5 minutes How are helping professionals coping in the waning days of the pandemic? Signs of burnout are everywhere. One in three nurses reportedly plan to leave their jobs. Physicians, especially hospitalists, are wracked by moral injury. Behavioral health workers are being crushed by the press of people seeking help for depression, anxiety, and substance […]
5 minute read First published January 20, 2021. Original post here. “The key to working with behavioral health clients,” a clinical supervisor told me over 30 years ago, “is asking about the past losses they’ve suffered and exploring whether they mishandled them.” He was a loss zealot, a mourning maven. He walked clients through guided […]
3 minute read Behavioral economics, as proposed by Kahneman and Tversky, was created in response to neoclassical theories that endorse rational decision-making (Reuter & Montag, 2016). According to Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman, people make decisions based on heuristics and biases, which, depending on the situation, may or may not yield the greatest gain (Kahneman, 2011). […]
2 minute read It is no surprise that pandemic-related isolation has, for many, had pathological consequences. Hardly a day passes without some mention in the media of anxiety and depression. What has received less attention is how COVID-19 affected our furry friends. For my cat, Goober, it has been the greatest thing to ever happen […]
Five Minute Read Operating as a behavioral health consultant (BHC) in primary care has always demanded flexibility but never more so than during the pandemic. Things have changed significantly and it’s worthwhile for us to reflect on those changes, not with resistance, but simply with acknowledgment and mindfulness about what those changes mean. So, this […]
2 minute read In a recent article for the New Yorker, physician/author Siddhartha Mukherjee discussed a surprising finding: that COVID-related deaths in a number of low-income countries are a fraction of the totals in developed nations such as the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and Spain (Mukherjee, 2021). How could this be? Was this […]
2 minute read The current pandemic is the greatest healthcare crisis most of us have experienced during our lifetimes, with over half a million deaths from the novel virus in the US alone (CDC, 2021). Yet for those who journalist Tom Brokaw described as “The Greatest Generation” (Brokaw, 1998), COVID-19 is simply another roadblock. Brokaw […]
3 minute read Ah, high school. I’m not sure what your experience was like, but as a shy, awkward thing, I found comfort in my high school’s theatre troupe and Latin club crowds. I relished acting in low budget school plays, competing in city and statewide Latin competitions (I know, nerd alert!), and I even […]
3 minute read Last week, the number of infections reported to the World Health Organization dropped for the third week in a row. Here in the US, recent reports suggest that numbers are dropping as well. The number of new daily coronavirus cases has dropped below 100,000 for the first time this year, according to […]
3 minute read In the late 1980s, neurologists Sterling and Eyer introduced the theory of allostasis, which describes how certain physiological processes such as heart rate and blood pressure shift rapidly in order to maintain the internal mileiu.1 In a healthy animal, such adaptations serve to maintain a homeostatic baseline. However, when internal or external […]
5 minute read “The key to working with behavioral health clients,” a clinical supervisor told me over 30 years ago, “is asking about the past losses they’ve suffered and exploring whether they mishandled them.” He was a loss zealot, a mourning maven. He walked clients through guided imagery exercises of standing beside their loved one’s […]
3 minute read The emerging COVID-19 vaccine rollout is a potential knockout blow for a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the wellbeing of individuals and families across the globe. A new article from the editors at Families, Systems, and Health reviews the challenges of vaccine dissemination and uptake and recommends the mobilization of interprofessional […]
4 minute read I can hear her soft voice, with its slight Long Island intonations, murmuring in the next room as she comforts her many struggling psychotherapy clients about the pandemic during their telehealth appointments with her. My office—once our adult son’s childhood bedroom with YA titles and high school notebooks still on the bookshelves—is […]
10 Minute Read Our conversations tell us a lot about who we are, so we thought it would be a good idea to review our top list serve conversations for 2020. Before those of you who are not members of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) stop reading, let me convince you as to why […]
7 minute read I am writing this post on the tail-end of the CFHA 2020 conference. What an amazing time of coming together and re-orienting ourselves to this work! I have to admit to feeling fairly stressed during the conference as a clinician and behavioral health director. To some extent, this is often the case […]
5 minute read Greetings, CFHA! My name is Norma Balli-Borrero, and this is my very first post as a newly minted member of the CFHA Blog Writing Team. My posts will center around being a BHC and research assistant working in Pediatrics. Some of my posts will be based on my own personal experience, while […]
3 minute read As COVID-19 progresses into its ninth month, there is growing concern about long-term psychological consequences for frontline workers, and their inability to self-monitor. Shell shock was a term first used during World War I to describe psychological trauma among soldiers who had served on the front lines. Researchers observing symptoms such as […]
3 minute read The current pandemic has generated ongoing conversations on the topic of self-care, particularly as it relates to frontline workers who are experiencing unprecedented levels of burnout. In a recent study at Houston Methodist Hospital, researchers determined that working longer shifts, experiencing more loss of life, PPE supply shortages and fears of infecting […]
