we've grown used to the relentless distortion that occurs, one that transforms reality into an odd combination of fact and fantasy.

PTSD - Poetry of the Times

In the two years since receiving a $1.5 million private grant from William and Joy Ruane to study the effects of psychiatric medications in children and adolescents, the division of child psychiatry at New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI)-the nation's oldest psychiatric research facility-has opened a pediatric psychopharmacology research unit and established a federally supported research unit in pediatric psychopharmacology (RUPP), one of the first in the United States.

The program, Strong STARTS (Schools Taking Action to Reach Troubled Students), is a model initiative targeting the growing number of adolescents suffering from untreated emotional disorders that impact academic performance, social achievement and positive lifestyle choices. The program's fall kickoff seminar began with a keynote address by Alvin Poussaint, M.D., clinical professor and faculty associate dean for student affairs at Harvard Medical School, and featured focus sessions and panel discussions by national and local experts.

There is a substantial constituency for alternative medicine. Worldwide, 70% to 90% of all health care "ranges from self-care according to folk principles, to care given in an organized health care system based on an alternative tradition or practice." As many as one-third of all Americans are reported to have some belief in alternative medicine or to be actively using nonmainstream remedies.

All families have such belief systems, which include expectations, values, attitudes-the basic assumptions-that govern family interactions. Because they determine the structure and organization of a family, the traditions they follow, the rules they abide by, and the values they hold, these beliefs shape the kinds of problems a family has and how they go about trying to solve them.

My Bosnian psychiatric colleagues reported to me that there was the usual adolescent stew of identity crisis among them: delinquency, drugs and sex; but also much, much more. I asked the students, "What do you suffer from?" Lack of opportunity was mentioned most often. A few said that they wanted someone to talk with when it all got to be too much. They welcomed the new school-based initiative of the adolescent mental health clinic in Sarajevo.

Although adoption dates back centuries, the issue of whether or not adopted children are at risk for psychological maladjustment remains controversial. That this dispute would occur at all is not surprising, since as recently as 1926 laws which liberalized adoptions in England were faced with a widespread objection that adoption would encourage depraved conduct.

Today, average young adults report sleeping about seven to seven and one-half hours each night. Compare this to sleep patterns in 1910, before the electric lightbulb, the average person slept nine hours each night. This means that today's population sleeps one to two hours less than people did early in the century.

Previous research on the effects of early child care had led to controversy and confusion. The most provocative finding was that when infants were in nonmaternal child care 20 or more hours a week, starting in the first year of life, they were less likely than infants without such experience to form a secure emotional attachment to their mothers.