You don't have to struggle with your teen any longer. Many parents are struggling with adolescents and young adults who suffer from mental health, substance abuse, and other issues associated with this age group. Although the usual courses of therapy and medications have been tried, for some, these therapies are just not working. In these cases, alternative therapies are being sought out. One type of alternative therapy parents are as...

People tend to wait for an ideal environment for communication: face-to-face, alone, and with no distractions. Those conditions are ideal, but rare. Most interactions are constrained: in an open-plan office, with family members, on a car or train, with background noise, or amidst distractions, lack of sleep, and preexisting stress. The communication channel may limit tone of voice and facial expression: email / text / IM /phone / h...

Nature and Its Mental Health Benefits When it comes to effective mental-health treatment, the natural world probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. In fact, when seeking psychiatric care for mild-to-severe mental illness, nature is probably around the 1000th thing that comes to mind (somewhere between joining the Church of Scientology and volunterring with the peace corps.). And why wouldn't it be? After all, we live in a pi...

As I walked up to one of my groups, this week, I saw this tree. I instantly had a metaphor pop into my mind. I took one of my students down to look at it....he saw the same metaphor. Since then, I have showed it to several people. They all came up with metaphors of their own but none with the same that my student and I came up with. What I saw was a tiny seed that fell into a small crack at the top a large boulder. The...

A Cycle Of Abuse With substance abuse, the self-destructive behavior becomes habitual in a way that isn't just psychological, but also physical. Even alcohol can become such a part of a person's bodily health needs, that it requires a slow wean rather than a swift dismissal. Heroin abuse leads to terribly virulent come-downs which involve days of recuperation. Breaking such a cycle requires, first, getting away from th...

Where to Get Help It’s been a long, tiring day, and you finally head to bed. You glance down to your phone and see how late it is, but you know you’ll have another restless night. Things have been so challenging lately, and you can tell things are only getting worse... You love your child, dearly, but why have they been acting out so much? This question occupies your mind each night, preventing you from getting enough ...

The therapeutic usefulness of therapy animals (most notably dogs and horses) is well known and well practiced by treatment programs across this country and in the world. I asked two leading clinical professionals, each an authority on the subjects of canine and equine therapy respectively, to help me understand the characteristics of these animals that allow them to be so powerful in treatment settings. This list is a synthesis of wha...

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them. -- Leo Buscaglia Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold. -- Joseph Chilton Pearce You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. -- Plato Playing Has Many Benefits I've noticed several b...

The great outdoors might just be greater than you think. There are plenty of us who love to spend as many hours of the day outdoors as we can, and hiking is obviously quite healthy for the body, but few of us ever give a lot of thought to how hiking could benefit our mental health as well. It turns out that hiking might just be your ticket to a brand-new brain, whether you’re passionate about the outdoors, or just force yourself t...