Category: misc
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Telehealth Boundaries: Managing the Intimacy of Being in Clients’ Homes (and Vice Versa)
When your client’s cat jumps onto their lap mid-session, their partner walks through the background in pajamas, or you hear their children arguing in the next room, you’re experiencing something more-or-less unprecedented in the history of therapy: mutual domestic intimacy. Telehealth doesn’t just bring therapy into clients’ homes—it invites them into yours, too. This new…
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Google My Business for Therapists: The Free Tool You’re Probably Underusing
When potential clients search for “therapist near me” at 2 AM during a moment of crisis, what they see first can determine whether they reach out for help or give up entirely. If you’re not actively managing your Google My Business (GMB) profile, you’re missing out on the most powerful free marketing tool available to…
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Gratitude Science
From the NYT, Gratitude Really is Good for You. Here’s What the Science Shows. Most useful to you and your clients, the 100 gratitude prompts Google Doc linked here: Imagine that your partner is thanking you for cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. Which statement would you rather hear? “Thank you!” Or: “I am grateful…
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What Therapists Are Thinking
An illustrated survey from NYT, What Your Therapist Isn’t Telling You. A few samples: “ ‘I need to pee so bad.’ Clients don’t realize that we have five minutes between sessions and sometimes making it to the bathroom is not possible.”— Jessa White, L.M.H.C.A. “ ‘What is her husband’s name again?’ I’m terrible at remembering…
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How to help a suicidal teen
The NYT digs in–part of a New York Times Magazine Therapy issue. There is evidence that less intensive and less expensive therapeutic interventions against suicide might help children, at least those at the highest risk and, by extension, put less pressure on the medical system. For a study published in 2001, more than 800 patients in…
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The Trump Effect
Politico headline: America’s Therapists Are Worried About Trump’s Effect on Your Mental Health. Last month, to put some research heft behind his concerns, Doherty commissioned a national poll of 1,000 voting-age Americans and found that 43 percent of the respondents—not limited to people in therapy—reported experiencing emotional distress related to Trump and his campaign. Twenty-eight…
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Therapy + Politics
Why a therapist should talk politics (NYT): If the patient describes a nearly unbearable work situation, the therapist will tend to focus on the nature of the patient’s response to the situation, implicitly treating the situation itself as unchangeable, a fact of life. But an untenable or unjust environment is not always just a fact…
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In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch
What Your Shrink’s Office Says About You…or under what circumstances would you let a fellow therapist photograph you in your office? (Daily Beast): Thanks to his unique combination of being both a practicing psychoanalyst with nearly 30 years of experience and also a trained professional photographer, Dr. Mark Gerald has been able to throw open a…
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Sharing Notes with Clients
It’s being tried (NYT): Mental health patients do not have the ready access to office visit notes that, increasingly, other patients enjoy. But Mr. Baldwin is among about 700 patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who are participating in a novel experiment. Within days of a session, they can read their therapists’ notes on their…
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DSM-5 Arrives
The psych bible gets a rewrite.