How Electro-Shock Therapy Affects the Brain and Depression [dailymail.co.uk]

by Emily Allen / Daily Mail

Scientists have finally discovered how one of psychiatry’s most controversial treatments can help patients with severe depression.

Researchers at Aberdeen University have discovered that ECT – or electro-convulsive therapy - affects the way different parts of the brain involved in depression ‘communicate’ with each other.

They found that the treatment appears to ‘turn down’ an overactive connection between areas of the brain that control mood and the parts responsible for thinking and concentrating.

This stops the overwhelming impact that depression has on sufferers’ ability to enjoy normal life and carry on with day-to-day activities.

This decrease in connectivity observed after ECT treatment was accompanied by a significant improvement in the patient’s depressive symptoms.

The ECT treatment, which is 75-years-old, involves an electric shock being passed through the cortex of a severely-depressed patient to ‘cure’ them.

Its graphic portrayal in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next won Jack Nicholson an Oscar.

The controversial treatment was introduced in 1938 by an Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti, who was allegedly inspired by watching pigs being stunned with electric shock before being butchered in Rome.  The animals would go into seizures and fall down, making it easier to slit their throats.

At the time psychiatric orthodoxy held – wrongly – that schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic and one could not exist in the presence of the other.

Deciding to try the stunning technique on his patients, Dr Cerletti found electric shocks to the head caused his most obsessive and difficult mental patients to become meek and manageable.

Later the treatment was found to be effective in treating severe depression but its mode of action has remained until now a complete mystery.

The study involved using MRI to scan the brains of nine severely depressed patients before and after ECT, and then applying entirely new and complex mathematical analysis to investigate brain connectivity.

Professor of Psychiatry at the university Ian Reid, who is also a consultant psychiatrist at the Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen, said: ‘We believe we’ve solved a 70 year old therapeutic riddle.

‘ECT is a controversial treatment, and one prominent criticism has been that it is not understood how it works and what it does to the brain.

‘For all the debate surrounding ECT, it is one of the most effective treatments not just in psychiatry but in the whole of medicine, because 75 per cent to 85 per cent of patients recover from their symptoms.

‘Over the last couple of years there has been an emerging new perspective on how depression affects the brain.

‘This theory has suggested a ‘hyper-connection’ between the areas of the brain involved in emotional processing and mood change and the parts of the brain involved in thinking and concentrating.

‘Our key finding is that if you compare the connections in the brain before and after ECT, ECT reduces this ‘hyper-connectivity’.

‘For the first time we can point to something that ECT does in the brain that makes sense in the context of what we think is wrong in people who are depressed.’

Although ECT is extremely effective, it is only used on people who need treatment quickly: those who are very severely depressed, who are at risk from taking their own lives, and perhaps cannot look after themselves, or those who have not responded to other treatments.

Professor Reid said: ‘The treatment can also affect memory, though for most patients this is short-lived.

‘However if we understand more about how ECT works, we will be in a better position to replace it with something less invasive and more acceptable.

‘At the moment only about 40 per cent of people with depression get better with treatment from their GP.

‘Our findings may lead to new drug targets which match the effectiveness of ECT without an impact on memory.’

Professor Christian Schwarzbauer, chair in neuroimaging at Aberdeen, who devised the maths used to analyse the data, said: ‘We were able to find out to what extent more than 25,000 different brain areas ‘communicated’ with each other.

‘The method could be applied to a wide range of other brain disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, or dementia, and may lead to a better understanding of underlying disease mechanisms and the development of new diagnostic tools.’

The team’s findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2117246/Electro-convulsive-therapy-How-electric-shock-treatment-treat-severe-depression.html#ixzz1pddSJeSu

Wednesday Lite: Lost Superpowers

 

Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are [cnn.com]

By Madison Park / CNN

Berkeley, California (CNN) – One of the first things Thomas Lobel told his parents was that they were wrong.

The 3-year-old had learned sign language because he had apraxia, a speech impediment that hindered his ability to talk. The toddler pointed to himself and signed, “I am a girl.”

“Oh look, he’s confused,” his parents said. Maybe he mixed up the signs for boy and girl. So they signed back. “No, no. Thomas is a boy.”

But the toddler shook his head. “I am a girl,” he signed back emphatically.

Regardless of the fact he was physically male, Thomas has always maintained that he is a girl. When teased at school about being quiet and liking dolls, Thomas would repeat his simple response, “I am a girl.”

Thomas, now 11, goes by the name of Tammy, wears dresses to school and lives as a girl.

Her parents have been accused by family, friends and others of being reckless, causing their youngest child permanent damage by allowing her to live as a girl.

When children insist that their gender doesn’t match their body, it can trigger a confusing, painful odyssey for the family. And most of the time, these families face isolating experiences trying to decide what is best for their kids, especially because transgender issues are viewed as mysterious, and loaded with stigma and judgment.

Click to read and view the rest of the story on CNN…

10 Psychological States You’ve Never Heard Of — And When You Experienced Them [io9.com]

Annalee Newitz – Everybody knows what you mean when you say you’re happy or sad. But what about all those emotional states you don’t have words for? Here are ten feelings you may have had, but never knew how to explain.

1. Dysphoria
Often used to describe depression in psychological disorders, dysphoria is general state of sadness that includes restlessness, lack of energy, anxiety, and vague irritation. It is the opposite of euphoria, and is different from typical sadness because it often includes a kind of jumpiness and some anger. You have probably experienced it when coming down from a stimulant like chocolate, coffee, or something stronger. Or you may have felt it in response to a distressing situation, extreme boredom, or depression.

2. Enthrallment
Psychology professor W. Gerrod Parrott has broken down human emotions into subcategories, which themselves have their own subcategories. Most of the emotions he identifies, like joy and anger, are pretty recognizable. But one subset of joy, “enthrallment,” you may not have heard of before. Unlike the perkier subcategories of joy like cheerfulness, zest, and relief, enthrallment is a state of intense rapture. It is not the same as love or lust. You might experience it when you see an incredible spectacle — a concert, a movie, a rocket taking off — that captures all your attention and elevates your mood to tremendous heights.

3. Normopathy
Psychiatric theorist Christopher Bollas invented the idea of normopathy to describe people who are so focused on blending in and conforming to social norms that it becomes a kind of mania. A person who is normotic is often unhealthily fixated on having no personality at all, and only doing exactly what is expected by society. Extreme normopathy is punctuated by breaks from the norm, where normotic person cracks under the pressure of conforming and becomes violent or does something very dangerous. Many people experience mild normopathy at different times in their lives, especially when trying to fit into a new social situation, or when trying to hide behaviors they believe other people would condemn.

4. Abjection
There are a few ways to define abjection, but French philosopher Julia Kristeva (literally) wrote the book on what it means to experience abjection. She suggests that every human goes through a period of abjection as tiny children when we first realize that our bodies are separate from our parents’ bodies — this sense of separation causes a feeling of extreme horror we carry with us throughout our lives. That feeling of abjection gets re-activated when we experience events that, however briefly, cause us to question the boundaries of our sense of self. Often, abjection is what you are feeling when you witness or experience something so horrific that it causes you to throw up. A classic example is seeing a corpse, but abjection can also be caused by seeing shit or open wounds. These visions all remind us, at some level, that our selfhood is contained in what Star Trek aliens would call “ugly bags of mostly water.” The only thing separating you from being a dead body is . . . almost nothing. When you feel the full weight of that sentence, or are confronted by its reality in the form of a corpse, your nausea is abjection.

Click to Read the Rest of the Article on IO9…

http://io9.com/5813475/10-psychological-states-youve-never-heard-of–and-when-you-experienced-them

The Damage of Anti-Gay Therapy? The True Story of George Rekers And “Kraig [boxturtlebulletin.com]

by Jim Burroway

In the summer of 1970, just before Kirk’s fifth birthday, his parents learned about a new federally funded research program at UCLA for young boys who were showing early signs of being effeminate. Concerned that Kirk was exhibiting some of the behaviors listed by a UCLA researcher on a local television talk show, Kirk’s parents decided to take him in for an evaluation and treatment. Ten months later, Kirk’s therapy was judged a success and his parents were reassured he would now grow up to be a normal, heterosexual man.

When Kirk was undergoing treatment at UCLA, he was under the care of a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. In 1974, Rekers and his mentor, Dr. Ivar Lovaas, published a landmark paper describing “Kraig’s” treatment — “Kraig” being their pseudonym for Kirk. That paper, which appeared in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, was “the first experimental study on the subject of childhood cross-gender problems.” That paper launched Rekers’s career, first as an expert in childhood sexual development, and later as an anti-gay activist.

Kirk survived his ordeal, and he continued to grow up under relative anonymity. Neither he nor his family knew that he was the subject of nearly two decades of discussion among behavioral therapists working to change their clients’ sexual orientation. Through it all, Rekers wrote that Kirk had a “normal male identity, had normal aspirations for growing up to be married and have a family, and was well-adjusted as a teen-age boy in general.” The truth was far different. His suicide attempt at the age of seventeen was unsuccessful. But twenty years later, he took his life on December 21, 2003. He was 38.

Rekers’s career came to an end on May 4, 2010, when two reporters at The Miami New Times revealed that he had been photographed at the Miami International Airport while returning from an overseas trip in the company of a handsome, blond twenty-years-old man who Rekers found on Rentboy.com. Rekers protested that he had hired the escort to help him with his luggage, but his escort himself begged to differ. Rekers’s colleagues began distancing themselves from him, and he eventually resigned from the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a group composed of dissident therapists who believe that homosexuality is a pathology in need of treatment, despite the findings otherwise of every major medical and mental health organization.

Today we can reveal the full story behind the story. In an original BTB investigation, “What Are Little Boys Made Of?” we take you through extensive interviews with Kirk’s mother, brother and sister, ex-wife, friends, and others to bring you up to date on the truth behind Rekers’s “success.” We also investigate the state of psychology in 1970 when Kirk first came under Rekers’s care, and the profound changes that the profession underwent in the forty years since then — changes which Rekers steadfastly resisted. It is all right here.

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2011/06/07/33401

Court Allows Sex Change for 10-Year Old with Hormone Blockers

by Sue Hewitt / Sunday Herald Sun

A COURT has allowed a 10-year-old boy to become the youngest Australian to have sex-change therapy.

The boy, known as Jamie, has lived as a girl for two years, dressing in feminine clothes, using the girls’ toilet at school and “presenting as a very attractive young girl with long, blonde hair”, the court heard.

Jamie’s parents, medicos and psychiatrists feared early-onset puberty could lead to self-harm or suicide and supported an urgent application for the child to receive sex-change therapy.

Family Court Justice Linda Dessau ordered that Jamie be allowed to start drug therapy to stop male puberty and that the court reconvene when she turned 16 to consider approving the second stage of taking female hormones to feminise the body.

The court heard Jamie saw herself as a “freak” and a “girl in a boy’s body”, and had first identified as a girl when she was a toddler.

Her mother said though doctors had told her Jamie would be the youngest patient to start such treatment, she was confident it was in her best interests.

She said before her child changed schools in year 3 and acted as a girl, her child told her, “Mummy, it is so hard trying to be a boy”, and that she had to “go to school disguised as a boy”.

The mother said the family had started treating Jamie as a female in 2008 after her non-identical twin brother accepted her condition and announced: “I have a sister.”

The mother was concerned that without treatment, Jamie’s voice would break and an Adam’s apple and facial hair would grow.

“(If Jamie does not receive treatment) she will very shortly develop obvious male characteristics … which will be permanent and will not be able to be reversed,” the mother said.

“At the moment Jamie can live comfortably as a girl, is socially confident and suffers no teasing or social isolation.”

A medical expert said when he first saw Jamie in February 2009, she “looked convincingly female in every way” except her genitalia.

The doctor said he was concerned about Jamie’s rapid-onset puberty, which was equivalent to that of a 14-year-old, and said sex-change treatment should start immediately.

Another doctor said stage one treatment to stop male puberty was reversible.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/boy-10-gets-sex-change-ok/story-fn6bqvxz-1226040332407

Quote of the Day: Direct Therapy

“I’m starting to discover that I am one of those therapists who is unable to be anything but direct.  Life is too short to hide in the shadows, especially when the shadows are often our own.”

- Helen Hill MFT

Quote of the Day: Therapy, Living and Discipline

“I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline.”

- Jack LaLanne

Break Out of the Winter Doldrums with a Little Therapeutic Help

Remember your New Years Resolutions?

• Break Out of the Winter Doldrums.
• If not now, when?
• Helen’s Winter Special for Counseling / Psychotherapy is $40 OFF the Regular Session Fee of $125.
• At $85 Per Session Facing One’s Identity Just Got a Lot More Affordable.
• Sliding scale based upon economic necessity
• Give Yourself a Chance in 2011.

Find Out That Being You is not only Possible, but Wholly Wonderful and Good Too!

**This discount ends on March 31st, 2011**

http://www.helen-hill.com

http://www.genderSanctuary.com

Gender Identity Therapy and Counseling in Los Angeles

Gender is not something people wrestle with easily. In our culture, gender is a bit taboo. And yet we want our answers; our peace; our souls. We want to put our toe into the water to test the temperature. And we must deal with our fears, both real and perceived. Most of all we must deal with our own self-image and self-worth. These are the real issues behind gender.

Whether you are seeking hormone therapy (HRT), sexual reassignment, or simply contemplating your future, therapy can be a great benefit. (My practice follows the WPATH (Harry Benjamin) standards of care related to hormone recommendation letters and surgery letters.)

A “transition” (or also known as a sex change) is not undertaken lightly. It requires: complete resolve; strength of will; facing and overcoming adversity (both internal and external); resources (including money); support systems (friends, colleagues, and/or family); and a certainty of one’s identity and forward path. Such a path is not for the faint of heart, nor for those seeking to maintain the status quo in one’s life. The most dangerous aspect of “transition” is the tendency toward isolation, which must be confronted and overcome if one is to live successfully and authentically in the world.

Therapy is usually the LEAST expensive aspect of a “transition.” (see Helen’s Fees and Forms here) When considering doctors’ fees, services, electrolysis, surgeries, hormones, blood tests, presentation costs (clothing, hair, voice, and the like), as well as other myriad issues, the demands of a sex change can be and are daunting. Resources are stretched and patience is key.
(see TSRoadmap for helpful information)

While it is important to be frugal and minimize costs, you cannot do a sex change “on the cheap.” One must be so assured of one’s identity and the steps to be taken, that commitment, clarity and endurance continue throughout. After all, it is the journey of a lifetime – to be true to yourself.

Helen has worked extensively with those uniquely gifted individuals often referred to as transgendered, transsexuals, intersexed and multi-layered gender variant individuals .  Ms. Hill brings years of real life experience compassion, acceptance, and honesty to those on their journey to wellness, integrity and congruency.