Blogs

Calling these diseases “behavioral illnesses” and calling our systems of care “behavioral health programs” promotes two destructive, harmful beliefs.

I like to say that most of the conflicts are a tempest in a teapot — the problem being that you are in the teapot along with the tempest.

Anybody who lives or works with an active alcoholic is likely to hear a lot of excuses, along with protests that they are not, in fact, excuses.

You’re aware that music therapy is used in mental health settings. Playing music is great, but for most of us, it’s enough just to listen and be affected.

Problems with alcohol are better defined in terms of the problems themselves than some arbitrary amount consumed.

Countertransference issues can be a genuine hazard in our field. If allowed to continue, it can lead to some pretty spectacular incidents.

These powerful drugs have escaped the constraints of legal use and become widely misused

Some of what patients hear is gossip and folklore, something for which the addict community is famous. But there is a wide variation in quality among OTPs.

The technique works. But it doesn’t make for very entertaining TV, which is why they usually leave that part on the cutting room floor.

Counselors and therapists are — and I’m generalizing shamelessly here, so forgive me — warm, empathetic, even sympathetic by nature.