September 27, 2008

Finding a Therapist in Your Community, Part One

Oh, you’d be astonished at the number of well-educated people who don’t know the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist!   The same is true of distinctions among the other helping professionals, so here’s a short course:

Psychiatrists. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor, just like the one that delivered your child or set the bone in your ankle.  In medical school they took all the classes along with their colleagues going into other specialties.  At some point, however, they selected psychiatry as their special interest, and began to focus—not on psychology, but—on brain chemistry and how that relates to emotions and behavior.  They do spend time talking with patients about issues and progress toward goals, but their special area of expertise is in prescribing particular medications.  Insurance carriers almost always cover the services of a psychiatrist, but may require a referral from a primary care doctor.  Often individuals will see a psychiatrist in addition to the helping professions listed below. (more…)

September 14, 2008

Gratitude: The Life-Changing Practice

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), ‘Pro Plancio,’ 54 B.C.

Research shows (see articles by Martin Seligman, Robert Emmons, and on this website) that the best predictor of “happiness” and life satisfaction is the degree of gratitude experienced and expressed by the individual.  In other words, to begin to raise your life satisfaction, be thankful for the good things already in your life!

I’ve given talks to crowds large and small, in school, corporations and even in prisons, and I’ve found that the audiences have a common denominator (several, really).  People are fascinated when they hear about the difference that simple gratitude can make in one’s life.  Just to illustrate the research that has been done in this area, it has been shown that life satisfaction increases (as measured on a psychological test) over the course of as little as six weeks, if a person takes just a few minutes each week to write down the good things that have happened during that 7-day period. Ironically, the research shows that doing this one night a week was more beneficial than doing this three nights a week. (In a future article I will address the research by on how life satisfaction efforts must be a good fit for each individual). (more…)