2010 APA Convention Blog

Take-home thoughts

Attendees of APA's 2010 Annual Convention will be flying home with more than pilfered pens and hotel shampoo. Here's a sampling of what psychologists and students took from this year's meeting.

"Seeing so many people gathered together around shared interests inspires me at every APA convention I've come to!"

-- Suzi Marie Clark, Clarion University

"A thought that inspired me was that we need to have more detailed research as far as looking at each population and comorbidity, in order to treat them better."

-- Dorothy Reinagel, Alliant International University

A glimpse at the APA Caregiver Briefcase

As so many of the presidential programming sessions at this year's APA Annual Convention have already emphasized, caregiving is a responsibility that will touch almost all of us at some point in our lives. And with an aging population and so many people caring for ill and disabled children and young adults, the need for help from psychologists on reducing the stresses on family caregivers across the lifespan will only continue to grow.

In response to this need, APA President Carol Goodheart, PhD, convened the APA Presidential Task Force on Caregivers in the spring of 2009. The culmination of their work on the issue of caregiving will be revealed in early 2011 with the launch of the web-based APA Family Caregiver Briefcase for Psychologists. At a session Saturday, Goodheart and the other task-force members provided a glimpse into several of the components of the briefcase, including:

• Facts and figures about family caregiving and common caregiving problems
• Tips on how to reach caregivers
• Assessment and intervention strategies and tools
• Information on conducting caregiver research
• Advice on addressing the needs of culturally diverse groups

Researchers exploring therapeutic uses of hallucinogens

People struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder who haven't responded to conventional treatments, lifelong smokers, patients with terminal cancer and even the mentally and physically healthy have all shown therapeutic benefits in controlled experiments with hallucinogens, psychology and medical researchers reported at a symposium Saturday.

Working with a group of participants given psilocybin derived from mushrooms, Roland Griffiths, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that months later, 80 percent of subjects reported the experience as one of the five most spiritually significant of their entire lives, and continued to feel improvements in mood and behavior.

Adolescents and healthy sexual attitudes

Young people today are bombarded with messages about sex from the media, advertising and their peers. Unfortunately, one message they're often not hearing is how to make their own healthy decisions about sex. Researchers at APA's Annual Convention shared some of the latest research on what affects those messages and how parents and teachers can do more to help adolescents make better decisions.

Throwing her weight around

Contrary to most polls, America is not the world's most overweight nation, not by a long shot: that distinction goes to the South Pacific island of Nauru. America? It's number 20 on the list. So why the discrepancy? Dr. Esther Rothblum of San Diego State University thinks she knows the answer, which she outlined today in her invited address "It's Time to Throw Our Weight Around: The New Field of Fat Studies": Jenny Craig wants us to think we're the kings of cholesterol.

And Ms. Craig is serious about it -- after all, in 1995, she, along with Slim Fast and a raft of other diet food companies, fired the opening salvo in the War on Obesity. Now, 15 years later, Rothblum is fighting back. Dubbing her counter-offensive "Fat Studies", she is pushing back on discrimination based on body weight.

Why do kids kill themselves?

There's a wealth of data on adolescent suicide, and numerous programs and interventions designed to prevent it. But what about even younger children? In 2006, 56 children under the age of 12 committed suicide -- about one per week. And there's a staggering lack of research into suicide among kids this young. As a first step toward addressing that problem, a panel convened at APA's Annual Convention to share with audience members what's currently known, what still needs further research, and what can be done about it.

Examining the crossroads of our human experiences

Psychologists have always been concerned with the effects of race, ethnicity, gender, social class and sexuality on health and well-being, but what they haven't explored as often is how all of these social categories work together to affect an individual's life experience. For example, research suggests that black women tend to report higher levels of body satisfaction than white and Asian-American women, but the studies are mainly based on body image measures developed from work with white, middle-class women, who have been raised to view thinness as beautiful. Isn't it time to rethink the assumption that these measures are equivalent and valid across all of these groups?

The answer to this question and more were discussed Friday at APA's Annual Convention during a symposium examining the implications of 'intersectionality,' a social science theory suggesting that classical models of discrimination, based on race, gender, sexuality and other markers of difference, do not act independent of one another.

Many psychologists don’t seek out the psychological care they need, survey suggests

Ironically enough, almost half of psychology practitioners don’t seek help when they feel intense stress, even though 18 percent reported they had suicidal ideation during stressful times, according to results of an APA survey on practitioner worries released on Friday.

APA conducted the survey to assess the need for colleague-assistance programs. Although such programs sprung up nationwide during the 1980s, today only 30 state, provincial or territorial psychological associations have one. Several programs were dismantled after a lack of use.

The top five stressors identified by the survey were:

Love code: Social engagement and social bonding

Picture a mother holding her newborn infant. The mother calmly and contentedly rocks her baby, not clutching for fear of dropping the infant. At the heart of this moment is the uniquely mammalian hormone oxytocin, says Sue Carter, PhD, a neuroscientist in the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago who will co-present with Stephen Porges, PhD, also of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Oxytocin acts on autonomic systems, such as the brain stem, and allows us to manage the challenge of meeting a new partner, falling in love and caring for our offspring.

“Love — acting in part through oxytocin — helps us heal body, brain and behavior,” Carter says.

Moment to moment: Mindfulness-based relapse prevention in the treatment of addictive behaviors

When a smoker who’s trying to quit gets a cigarette craving or an alcoholic gets the urge to drink, he or she can avoid relapse with a mindfulness-based technique called “urge surfing,” suggests research by G. Alan Marlatt, PhD. Instead of ignoring or suppressing the urge for a cigarette or beer, people can imagine the craving as a building wave, and their breath as a surfboard, riding the urge until it rolls by.

That’s just one technique Marlatt, a pioneer in relapse prevention and addiction treatment and director of the University of Washington’s Addictive Behaviors Research Center, will describe during his talk at this year’s convention.