"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. "


Posts tagged with 'loss'

Psychotherapy with couples & other close relationships

28th January 2019

Over the next two days I'm due to run a two day training workshop in Glasgow on "Psychotherapy with couples & other close relationships". Here are the downloadable slides for the first day on "Working with couples" (sadly with the cartoons removed for copyright reasons) and here the slides for …

Kathy Shear workshop on complicated grief: identification (2nd post)

19th June 2015

I wrote a blog post yesterday morning setting the scene for a two day workshop I was about to go to with Professor Kathy Shear on her treatment approach for complicated grief. Well, how did the day go? It was very interesting, inspiring, and also a little too much "simply …

Kathy Shear workshop on complicated grief: before (1st post)

18th June 2015

I was struck by a couple of papers on grief that I read last year. One was Kathy Shear & colleagues' "Treatment of complicated grief in elderly persons: a randomized clinical trial" and the other was Bryant et al's "Treating prolonged grief disorder: a randomized clinical trial." I was impressed …

Treatment of prolonged grief disorder

26th December 2014

A couple of recent research studies have underlined the value of specific forms of psychotherapy for complicated grief reactions: Shear, M. K., et al. (2014). "Treatment of complicated grief in elderly persons: a randomized clinical trial." JAMA Psychiatry 71(11): 1287-1295. IMPORTANCE: Complicated grief (CG) is a debilitating condition, most prevalent …

Recent research: a mixed bag of six papers on anxiety

19th February 2009

Here are half a dozen papers with anxiety relevance. The first couple are about the interaction between genetic vulnerability (or resilience) and childhood experience. The Stevens et al paper is an update on the large body of research looking at psychological genetic vulnerability/resilience in macaque monkeys and how this interacts …

Ways of coping: theory & personal experience

25th January 2009

In blog postings earlier this month, I've talked about supporting my Mum after her recent couple of strokes. She's been shipped through three different hospitals and now is more peaceful in a nursing home. It's sad - very sad at times - and it's great that she seems more comfortable, …

Friendship, life planning, & expressing emotions

11th January 2009

Yesterday and today are a check-in time with my friend Larry. I've written in a previous blog post how Larry and I have met every three or four months for many years specifically to review how our lives are going and to plan and prioritize our goals for the next …

Edie: New year intentions

1st January 2009

Sadness. I woke feeling sad ... aching in my chest and then in my gut. Not awful, just like a dull toothache, or a hurt, a wound. Yesterday when I visited my mother in the Stroke Unit of Liberton Hospital, one of the more senior nurses came up to me …

Recent research: six studies on depression – bereavement, pregnancy, bipolar disorder, suicide, & stress in hospital staff

11th December 2008

Five of these six studies are from last month's American Journal of Psychiatry. Kendler et al discuss the many similarities and only occasional differences between bereavement-related and other life event-related depression - an issue explored further in Maj's editorial. Li et al show that depression in pregnancy (exacerbated further by …