The recent mass shootings in our country have raised many questions about what the United States is doing to address untreated mental illness. In an article published by JAMA Psychiatry the past APA president Renee Binder, M.D., and Matthew Hirschtritt, M.D., M.P.H. wrote that the media's focus of blame for mass shootings on individuals with serious mental illness “stigmatizes an already vulnerable and marginalized population, fails to identify individuals at the highest risk for committing violence with firearms, and distracts public attention from policy changes that are most likely to reduce the risk of gun violence.”
Binder and Hirschtritt have summarized several studies that suggest that mental illness not a specific indicator for risk of violence. "The article notes that such studies have found that people with mental illness are three times more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence and only 4% of criminal violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness" (Psychiatric News). The factors other than serious mental illness that contribute to violence risk are: being male, young, being a victim of violence or having a history of perpetrating violence, and unlawful use of firewarms.
Addressing the issue of mass shootings is going to require addressing individual, community-level, state, and national policy factors. Binder and Hirshtritt explain that assisting those with serious mental illness will require an investment of resources and coordination of services including case managers, law enforcement, emergency personnel, and mental health practicioners.
To conclude, we need to counter the perception that mental illness is the primary cause of gun violence. “Most people with mental illness will never commit a mass shooting, and this rhetoric leads to increased shame, societal reduction, stigmatization, and problems in gaining stable employment and housing” said Binder.
This blog post was adapted from Psychiatric News and JAMA Psychiatry. Gain access to the original articles which will provide further information here and here. Additional statistics on this subject can be found here.
It’s that time again..back to school! As a parent, you may be experiencing mixed emotions. Happiness, maybe even sheer joy, anxiety or worry; they’re all very normal. You want your child to be successful and happy throughout the school year. So, what are some ways to help your family accomplish those goals? Here’s a list of 10 things you and your child can do to ensure a good start and continued success throughout the school year.
- Get organized: Include your child with thinking and planning sessions. There are many tasks to be completed before the school year begins. Buying supplies, filling out paperwork, shopping for clothes..all time consuming tasks. Involve you child in as many ways as you can. Not only will you teach your child about planning and being proactive, it may increase their excitement and helps you as well.
- Design a kid friendly homework space. The space should be quiet, free of clutter and well lit. The work surface should be large and there should be comfortable seating. Keep extra supplies at the space including paper, pens, pencils, scissors, glue etc.
- Return to the routine. About a week before school, have your child return to their normal evening routine and bedtime. This will help them adjust before the first day of school and they will be rested and ready for the first day.
- Speaking of schedules—if you don’t have one, now is the time to make one! A morning and evening routine helps kids know what to expect and it helps them form good habits. A schedule is also a good time management tool for both parents and kids.
- If your child is going to a new school, look at the school map together to locate the office, school nurse, and cafeteria. Call the school to see if they are having an orientation session and attend with your child.
- Talk to your child about any fears or worries they may be experiencing. Ask them what you can do to help them and assure them that you are available to talk about any concerns they may have.
- Ask your child to write down what they need to do each week to be successful. Reward and praise often for meeting those small goals.
- Communicate with your child’s teacher on a regular basis. Notify the school about any changes that may affect your child such as illness, moves, job changes, marriage, divorce or changes in visitation schedules.
- Keep your eyes and ears open. If your child’s behavior changes, including changes in appetite or sleep patterns, it may be a sign of difficulty adjusting.
- Finally, pay attention to success! PRAISE the behaviors you want to see again. A hug and a “good job” go a long way!
If your child has difficulty adjusting to the new school year behaviorally or academically, be proactive and address problems quickly. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Tarnow Center at 713) 621-9515.
Summer break is the perfect time to learn as well as address issues too time consuming to tackle during the busy academic term! Whether you want to increase your mental and brain health, tackle challenges that were making the past school year problematic, or start planning for the next developmental stage of your child’s life, The Tarnow Center is here for you. Our clinicians have put together a newsletter full of articles that will educate you on new and noteworthy research, as well as provide opportunities for group therapy sessions to help successfully launch your child off to college.
Below you will find a summary of each article in this summer’s newsletter:
Link: http://bit.ly/2sxHHZw
We often take for granted that our children will go to school and learn, and are shocked when they encounter difficulties despite the fact that learning is a very complicated process. Sometimes, the brain needs a little help to become an efficient machine – for example improving the organization of the brain or increasing the neural connections. This article explains what organization in the brain means, the various neural pathways that need to come together for efficient firing, and how the summer is an excellent time to work on the brain.
Link: http://bit.ly/2retXyB
Each developmental stage of a child’s life brings new challenges that may leave a family asking “what now?” With over 25 years of working together with complicated children and families, we at the Tarnow Center are in the unique position to help you address this question. Whether you need a new evaluation of medication for your child, or assistance in helping them adapt better at school, let us be your Developmental Clinical Consultants.
Link: http://bit.ly/2reA0U2
The link between mass media and the development of disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and drive for thinness has been under investigation in eating disorder literature for a long time. However now that teens and young adults spend more time online, especially on social media sites, we now wonder how this new culture regarding media consumption might impact body image and the development of eating disorders. This article talks about the new research results on the impact of social media, and why parents should be aware of how these sites may be affecting their children.
Link: http://bit.ly/2ti0J2J
Over the last 30 years, the research on the brain and neuroscience has drastically expanded. As parents and teachers we now have the knowledge to help our children maximize their brain growth, learning, and brain health. This article explains the main areas/factors needed for successful brain growth: cognitive and academic growth, hard work and effort, executive functioning skills, and health and brain growth.
Link: http://bit.ly/2rrVpYZ
Being ready to go to college does not mean you are ready to be successful there. In fact, only 50 to 56% of those who go to college actually end up graduating in the United States. Students with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and leaning differences are at much greater odds of not completing these degrees. Dr. Havasy has been working with this young at-risk population for the past 20 years and is offering a College Readiness Consultation this summer for parents and students as well as a College Readiness Group. For more information, refer to the full article in the link above.
Link: http://bit.ly/2s7935U
Dr. Havasy will be facilitating College Readiness Group sessions this summer for high school juniors and seniors. The group sessions will be 1 hour per week and will discuss topics such as strengths and weaknesses, stress and time management, expectations, as well as many more. Parents and students will attend the first session together, followed by the students attending alone for the following 4 sessions. For more information, refer to the flyer provided in the link above.
Link: http://bit.ly/2s75Ovb
Launching 101 is a group designed to work with young adults and their parents to initiate the launching process after graduating high school or to reactivate the process if a family is stuck. The program will be 1.5 hours a week and the parents will only attend each 4th session. Each session we will work on specific target areas and the young adult will leave with homework assignments that are coordinated with the parents. For more information, refer to the full article in the link above.
Link: http://bit.ly/2s6Qeji
Under the direction of Dr. Jay Tarnow, The Tarnow Center for Self-Management has always been on the leading edge of psychiatry, using an integrative medicine approach with a multidisciplinary team of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and marriage family therapists. This environment has provided a unique opportunity for clinical research. Dr. Swatzyna is currently looking for new research assistants who will work within a multidisciplinary team to work on the clinical research team and write up the results. This article summarizes the past research studies completed by our team, and explains the benefits of having this research experience before going to graduate school.
- Because our kids are watching and they need to be able to discuss and process the complex subject matter that is presented in this series
- Because as adults we need to be able to provide a safe and open space for our kids to turn when they are faced with their own difficult situations or emotions
- Because talking about suicide can help prevent it, but glorification cannot be tolerated
- Because 17.7% of high school students included in the CDC’s national Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported seriously contemplating suicide (2015)
- Because each day there are over 5,240 suicide attempts by young people in grades 7 through 12
- Because mental health in too many instances is still stigmatized
- Because good mental health treatment can help
- Because 1 in 10 high school girls report being forced into sex (Howard & Wang, 2005)
- Because girls and women should be encouraged to report rape and sexual assault, not silenced or blamed
- Because more than one out of every five students report being bullied according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (2016)
- Because only 36% of those who are bullied actually report it (Petrosina, Guckenburg, DeVoe, & Hanson, 2010)
- Because there is an association between bullying and suicide, but it is often mediated by other factors such as depression, substance abuse, or violent behavior; and suicide is not a natural response to being bullied. (Reed, Nugent, and Cooper, 2015 & CDC, 2014)
- Because we can help our children even when they feel hopeless and sure that no one can
If you would like help speaking with your children about this series or any of the traumatic experiences portrayed; if you would like someone to come and answer questions or speak with parents, teachers, or students about the issues raised by this series; or if your child is struggling with any of the issues presented in this series, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or you can call 713-621-9515 to set up an appointment.
Melissa Gonzalez, PsyD
Human beings are social animals, and as such, we spend most of our lives in connection with those around us. These social relationships facilitate the expression of emotion, the development of empathy, and the learning of specific social skills. Further, our relationships have far-reaching implications. Most psychologists believe that our perception of ourselves is highly influenced by how others respond to us. When we are very young, a healthy attachment to a sensitive caregiver helps us to feel safe and to perceive ourselves as separate from our parents. As we grow older, the peer group becomes more important and whether we are accepted and liked or excluded and disliked often contributes to our own opinion of ourselves. Our ability to function and self-manage in a group also has important implications for our physical health. Positive social affiliation has been shown to be the most important factor in health and disease since having a good social support network can actually protect us from disease.
For children, the ability to function as part of a group is particularly important. The family (the group in which we learn the most) is the first group in which a young child must learn to function. Fitting in to the family group is essential for fitting in to all future groups. By the age of six, a child must know how to be a good group member to be successful in school. The lives of school age children are filled with groups including the family unit, the classroom, neighborhood playgroups, clubs, and athletic teams. One of the main social tasks in middle childhood is to learn to fit into a peer group. At this age, the peer group serves as a prime source of self-esteem. Success in these groups involves skills such as eye contact, reciprocity, perspective taking and most importantly, empathy.
For children with ADHD and other self-management difficulties, maintaining relationships is not always easy. These children are often impulsive, non-reflective, and have behaviors (such as being aggressive or disruptive) that may irritate others. As a result, children with self-management difficulties may experience social rejection, which in turn, can limit further opportunities to benefit from relationships.
Group treatment is considered one of the most effective ways to address deficits in self-management and social interaction during the school years. Middle childhood is a time when youngsters are readily responsive to group experiences. For them, the group is a natural setting for learning and group treatment simulates the world to which they are accustomed. Cognitive changes in the school age years also facilitate the use of group therapy. By the time children reach the school age years, they have more fully developed verbalization skills and a greater capacity for self-awareness. Peers at this age play an increasingly prominent role and peer reinforcement becomes very powerful.
Like a family, the group provides reinforcement and support of appropriate social behaviors and provides limits for overly excited and aggressive behaviors. It provides a setting for members to practice and generalize skills and concepts learned in individual or family treatment. Children with self-management disorders such as ADHD sometimes do not generalize well what they have learned in one setting to another. For these children, a group setting that recreates the world in which they will use the newly learned information may be more effective than individual psychotherapy. Group facilitators serve as models of sensitive and caring behavior. In a therapeutic peer group, children can obtain feedback from the peer group members, become more aware of behaviors that could be interfering with their interactions, and adopt more appropriate behaviors. Group treatment offers children with self-management difficulties the opportunity to see that they are not alone in their difficulty; it gives them a chance to help others as well as accept help from others.
A brief example of a typical session may help explain how school age children can work on recognizing feelings in themselves and others. The facilitator may discuss how feelings exist on the inside and the only way to determine how someone is feeling is by looking on the outside. Children can take turns making “feeling faces” and having the others in the group guess the emotion. The facilitator may also show pictures of real people cut out from magazines or newspapers and have the children give examples of what might be happening to make the people feel that way. They might play a game in which they take turns drawing cards that describe sticky social situations. Each child in the group might describe how they would feel about the situation and how they would cope with it. The facilitator may then encourage the children to share with the group a time when they felt a similar way. Activities such as these help the group members understand how other children may react differently from themselves in a similar situation. The children can learn the more subtle aspects of social relationships and share their experiences in a supportive environment.
The characteristics of group treatment often render it the most efficient way to address specific issues. For example, mental health professionals believe that empathy (the ability to react to another’s feelings with an emotional response that is similar to the other’s feelings) is necessary for the development of cooperating and helping behaviors. Also, research suggests that empathy develops most easily in an environment that:
- accepts and supports a child’s feelings and emotional needs
- encourages a broad range of emotions
- provides numerous opportunities for a child to interact with others who are sensitive and responsive
- provides peers that the child may consider similar in some way to themselves
- focuses on the feelings of victims if they have been wronged
By providing an environment conductive to the development of empathy, group treatment can lay foundations that facilitate emotional connections and close friendships.
The effectiveness of group treatment for school age children is greatly enhanced by corresponding parent groups. In their own group, parents of children with self-management difficulties can learn about the happenings in their children’s group, learn ways to support gains made by their children, and exchange feedback with group facilitators and other parents. Families of children with self-management difficulties are the primary source of support for their children; however, sometimes they feel isolated, alone, and unsure how to best manage the social interaction difficulties. A parent’s group can provide families with ideas of how they can help their children generalize newly acquired skills in real-life settings.
Research supports the use of group psychotherapy for peer and relationship difficulties. For example, a recent study (Sukhodolsky et al., 2000) compared the therapeutic effects of group therapy and of a structured playgroup for boys between 9 and 11. They found group therapy to be superior in reducing aggression toward others and classroom disruption (as reported by teachers). Further, these boys reported that they were more frequently attempting to use anger control strategies.
In summary, groups are where we all learn our most important lessons in connecting and sharing with others. For those with self-management difficulties, group treatments can offer abundant opportunities to learn to better manage our relationships and ourselves.
Current Groups forming
College Group – Herschel Ebner, PsyD
College Readiness Group for High School Students – Herman Adler, LPA & Meaghan Devlin, M.Ed, BCBA, LBA
For more information about groups or to make an appointment, please call 713.621.9515 and ask for the Intake Coordinator.