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A top health expert has tagged Tiger Woods a "sex addict" who needs immediate help. David Smallwood, Addictions Manager at London's Priory clinic, believes the exposure of the golfer's affairs hint at his uncontrolled craving for sex. "He displays a number of the pointers such as seeking highs from outdoor sex and having many mistresses," the News of the World quoted him as saying. However, the expert who has provided service to a number of celebrities wishes to help Woods. He said: "I would implore him to get help. But I see him as ill, not bad. "All of the...

The Army is severely short of enough mental health professionals to properly attend to soldiers after eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Pentagon and Congress are asking whether that shortage may have played a role in the ability of the accused Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, to elude detection despite a spotty work record and suspicious behavior. Hasan’s competence and radicalism stirred concern among his fellow students and superiors and he was counseled for proselytizing to his patients, but he nevertheless progressed in his schooling and his military career throughout his six years at...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Nov. 20, 2009) — Michelle Hartmann, of Jefferson City, has been named the Missouri National Guard's first-ever director of psychological health. Hartmann oversees the Missouri Guard's psychological health program. The program, which is funded through the National Guard Bureau, is designed to promote readiness through psychological fitness. Hartmann said the program's guidelines are intentionally vague, which allows each state's director to tailor it to the specific needs of each state. Hartmann said one of her goals is to make mental health a more normal part of conversation. To some extent, Hartmann said, the stigma associated with psychological...

Early signs suggest the number of suicides in the U.S. crept up during the worst recession in decades, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of states that account for about 40% of the U.S. population. Available data, still incomplete, suggest that this recession, like past ones, coincided with an uptick in suicides. The data from 19 states find an increase in suicides in the recessionary year of 2008 from 2007. Those states historically account for about half of annual suicides in the U.S. Calls to suicide hotlines are rising. And suicides in the workplace and the military -- a...

Boosting the level of a brain chemical reverses learning impairments in a mouse model of Down syndrome, researchers report. The work adds to emerging evidence that cognition-enhancing drugs may one day help humans with Down syndrome lead more independent lives. Down syndrome is the most common cause of mental retardation, affecting approximately one in 800 babies at birth. People with the disorder have an extra copy of chromosome 21, giving them additional copies of hundreds of genes. This somehow alters brain development and causes mild to severe learning disabilities. To investigate what goes wrong in the brain of someone who...

SARAH PALIN’S sit-down with Oprah Winfrey this week may have been the most tense TV encounter of the year, a palpable mix of suspicion and mutual need. Oprah was good for Obama, but she’s also good for books, and Palin is good for TV. When the two shook hands across the chasm of a coffee table, you wondered if the studio circuitry would blow. It didn’t, but of all of the interlocutors Palin faced in this week’s “Going Rogue’’ media blitz, only Winfrey managed to cut through Palin’s efforts to cast herself as a victim. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly...

The Associated Press "fact check" of Sarah Palin's new book wasn't enough. Now the left is just coming out and claiming Palin is a flat out liar. That was the argument made by Bella DePaulo in a Psychology Today blog entitled "Sarah Palin's Lies." DePaulo, who has a Harvard Ph.D. in psychology and experience in analyzing lying, claims Palin excels at it. "From my post as an outside observer, it seems to me that Sarah Palin doesn't care much about the truth. In that way, she is a very special liar," she wrote in the Nov. 19 "Living Single" blog.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children who don't show normal fear responses to loud, unpleasant sounds at the age of 3 may be more likely to commit crimes as adults, according to a new study. Yu Gao and colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom compared results from a study of almost 1,800 children born in 1969 and 1970 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to criminal records of group members 20 years later. At age 3, the children were tested to gauge their level of "fear conditioning," or fear of consequences. The idea is that children...

Recently I attended a domestic violence conference hosted by a church in my community. "The Church's Role in Addressing Domestic Violence in the Faith Community," the glossy brochure explained. The program featured a Proclamation by President Barack Obama filled with heart-rending language about the "devastating impact" of domestic violence on women and children. The conference included a workshop a dramatic presentation of The Yellow Dress, a play based on stories of women who were victims of dating violence. I opted to screen a video called "Defending our Lives," featuring the accounts of five women incarcerated for murdering their partners. All...

As an army psychiatrist treating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had front row seat on the brutal toll of war. It is too early to know exactly what may have triggered his murderous shooting rampage Thursday at Fort Hood — Hasan is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 32 others before he was wounded by a police officer — but it is not uncommon for therapists treating soldiers with Post Trumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) to be swept up in a patient's displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury. In medical parlance it is known...

Health experts say they are hardly astonished that the suspect in the worst mass murder ever at a U.S. military base is an Army psychiatrist — the very person who is supposed to be helping soldiers deal with the traumatic stress of war. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, suspected of gunning down 13 and wounding 30 at the Fort Hood Army Post in Texas, treated soldiers at the Darnall Army Medical Center there after being transferred in July from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he had worked for six years. Dr. Robin Kerner, an attending psychologist who specializes in...

FOX News: "Robert Gibbs said ‘well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went.'"

O-Care is an awful idea for all kinds of reasons. It's a monstrosity. But one reason that has not been discussed is the problem of giving Obama -- a narcissist who has surrounded himself with thugs -- a crucial psychic victory. Narcissists have a problem with reality. They are absolutists of a kind, and their absolute ideal is themselves. So a defeat makes them feel utterly enraged -- because their gnawing self-doubts are strengthened -- but a victory is interpreted to support their messianic self-image. When Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in a way that made him the laughingstock...

It’s worth looking at how life used to be. Now, as early as a thousand years ago, people didn’t have laptops. Back even further, in the hunting and gathering days — the 60s — there were no computers of any kind. At all. The primary method of social networking was drawing pictures on cave walls. So, for instance, if one of the cave dwellers was hunting buffalo, instead of using his cell phone to update his Facebook status to “kilin buf-lo,” he’d go to the cave wall and draw a picture on it of a buffalo next to himself holding...

Based on this detailed, comprehensive Mayo Clinic definition, one that I believe perfectly describes Obama, it's obvious he needs prescription medicine and extended psychotherapy. Our country is in tremendous danger with a person suffering from this complex mental illness in our White House.

"The woman's movement wasn't about happiness." That judgment, attributed to feminist Susan Faludi, seems to be the blunt assessment shared by many other women. As numerous recent studies now indicate, a remarkably large percentage of women describe themselves as increasingly unhappy. This issue came to light last month in a fascinating essay by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times. Dowd, whose columns often reveal the nation's Zeitgeist, cited the fact that a number of major studies indicate that "women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier." She asked: "Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than...

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those ”Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses. They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect. “We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years. Baby Einstein,...

You can divorce an abusive spouse. You can call it quits if your lover mistreats you. But what can you do if the source of your misery is your own parent? Granted, no parent is perfect. And whining about parental failure, real or not, is practically an American pastime that keeps the therapeutic community dutifully employed. But just as there are ordinary good-enough parents who mysteriously produce a difficult child, there are some decent people who have the misfortune of having a truly toxic parent. A patient of mine, a lovely woman in her 60s whom I treated for depression,...

Via Breitbart. I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you her answer, but suffice it to say, it’s not much of a surprise. I’m not sure why they stopped with a psychiatrist, though. Wouldn’t Jane Goodall have had some potentially valuable insights here? Or an FBI criminal profiler? Remember, this is the “objective” cable news network.

Josie Romero loves the colour pink, braiding her hair and having her fingernails painted. But life has not always been easy for this sweet and charming eight-year-old, who was born in the body of a boy. The transgender youngster, then called Joseph, knew at the age of four that she was the wrong sex and even told her parents: 'I am really a girl.' At five, she was refusing to have her hair cut and only wore colours like orange which were nearest to girly pink. By the time she reached six, Josie had been diagnosed as transgender and was...

Anyone reading Sigmund Freud's original works might well be seduced by the beauty of his prose, the elegance of his arguments and the acuity of his intuition. But those with a grounding in science will also be shocked by the abandon with which he elaborated his theories on the basis of essentially no empirical evidence. This is one of the main reasons why Freudian-style psychoanalysis has long since fallen out of fashion: its huge expense — treatment can stretch over years — is not balanced by evidence of efficacy. Clinical psychology at least has its roots in experimentation, but it...

When a sonogram showed that Stephanie Lewis, a writer and party planner living in San Diego, was expecting boy-girl twins, she was ecstatic. Lewis, already the mother of a two-year-old son, had always longed for a girl. “From an early age, I just remember wanting a daughter,” says Lewis, an effervescent brunette who recalls a Pleasantville childhood filled with mother-daughter fashion shows, ballet recitals, and tea parties. “Now, finally, I was getting her. I was just in heaven.” Not that the sonographer’s revelation had come as a shock. For this, her second pregnancy, the 28-year-old Lewis had done everything in...

NEW YORK, Oct. 15, 2009 – To the envy of all the neighborhood kids, I was invited to New York yesterday to attend the taping of a special Sesame Workshop production aimed at helping military children. Elmo's dad, Louie, helps Elmo cope with the loss of his Uncle Jack during the filming of a Sesame Workshop video aimed at helping military children deal with the loss of a loved one. Elmo wears his uncle's hat in memory and celebration of his uncle's life. The video was filmed in Queens, New York, Oct. 14, 2009. Courtesy photo by Gil Vaknin  (Click photo...

NEW YORK, Oct. 15, 2009 – As filming for Sesame Workshop’s latest “Talk, Listen, Connect,” video got under way here yesterday, it became clear that while it’s not always sunny on Sesame Street, ultimately the clouds can be swept away. Deborah Mullen, wife of Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, poses with Elmo’s mom, Mae, on the New York set of Sesame Workshop’s third “Talk, Listen, Connect,” video Oct. 15, 2009. The new video in the TLC series addresses the loss of a loved one and offers parents and children alike tools to deal with...

Are chemicals in our environment masculinizing girls and feminizing boys? A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that this is the case, and one of the latest studies has linked exposure to a substance known as bisphenol A, or BPA, with aggressive behavior in girls. Liz Szabo reports on the research in USA Today, writing, “In the study of 249 pregnant women, the first to examine the effects of BPA on children's behavior, researchers found that girls ... were more likely to be aggressive if their mothers had high levels of BPA — an estrogen-like chemical used in many consumer...

Multiple-session early psychological interventions are no better at reducing posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms than no intervention at all and might even increase symptoms in some individuals, a review of 11 randomized controlled studies shows. “There was no evidence that a multiple session intervention aimed at everyone following a traumatic event was effective. There was a trend that just failed to reach significance for no intervention to result in less self-reported PTSD symptoms at 3 to 6-month follow-up than a multiple session intervention,” wrote Neil P. Roberts, D.Clin.Psy., of the Traumatic Stress Service at Cardiff and Vale National Health Services (Wales),...

(edit)Scientists say the hormones in the oral contraceptive suppress a female's interest in masculine men  - and make boyish men more attractive.   Dr Alexandra Alvergne, of the University of Sheffield, says the Pill could also be altering the way women pick mates - and could have long term implications for society.  'There are many obvious benefits of the Pill for women, but there is also the possibility that the Pill has psychological side effects that we are only just discovering,' she said.  'We need further studies to find out what these are.'  (edit)  Scientists have long known that a...

PRESCHOOLERS turning themselves into sexualised "mini-adults" by wearing bras, nail polish and lipstick are requiring psychological help in increasing numbers. Child development experts said young girls were now entering their "tween" years between being a child and a teenager at the tender age of six - five years earlier than previously. Experts said that by age six, girls needed branded clothes, at seven they wanted styled hair, by eight they were beginning diets, at nine they were styling their hair and by early teens were engaging in sex or sending sexually explicit text messages. The Daily Telegraph yesterday found crop-top...

The prevalence of mental health disorders in this country has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Who is treating all of these patients? Clinical psychologists and therapists are charged with the task, but many are falling short by using methods that are out of date and lack scientific rigor. This is in part because many of the training programs—especially some Doctorate of Psychology (PsyD) programs and for-profit training centers—are not grounded in science. A new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, by a panel of distinguished clinical scientists—Timothy Baker...

What parent hasn't used candy to pacify a cranky child or head off a brewing tantrum? When reasoning, threats and time-outs fail, a sugary treat often does the trick. But while that chocolate-covered balm may be highly effective in the short term, say British scientists, it may be setting youngsters up for problem behavior later. According to a new study, kids who eat too many treats at a young age risk becoming violent in adulthood. The research was led by Simon Moore, a senior lecturer in Violence and Society Research at Cardiff University in the U.K., who specializes in the...

Contrary to what had been thought, young people with autism recognize and compare relationships among objects in scenes Children with autism have difficulty forming social relationships. But they discern relationships among objects in visual scenes surprisingly well, indicating a fundamental grasp of analogical reasoning, according to a new study. Youngsters diagnosed with autism, or autistic disorder, reason about the relations between objects and people on a par with kids free of any developmental problems, psychology graduate student Kinga Morsanyi of the University of Plymouth, England, and psychologist Keith Holyoak of the University of California, Los Angeles report in an upcoming...

J.J. Newberry chuckles when he watches "Lie to Me," the Fox television series about scientists who help cops catch crooks with their extraordinary ability to detect lies by analyzing facial expressions and body language. Starring Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Lightman - a character inspired by the work of San Francisco scientist Paul Ekman, - the highly rated series is set to premiere its second season at 9 p.m. Monday, appearing on KTVU in the coveted slot after the network's smash hit "House." "If you shrug your shoulder, rotate your hand or even just slightly raise your lower lip, Lightman...

  Cults, wonderful on the outside but on the inside are very manipulating. Cult leaders are desperate to trick you into joining. They are after your obedience, your time and your money. Cults use sophisticated mind control and recruitment techniques that have been refined over time. Beware of thinking that you are immune from cult involvement, the cults have millions of members around the world who once thought they were immune, and still don't know they are in a cult! To spot a cult you need to know how they work and you need to understand the techniques they use....

Spanking Lowers A Child's IQ, Researcher Says September 24, 2009 Being spanked as a child is linked to having a lower IQ, according to a study presented today at the International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma in San Diego. The relationship between spanking and intelligence is found in children around the world, said the lead author of the study, University of New Hampshire professor Murray Straus. Children in the United States who were spanked had lower IQs -- by 2.8 to 5 points -- than those who were not spanked, Straus found. Straus studied 806 children ages 2 to...

“And the whole country’s under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization,” said Post, now a professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University. “The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there’s a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action.”

At a meeting inside the tight quarters of the Bay Area Career Center, Beth Nelson brings up something many laid-off job-seekers ask advisers when they find themselves unemployed. "I have an ebb and flow of motivation and productivity," the San Francisco musician, teacher and actress tells the six other job hunters. She then asks what she can do to fill in the long days without work. Keep an Excel spreadsheet noting different activities during the day, one person suggests. Volunteer for a nonprofit that helps the poor, or learn a new skill, another proposes. Schedule times to check in with...

London - Researchers found that women will typically spill the beans to someone else in 47 hours and 15 minutes. A study of 3 000 women aged between 18 and 65 also found that four in ten were unable to keep a secret, no matter how personal or confidential the news was. Michael Cox, UK Director of Wines of Chile which commissioned the research said: "It's official - women can't keep secrets." No matter how precious the piece of information, it's often out in the public domain within 48 hours. The study found that the average woman hears three pieces...

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome. (See article for details) ###

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils.If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome. And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story...

IT'S official - Victorians simply can't live without the internet. A new survey shows most of the state would give up sex, our car or even our partner before surrendering the beloved internet. When given a list of things they could survive without for a month, seven out of 10 Victorians said they would rather give up their partner than their internet - higher than the national average, the Herald Sun reports. Victorians also claimed they could give up chocolate or their daily coffee in favour of the worldwide web.....

Boy, 12, Is Having Sex Change, School Announces A school called an emergency assembly to tell children that a 12-year-old male pupil was having a sex change. By Murray Wardrop 18 Sep 2009 The youngster arrived for his first term at secondary school wearing a dress and with long hair in ribboned pigtails after his parents changed his name to a female one by deed poll over the summer holidays. However, the boy, who is preparing to undergo hormone treatment and sex change surgery, was immediately taunted by classmates who recognised him from primary school. As a result, the 1,000-pupil...

It is the ultimate domestic cliché: a woman, beautiful and dutiful, tending a stove all day in preparation for her husband’s homecoming. As soon as he walks in, the ritual can begin: family members take their seats around the table (he sits at the head, of course) and dinner is served. Couples are reliving a scene that has played out billions of times in our history because gender roles — husband at work all day, woman as homebody — have been forged not by relatively recent social conventions but by our distant evolutionary past. We are the "cooking ape," according...

Return to the Article September 16, 2009Is Obama a Narcissist?By Robin of Berkeley Many of us are asking ourselves the million dollar question: are Obama and his crew  narcissists? (Translation:  What in God's name is wrong with these people?  Are they on medications?  Are they off their medications? Are we being unknowingly subjected to some new reality show, Extreme Alien Invasion?) Now as a newby conservative, I have a long way to go to herald myself as an expert on conservatism, neoconservatism, paleoconservatism (whatever that is), and the like. But one thing I do know is crazy -- and that's...

At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old. The goal of Vittrup's study was to learn if typical children's videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children's racial attitudes. Her first step was to give the children a Racial Attitude Measure, which asked such questions as: How many White people...

Taller People Make Happier People, Study Shows Taller people appear to live happier lives, according to a new study.Researchers conducted a phone survey among more than 454,065 adults aged 18 and older between January 2008 and April 2009.Participants were asked to give their height as well as answer questions about their standard of living.Writing in the journal Economics and Human Biology, researchers said they used the Cantril "self-measuring striving scale", which allows participants to describe their quality of life through imagining a “life ladder” with rungs numbered from zero to 10 at the top. The top rung is associated...

It seems that in many people, a lifetime of bombardment by anti-gun messages and sentiment leads to a sort of suspension of reality when considering gun issues. The indoctrination into the gun control agenda requires a leap of faith and a refusal to consider the issue in any depth beyond parroting back emotion based arguments. An article in a student-run blog I read this morning clearly demonstrates the level of psychological denial required to accept those arguments at face value. This article raved about another student article being given a new "award" from the Austin Chronicle for "Best Way to...

Spending time on the Facebook networking site could enhance a key element of intelligence that is vital to success in life, a psychologist has claimed, but using Twitter may have the opposite effect. Playing video war games and solving Sudoku may have the same effect as keeping up to date with Facebook, according to Dr Tracy Alloway. But text messaging, micro-blogging on ''Twitter'' and watching YouTube were all likely to weaken ''working memory''. Working memory involves the ability both to remember information and to use it. Dr Alloway, from the University of Stirling in Scotland, has extensively studied working memory...

As a member of the American Psychological Association for 36 years, I am filled with indignation at the recent statement of the APA that deems it “inappropriate” for therapists to treat homosexual clients. Such therapy is called reparative therapy and has as its goal the establishment of a heterosexual orientation in place of a homosexual one. This statement of the APA has been issued despite the fact that there are a number of outstanding members of that organization, including two past presidents, who have strongly supported reparative treatment.Issued in August, “Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation” advises treatments that “increase...

Ponca City, We love you writes "The Telegraph reports that men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive. This leads to speculation that men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks. Psychologists at Radboud University in The Netherlands carried out the study after one of them was so struck on impressing an attractive woman he had never...

Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study. Pat Hagan 03 Sep 2009 The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive. Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or...