Saturday 12 January 2019

Addiction Rooted In Childhood Trauma, Says Prominent Specialist By Rob Waters January 10, 2019



"All addictions — alcohol or drugs, sex addiction or internet addiction, gambling or shopping — are attempts to regulate our internal emotional states because we’re not comfortable, and the discomfort originates in childhood. For me, there’s no distinction except in degree between one addiction and another: same brain circuits, same emotional dynamics, same pain and same behaviors of furtiveness, denial and lying."

Link

Monday 7 January 2019

Mental health services: survey


"Stem4, a charity which works to prevent mental ill health in teenagers, has published results from a survey of 1,000 GP's across the UK about their views on children and young people accessing mental health services. Findings include: 99 per cent of GP's fear that young people may come to harm while waiting to access specialist mental health treatment; 90 per cent of GP's believe that mental health services for children and young people aged 11- to 18-years-old are inadequate; 88 per cent of GP's said that it was either impossible or very difficult for their patients to access treatment for anxiety"

From NSPCC CASPAR: current awareness service for practice, policy and research 07.01.19 
Link to PDF

Wednesday 2 January 2019

Suicide Facts and Myths



The Tavistock and Portman GIDS clinic states that amongst children referred to the clinic “suicide is extremely rare” (taken from the Tavistock evidence base page here).At a conference in Bristol in October 2017, Dr Polly Carmichael, Director and Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Tavistock, stated that the PACE survey is “deeply flawed” and that rates of self-harm, distress and suicidal ideation are similar to CAMHS figures overall. Dr Carmichael’s full talk is available on this page and we summed it up in this thread.Dr Carmichael expressed concerns about the use of suicide statistics in the discourse around gender dysphoric young people which is so negative and suggests a lack of agency and resilience.This is our position. Every suicide is a terrible tragedy and we must be extremely careful in any message we send to young people on this subject. The Samaritans guidance states that we should avoid speculation about any one ‘trigger’ for suicide and that we need to exercise caution in repeating suicide statistics. We would like to see this advice followed more carefully in the case of young people struggling with gender identity issues.


Link