Physical
Affection
 |
 ANY YEARS
before he started
psychotherapy, a nurse in his physician’s office suffered the sudden death of
her father. Just out of kindness, he sent her a sympathy card. The next time
he saw her, not too long thereafter, she ran up to him, threw her arms around
him, and gave him a big hug. He almost fainted. The fact that a woman he hardly
even knew was putting her arms around him was one thing,
but the real surprise—as odd as it sounds—was that no one had ever
given him such an innocent, spontaneous hug before.
That hug initiated
a radical change in his life.
|
In the early
1960s, H. F. Harlow’s experiments with monkeys showed that when physical
contact was withheld from infant monkeys, they became fearful, withdrawn,
and apathetic.
And we know now that the same is true for human infants. Without physical
affection, infants cease to thrive. |
|
He was raised with
all the basic care an infant needs. His family, however, was not an emotionally
open family. Yes, they were close, and they did everything together. But, beyond
infancy and early childhood, aside from a handshake or a kiss on the cheek, he
never learned to touch or be touched.
Fortunately, once he
saw the problem through the perspective of his psychotherapy, he learned how
bodily awareness relates to emotional awareness. He
developed social confidence. And he learned how to hug.
In order to develop
emotional intimacy, children need to be touched and caressed. A lack of physical
affection and emotional intimacy can cause great psychological pain to a child.
Lacking touch and emotional spontaneity in their families, they don’t even know
how to recognize their own emotional experiences. They repress their emotions,
they suffer psychosomatic illnesses, they become socially insecure, and they
confuse a need for simple physical affection with sexual desire.
Moreover, this
emotional pain can persist even into adulthood as the underlying cause of social
dysfunction. These emotional wounds can be healed in
psychotherapy, but the healing doesn’t happen by
receiving hugs from your psychotherapist;
the healing occurs through your “mapping out” the effects of the pain of not
having received physical affection from your parents.
Clinical
Considerations
When an infant
perceives its mother as consistently protective and nurturing, it will actively
seek out contact with her. In psychological language, a child who demonstrates
this kind of comfort with its mother is said to be securely attached
to her.
Impediments to
a secure attachment can manifest in several ways. There can be an
avoidance of contact, as exhibited by withdrawal, inhibition, or
hypervigilance; there can be a resistance to contact, as exhibited
by pushing others away, hitting and slapping them, or angry outbursts; and
there can be indiscriminate sociability, as exhibited by excessive
familiarity with strangers, or a lack of selectivity in choosing attachment
figures.
These impediments
can result because the child has been physically, sexually, or emotionally
abused, or, even more specifically, has been
witness to domestic violence or has suffered
the emotional betrayal and confusion of a mother who abuses drugs or
alcohol.
Insecure attachment
styles can be diagnosed as Reactive Attachment
Disorder if the cause of the non-attachment can be attributed to
pathogenic care: persistent disregard for the child’s emotional
or physical needs, or repeated changes of primary caregiver (as in foster
care). |
Discipline:
Overview
of
Behavioral
Techniques
|
Techniques of behavioral psychology offer many different
ways to shape a child’s behavior so that it becomes obedient to the
values the parents want to teach. This shaping can happen through strategies
to increase selected behaviors or to
decrease selected
behaviors.
Increasing Behaviors
through Reinforcement
There are two
ways to increase a particular behavior;
one is called positive reinforcement
and the other is called negative
reinforcement.
Positive
Reinforcement occurs when you give
something in response to your child’s behavior. What you give can
be pleasant, such as a reward of money or food, or unpleasant, such as a
verbal reprimand.
For positive
reinforcement to be effective it must
• |
follow the child’s
behavior, |
• |
be delivered immediately after the
child’s behavior, |
• |
be large enough to be significant
to the child, |
• |
be consistently applied, and |
• |
have verbal clarification. |
Negative
Reinforcement occurs when you take away
something in response to your child’s behavior. This can be a hard
concept to understand, so consider the example of relieving a child from
washing the dinner dishes after you have noticed that he or she just
completed a special report for school. The idea here is that in being relieved
of an unwanted task the child will be motivated to keep doing well in school.
Even though taking away the task may seem like a reward, it technically involves
removing something, so it is a “negative”
reinforcement.
Decreasing Behaviors
through Punishment and Other Methods
Several psychological
methods can be used to decrease a particular
behavior.
Overcorrection is a two-step process which involves first making restitution
for the undesired behavior, and then performing correct behaviors. For example,
a child might be required to pick up all the clothes from the floor of her
bedroom and then to clean the floors of all the rooms in the
house.
Time
Out involves removing positive reinforcement
for a brief, specified time. For example, each time a child has a temper
tantrum, he can be sent to a place away from family activity (such as a chair
across the room) and ignored for a short time (such as 30 seconds).
For more details, see below. Note that locking the
child in a closet, for example, is abuse, not a healthy form of
psychological correction, and serves no good. And sending a child to his
or her room as a so-called “time out” can, ironically, be perceived
by many children as a form of reward.
Extinction is a technique to decrease a previously reinforced behavior
by removing the reinforcement for it. A parent won’t have much use for
this technique—unless you happen to read this section and find out that
you have been unwittingly reinforcing a bad behavior and now want to remedy
it. For example, you might stop giving attention to a child when she performs
the undesirable behavior.
Differential
Reinforcement involves positively reinforcing
all behaviors except the unwanted behavior. Like extinction, this technique
is unlikely to be used by a parent. Unlike extinction, this technique requires
you to actually give something to a child for all behaviors except the undesired
behavior during a certain time period.
Punishment occurs when you do something (which the child finds to be
unpleasant) in response to your child’s behavior. An example would be
removing driving privileges or adding extra tasks for a child
to perform in response to a speeding ticket—all with the goal of decreasing
unsafe driving habits.
For punishment
to be effective, it must
• |
follow the child’s
behavior, |
• |
be delivered immediately after the
child’s behavior, |
• |
hurt enough to be significant to
the child, |
• |
be consistently applied, and |
• |
have verbal clarification. |
The average person,
untrained in psychology, often misunderstands the simplicity and benefits
of punishment, so this leads to the next
section . . .
|
Punishment—
and
Values
|
As long as families have to exist in a permissive culture,
psychologically healthy families need more than healthy communication. Children
also need to be punished when they have done something wrong. After all,
punishment is a part of the reconciliation process,
and unpunished guilt can cause psychological problems of its
own.
As I said in
the previous section, punishment is just a simple psychological technique
to decrease specific behavior. But to be effective, it must be used properly.
The punishment, then, must be just: it must be consistent, fair, and
adequate to the transgression. And it must be tempered with mercy.
|
In its psychological
sense, mercy means to withhold some—or all—of the punishment
demanded by justice if the guilty person shows deep
sorrow for his or her behavior. |
|
But this is just
the easy part. A parent can’t expect to administer punishment by remaining
uninvolved. In fact, to administer punishment is to get
involved.
|
Don’t expect
to take away a child’s driving privileges and then say, “Well,
you need to drive to school, so you can use the car for that. Just come home
right after school.” What child couldn’t see through that
nonsense—and learn to abuse it immediately? So wake up. You will have
to drive your child to and from school, no matter what the inconvenience
to you.
Don’t expect to confine a child to the house and then expect that you
can come and go, leaving the child alone in the house, while saying
“Don’t go anywhere.” Wake up again. You will have to stay
home and monitor your child, never letting him or her leave your sight. Homework
must be done under your supervision, not alone in a bedroom. Meals must be
eaten together. Entertainment must be in your presence. Everything must be
done in your presence, and, as a result—like it or not—you will
be drawn closer to your child.
Sound hard? Well, that’s why there are so many family problems: the
parents are always too busy to really get involved in the punishment. In
the end, you have to accept the fact that the punishment will hurt the parent
as much as the child. If it doesn’t, it will never be
effective. |
|
Finally, parents
cannot provide healthy punishment unless they themselves live by healthy
values—courage, integrity, and responsibility, for example—that
they can pass on to their children through teaching and
action.
|
Sadly enough,
most adolescent “acting out” derives
from the fact that many parents’ values aren’t really grounded
in a deep devotion to something greater than themselves, such as religious
faith. And so the adolescent in effect says, “Your values are all a
fraud. They’re arbitrary. So why should I do what you say? It’s
not fair. I’ll do what I want because my desires are just as valid as
any of yours.” |
|
As strange as
it might seem, a permissive parent who fails to administer discipline actually
causes a child to fear punishment and to associate it with irrational violence.
These fears can become so strong that the child actually engages in
violence as an unconscious
plea to be punished for an unspoken, aching sense of guilt for other acts
that were never justly punished.
Guidelines for
Punishment
1. The
best form of punishment (removing something to decrease a specific behavior)
is time out. But, for this to work, there
has to be in place both a system of positive recognition and a clear set
of family rules. With these in place, “time out” then becomes the
response of choice when the child breaks a rule: the child is removed from
the positive family activity in such a way that he or she can still witness
it while being excluded from it. For example, if a child swears, the
parent responds—in a neutral tone, not angrily—“That’s
a time out.” The child then goes to the time-out location, such as a
chair on the other side of the room, and is ignored by everyone else. Then,
after about 30 seconds, the parent says OK and calls the child back.
And then the parent must offer positive recognition to the child, such as
by giving a hug and saying, “I like the way you accepted the time out
so willingly and how, even though you felt angry, you handled your frustration
very well.”
2. Any
infliction of punishment can easily become abuse, in which the punisher
takes pleasure in the punishment. In terms of
parental-child discipline, this is clearly not acceptable. Period. Many adults
use the excuse that the abuse they inflict on children is
“punishment,” but this is just a smoke-screen to hide the adult’s
unconscious sadism—or sado-eroticism, for sadly
enough many adults derive a sort of perverse erotic pleasure in inflicting
pain on children.
3. Physical
punishment can also be an “easy way out” for a parent who has botched
up the whole job of parental discipline all along and tries to “save
face” once in a while by lashing out at the
child. I feel sorry for any children in these
circumstances because there really isn’t anything that can help them.
They will be wounded for life. The lucky ones will seek psychotherapy as
adults, and the unlucky ones will end up in prison—or in their own private
hell of drugs and alcohol or whatever.
4. As for
“just” punishment, I personally cannot see any reason for punishment
that involves a series of repeated blows, as in caning (whether with a cane
or a belt) or with “spanking” as it is commonly
conceived. So for older children the
punishment should be focused on the removal of privileges or perhaps the
assignment of extra tasks. For younger children in circumstances involving
obstinate behavior, rather than simple childish desires, a gentle
whack on the butt, along with a strong “No!” can be quite effective.
But even this has to be done in compassion. And it needs to be done only
once. If the child doesn’t get the idea with one whack, then something
else is going on, and the parent needs to re-evaluate the whole
situation.
According to
California law, striking a child anywhere other than on the butt, or with
an instrument (such as a paddle), constitutes child abuse. |
Shaping
Positive
Behavior:
The
Best
Way
|
He was a “latchkey kid.” That is, he came home
from school to an empty house while both his parents were still working.
He spent his time watching TV and neglected his homework. When his parents
came home, his mother was too tired to do anything with him, and his father
blew up at him in anger. The child became disruptive in his classes; he began
to set fires and to shoplift. He was given medication for ADHD. It seemed
there was nothing he could do right. Nothing, that is, except play video
games.
Maybe he
couldn’t sit still in school, but he could focus his attention for hours
on the games, achieving advanced levels of play. He was one of the
best.
So how do we
understand this?
Well, the video
games offered three things that were sadly missing in his
family:
• |
Clear
Rules. He knew exactly what he had to do
to get points and exactly what would happen if he made any
mistakes. |
• |
Rewards
for good behavior. As long as he followed
the rules, he earned his points. Immediately. |
• |
Punishment
for breaking the rules. If he did make a
mistake, the game punished him for it. But the punishment was never critical
or belittling. It was just a fact: You did this, so this is the cost.
And then the game resumed. |
So what can we
learn from this? Well, several things.
1. Families
need rules of conduct that are clearly
stated. This includes the no’s (no
swearing, no hitting, no lying, etc.) and the do’s (do your homework,
come to dinner clean and on time, go to bed at the appointed time,
etc.).
|
Needless to
say—although in today’s world it may be necessary to say it
anyway—the parents must abide by the same rules
as the children. Period. |
|
2. Families
need to give children positive
recognition. Like the child in the story
above, many children are ignored until they do something wrong, so they
unconsciously are motivated to strive for even negative attention just to
get some attention. But a healthy family will give a child positive
recognition (a) for behavior that tends toward the desired behavior and (b)
for not breaking the rules:
|
I like the way you [hung
up your jacket, did your homework, helped your sister, etc.]. That shows
[consideration for others, integrity, compassion, etc.].
|
|
|
I notice that you
haven’t [fought with your sister, used swear words, thrown a tantrum,
etc.]. Thank you for [being kind, having good manners, using self-control,
etc.]. |
Note that this
positive recognition, though largely verbal, is best offered with
affectionate touching as well.
|
Some theories
of dealing with difficult children advocate the use of a credit system, or
token economy, in the school classroom and in the family. Such
systems, however, tend to reduce human interactions to the level of commodities
to be purchased. Token economies may be necessary in classrooms to keep order,
but in families, though they may seem to be convenient, token economies
ultimately subvert the deeper values of life. |
|
3. Families
need a fair and defined way to punish broken
rules. But the punishment
must be clean—it cannot be given in anger, and it cannot belittle
or shame the child. |
Death,
Dying,
and
Bereavement
|
Everyone has heard of the predicament of a person who receives
a diagnosis of a terminal illness and is given only several months to live.
You might then stop to ask yourself, “What if I had only six months
to live? What would I do now?” Unfortunately, the usual answer is something
like, “I would sell everything and take that trip to Tahiti I’ve
been dreaming about all my life.” I say “unfortunately” because
such an answer does little to get at the real spiritual and human point of
the matter.
Better to ask, “What would I do if I had only six hours to
live?”
What would you do? And what would you do if you knew your parents or your
children or your spouse had only six hours to live?
Notice that the Five Stages of
Dying identified by Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross [1] are based on a life that is unprepared for
death:
1. |
Denial |
2. |
Anger |
3. |
Bargaining |
4. |
Depression |
5. |
Acceptance |
The truth of
the matter is that a life unprepared to die—or unprepared for the death
of someone close—is not much of a life in the first place. It’s
a life whose first impulse is denial. It’s a life just waiting to be
slapped in the face with trauma. In contrast, some
of the saints lived lives of perfect joy and peace because they lived as
if they were dying in every moment.
So, to have a
family life that is truly intimate, learn to talk about death. Learn to ask
“What would you do if . . . ?” questions. Learn to walk
out the door with the awareness that you might not come back. Because it
might be the last thing you ever do.
Fear of
Death
Talking about
death can be difficult for many individuals because they have their own unspoken
fear of death. This fear of death can take on several dimensions,
and each dimension has its own particular questions that need to be explored
and prepared for before you can be at peace about your own death.
Contemplate the
questions that follow and prepare yourself for the various possibilities.
Even though you won’t be able to control anything after you die, while
you are alive you can (a) make legal plans; (b) discuss issues with others;
(c) alter your current attitudes; and (d) change your current
behaviors.
1. The
body dying. “What will I feel at the moment
of death? Will it be gentle or will there be bodily pain and
suffering?”
2. The
body after death. “What will happen to
my body? Who will touch it? Will my body be treated with respect or lack
of respect?”
3. Possessions
and wealth after death. “What will become
of my possessions and wealth? Who will handle my possessions? Will they be
treated with care and respect? What will happen to my financial assets? Who
will acquire them? For what purposes will they be
used?”
4. Relatives,
friends, and acquaintances. “How will those
who know me be affected by my death?”
5. The
soul. “Will I experience anything after
death? Is there a continuation of consciousness as some persons claim? Is
there a God? Will I be judged for my actions in life? Will I experience reward
or punishment because of my actions in life?”
Bereavement
Mourning
after the death of someone close, clinically diagnosed as
Bereavement, actually
takes a full year, because you have to live through a full cycle of holidays,
anniversaries, and birthdays—and ultimately the anniversary of the death
itself—without the loved one.
The process
of bereavement can also have many symptoms in common with a
Major Depressive Episode, such as feelings
of sadness, along with insomnia, poor appetite, and weight loss. The diagnosis
of Major Depressive
Disorder generally would not be given to a grieving
individual unless these symptoms are still present 2 months after the
loss and the full criteria for the diagnosis are met. Remember what I
said in the above paragraph: the bereavement cycle takes a whole
year—so if you are still crying over the loss at nine months, but
if you do not meet all the criteria for major depression, then you are simply
still grieving, and a clinical diagnosis is not
warranted.
Here is a comparison
of normal bereavement with clinical depression:
Bereavement |
Major
Depression |
The survivor may feel guilt about
actions taken or not taken at the time of the death. |
Guilt extends beyond actions around
the death. |
The survivor may feel that he or
she would be better off dead or should have died with the loved one. |
Thoughts of death extend beyond an
identification with the deceased. |
The survivor may feel empty and
useless. |
There are morbid feelings of
worthlessness. |
The survivor may feel lethargic or
move slowly. |
There is obvious and considerable
psychomotor retardation. |
The survivor may lose interest in
work and daily tasks or experience them as a heavy burden. |
There is obvious and considerable
functional impairment. |
The survivor may think that he or
she hears the voice of the deceased person or sees the transient image of
the deceased person. |
Hallucinatory experiences extend
beyond thoughts of the loved one. |
|
When depression
complicates bereavement, the root of the problem is often unrecognized
anger toward the deceased. The dynamics are quite
simple: one part of you feels anger for all the hurt
the deceased ever caused you, and consequently you feel relief for—and
even satisfied by—the death. But another part of you, which cannot accept
the “scandal” of being angry with someone you love, feels guilty
about your relief. So you end up unconsciously turning
your anger against yourself. And that’s what depression is: anger
turned inwards. Once the anger is recognized for what it is, and once
you can accept honestly all the positive qualities and the shortcomings
of the deceased, then you can forgive the
person—and the depression dissolves.
|
Anger at the
deceased may not always be turned inwards, as in depression, but it may also
be felt as irritability. In this case you may feel that you have been
cheated—or victimized—by the death,
and you may find yourself expressing this feeling with complaints of being
poorly treated and with subtle (or not so subtle) acts of hostility toward
others. |
|
|
The
Loss
of
Innocence
|
Once a child is born, its continued survival depends entirely
on someone to feed it and care for it. So it comes to expect the world to
be caring. And as the child grows and develops, its mental health and sanity
depend on the innocent belief that the world is not completely irrational
and hostile.
So what is a
parent to do when social violence and natural disasters around the world
shatter the child’s sense of innocence?
1. Don’t
try to hide anything from the child. Parents
sometimes believe that if they don’t talk about tragedies then it will
protect a child from fear. But children, in one way or another, know as much,
if not more, about what is happening in the world than their parents. So
not talking about an event only increases a child’s inner, unspoken
anxiety. And parental silence “tells” the child that the parent
can’t be a source of trust and support.
2. Talk
about the event from the child’s
perspective. Parents often believe that
“talking about” something means telling the child what they themselves
believe. But usually, the parents are more anxious than the child, and so
they end up making the child anxious. The fact is, children think
about things that might not even occur to an adult. For example, hearing
that an entire family was killed in a terrorist attack, a young child might
not be concerned at all about his or her own death in a similar situation
but might be worried about who will take care of the family cat that will
be left alone in the house without food if anything happened to the family.
Therefore, to “talk about” something with a child, it is necessary
for the parent to listen carefully to the child’s concerns and help
the child understand the meaning of those concerns.
3. Help
the child express emotions. Children need help
putting complex emotions into words. By listening carefully to the child’s
concerns, parents can help the child distinguish anger from fear
from anxiety from vulnerability from frustration
from sadness and so on. Of course, you, the adult, are perfectly capable
of sorting out your own emotions, aren’t
you? Aren’t you?
4. Don’t
overwhelm—or brainwash—the child with your own
anxiety. Parents who become overly protective
of a child after a tragedy only instill a sense of paranoia in the child.
If a child is kidnapped in your city, bolting the doors, keeping the drapes
closed, and refusing to let your child out of the house only cause additional
trauma in your child.
5. Speak
of positive and good things. Bad things happen,
yes, but far more good things happen each day. Thousands of airplanes take
off and land every day without incident. Hundreds of millions of children
go about their lives every day without getting hit by cars, abducted, or
shot at. Teach your child to trust in the good, not to fear the
bad.
6. “Why
do bad things happen?” Parents often freeze
when a child asks this question—or they offer a cynical answer that
reflects their own bitterness. Here’s the best and simplest answer of
all:
God is love, and God created the world to share that love with us. But
love can’t be commanded; if we are to love, we must love by our own
free will, and that means we must have the capacity to not love.
Therefore, God gave us free will, and with it came the freedom both to love
and also to reject love and do evil. So the more you see evil around you,
the more you should be reminded to love from your own
heart. |
Family
Therapy
|
Family therapy requires a counselor who can listen closely
to the family’s communication patterns and intervene to break through
dysfunctional communication styles so as to facilitate healthy,
honest interactions.
Forgiveness is also an element involved in healing
family wounds.
This same style of counseling can be applied to organizational
situations. |
Special
Hint
|
I’m always deeply saddened when someone attempts to
discourage a child’s behavior by saying, “You don’t want to
do that.” But of course the child wants to do that! It’s perfectly
obvious he wants to do it, or he wouldn’t be trying. So why confuse
the child by denying what you both know is perfectly
true?
Here, then, is
a special hint on how to say “No” to a child without causing
psychological hurt. You do this by acknowledging what the child wants
and then, without making the child feel
guilty or bad simply for having childish desires, explain why the
child cannot have what he or she wants.
To a young child
say the following:
|
I know you want to [have
some candy, play in the water, chase the birds,
whatever . . .] and there
are times when you can’t always have what you want because other good
things have to come first. |
|
To an older child
(or another adult, for that matter) try saying something like
this:
|
I know that you really would
like to [stay out past dark, bungee jump off the Golden Gate Bridge,
or
whatever . . .] and [the
danger of getting mugged, the law, insurance regulations,
etc.] just
won’t allow it. |
|
The point of
such statements is to show the child (a) that you recognize and respect the
child’s desire and (b)
that since the world is filled with conflicting desires, one’s own desires
can’t always be fulfilled. This is an important lesson for children
to learn. (Too bad most adults haven’t learned it.)
Said in
another way, it’s not that the child’s desire is wrong, it’s
simply that, because the world is unfair, all desires cannot always be fulfilled.
It’s important to learn that apparent “evil” is, in many cases,
simply the conflict between two “goods.” This is why you use the
word and, rather than but, between
the two parts of your statement.
What if . . .?
What if, after taking
the precaution of saying “No” properly, a child were to respond, “If you don’t give
me what I want, I will kill myself!” Or what if you were afraid that a child might
commit suicide if his or her desires weren’t fulfilled? What then? Should the fear of
suicide hold you hostage?
Well, it’s important to
remember that no one can make another person get angry. Even though a person might feel
hurt by something, anger is a response to that hurt, a deliberate
response freely chosen for the purpose of causing harm in retaliation for that hurt.
It’s not a response that someone can be forced into; it’s a response that a person
chooses.
So even though a parent
might have to do something for perfectly good disciplinary reasons that a child
experiences as hurtful, the parent is not responsible for causing any anger the
child might express, even if the anger takes the form of a suicidal threat—or
even if the anger takes the form of actual suicide.
When a child considers
suicide to be a justifiable response to feeling hurt, it points to a grave disorder
that derives from a combination of two things. First, it demonstrates that the child
has been brainwashed by the contemporary culture of hedonism and entitlement, such
that the child has come to accept the false belief that “anything is acceptable, and
if I want it, I’m entitled to it, and, if I don’t get it, I’ll make a big enough stink
about it until I do get it.” Second, it demonstrates that moral values and discipline
have been so lacking in the family life as to let false beliefs take root and
grow in the child.
Here, then, is where parents
do have responsibility. If a child gets angry when parents have to say “No,” then the
parents have failed in either, or both, of two ways. On the one hand, parents can fail
to provide necessary oversight and correction to reverse any brainwashing the child
receives from the culture; on the other hand, parents can fail to assert the discipline
of making moral values—such as love, humility, patience, and
mutual cooperation—the core of the family life. |
Lessons
In
Healing
And
Hope
|
 Psychology from the
Heart
The Spiritual Depth of Clinical Psychology
A collection of
texts from the writings of
Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D.
More
information |
Gratitude
|
Has this web page been helpful? Then please help support this
website in gratitude, as a “down-payment” on the success of your
hopes and dreams!
|
Notes:
1.
Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan.
Additional
Resources
Animal Abuse:
Animal Cruelty / Human Violence from the Humane
Society of the U.S.
Child Abuse:
American Professional
Society on the Abuse of Children “is a membership society
dedicated to serving professionals who work in child abuse and neglect and
thereby improve the quality of services to maltreated children and the adults
who share and influence their lives.”
National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children
National Clearinghouse
on Child Abuse and Neglect
National Committee to
Prevent Child Abuse
Child and Adolescent Mental
Health:
ADD provides
“information and discussion about the diagnosis and medical treatment
of ADD/ADHD” and describes “the many social consequences people
with ADD/ADHD neurology not infrequently struggle to cope with.”
Autism
from the National Institute of Mental Health
Autism Research
Institute
Cancer:
Support and Resources from the National Cancer Institute.
Children and Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General
provides comprehensive information about child development, mental
health disorders (including ADHD), and treatment.
Child
and Adolescent Mental Health Activities from the Center for Mental
Health Services.
Conduct
Disorder: Diagnosis and Treatment in Primary Care from American
Family Physician.
Contemporary Pediatrics® offers many helpful
articles.
Depression
in Children and Adolescents from American Family
Physician.
Guidance
for Effective Discipline from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Helping
Children After a Disaster from the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry.
Helping children with learning disabilities toward a brighter
adulthood from Contemporary Pediatrics
Mental
Health Disorders in Children from THE MERCK MANUAL
National Clearinghouse
on Child Abuse and Neglect
RETT
SYNDROME-SILENT ANGEL'S offers information from the perspective
family coping.
Self-Injury
in Adolescents - AACAP Facts For Families from the American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP).
Sleep
Disorders and Sleep Problems in Childhood from American Family
Physician
Sleep
disorders in children and teens from Postgraduate
Medicine
Suicide and
Suicide Attempts in Adolescents from the American Academy of
Pediatrics.
When parents have a drinking problem from
Contemporary Pediatrics
Child Psychology:
History of child psychology, testing, psychiatry etc.
provides an overview of the history of child psychology through many
articles by and about the most famous psychologists who worked with
children.
Psyche Matters:
Infant and Child Psychology and Psychoanalysis Resources provides
information about therapy and analysis for infants & children.
Domestic Violence:
Domestic
Violence - International Resources
Domestic violence: Ways to get help from the Mayo
Clinic.
Family Violence Prevention
Fund
Marital
Rape
National
Clearinghouse on Family Violence (NCFV), Health Canada
National Coalition Against
Domestic Violence
On-line Domestic
Violence Survival Kit
The
White Ribbon Campaign —Educational Materials: Men working
to end men’s violence against women.
Family Systems
Theory:
Allyn
& Bacon Family Therapy Website provides an overview of important
family systems therapists and historical concepts.
Family Systems Theory & Concepts provides a
slide presentation of basic family systems concepts.
Bowen
Family Systems Theory, family healing meditations provides some
helpful family systems healing concepts.
Geriatrics:
Alzheimer’s Association
A Practical
Guide to Caring for Caregivers from American Family Physician.
(A confusing title! It is a guide for family members who take care of persons
with dementia.)
Elder
Abuse from Emergency Medicine
Guidelines
for the Evaluation of Dementia and Age-Related Cognitive Decline from
the American Psychological Association.
Late-Life
Depression from Clinical Geriatrics Magazine Online.
The
Merck Manual of Geriatrics provides numerous articles which discuss
mental and physical aspects of geriatric care.
Recognition
and diagnosis of dementia from the National Guideline
Clearinghouse.
Marriage and Family
Issues:
Abortion
and breast cancer: The scientific link
Family
Matters and Resources
How
therapy can be hazardous to your marital health
Smart
Marriages
Marriage and Family
Therapy:
American Association
for Marriage and Family Therapy provides information and resources
for marriage and family therapy.
Directory
of State MFT Licensing Boards provides the regulated titles and
addresses of state boards regulating marriage and family therapists.
Strategic Therapy:
Strategic Therapy —from Jay Haley on
Therapy.
Substance Abuse:
Adult Children
of Alcoholics
Alcoholics
Anonymous
Alcoholism and other publications from the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
Canadian Centre on Substance
Abuse is “a non-profit organization working to minimize the
harm associated with the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.”
Cocaine Anonymous
Drinking and Your Pregnancy and other publications
from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
Droginformation
is a Swedish site with articles, in English, about marijuana abuse.
Drug
Use And Dependence (Substance Abuse) from THE MERCK MANUAL.
Narcotics Anonymous
The Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration is an agency of the U.S. Department
of Health & Human Services
Related pages within A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice:
Adolescent
Violence
Anger
Death—and the Seduction
of Despair
Depression and
Suicide
Fear
Forgiveness
Honesty
Identity and
Loneliness
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Reasons to Consult
a Psychologist
Sex and Love
Spirituality and
Psychology
Terrorism and
Psychology
Trauma
Types of Psychological
Treatment
The Unconscious
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