Aquaphobia

August 5th, 2010

Six teenagers drowned Monday in Louisiana’s Red River while attempting to save a friend who had slid into deeper water. The teenagers were wading in a popular recreation area where sandbars give way to 20 foot depths.

Sandbar

Sandbar

Those who drowned were the Warners: Takeitha, 13; and her brothers, JaMarcus, 14; and JaTavious, 17. Their cousin, Dekendrix Warner, 15, was rescued. The others killed were the Stewarts: Litrelle, 18; LaDarius, 17; and Latevin, 15.

Neither the teenagers or the adults watching knew how to swim.

Dekendrix Warner, the lone survivor, was wading near the shore when he slipped on a slick, clay surface and fell into deeper water. The other teens came to his aide but were tragically overcome.

Shreveport Assistant Fire Chief Fred Sanders said, “According to the divers, there was about 12 to 15 feet of water that slowly graded off from ankle depth to about three feet. It’s very slippery and so if you start hitting that bank, it’s very hard to find traction.”

“If you don’t have a swimming capability, you could find yourself slipping down that angle all the way to the 28 feet at the bottom of the river.”

A friend of the families, Marilyn Robinson, told a local newspaper that she watched helplessly as the victims went under. She said a large group of family and friends, including 20 children, were at the sandbar to barbecue.

Robinson claimed that the children were familiar with the water, but “none of us could swim.”

According an USA Swimming survey, lacking swimming skills is far too common. 40 percent of white children have low to no swimming ability; 70 percent of black children have little to no swimming ability, followed by 58 percent of Latino children.

Experts attribute the high numbers to a lack of access to pools, lack of financial means for swimming lessons, and the fact that non swimming parents are significiantly less likely to raise swimming children.

However, the most common reason for not swimming is a fear of drowning. A fear of drowning is closely related to the fear of water, which is known as Aquaphobia. This type of fear can make it nearly impossible to enjoy swimming, whether as a swimmer or spectator. Experts believe that this fear stems from a previous unpleasant experience with swimming.

Common symptoms of Aquaphobia include: high anxiety, dizziness, nausea, trembling, increased heart rate, sweating, the overwhelming desire to flee, and the feeling that if one enters the water they will drown.

Aquaphobe.

 Small first steps can be taken to overcome your fear, such as dangling one’s legs in the pool or walking on a beach with someone you trust. Ultimately, behavior therapy can help with this phobia.

With behavior therapy, one of the best treatments may be finding the original source of the fear. If you fear drowning, you have to know where the fear stems from if you want to overcome it. Your counselor will help you learn whether the beliefs surrounding your original fear are real or fake.

If an Aquaphobe can rationally understand and accept the general irrationality of their fear, one will ultimately be able to rethink how they view the water. A fear of drowning doesn’t have to be debilitating or life threatening. Swimming is a necessary survival skill.

As stated earlier, behavior therapy is extremely beneficial. Your therapist at Apex Behavioral Health will help you take small steps in treatment until you can take that giant leap into the pool.

Recalling distant events can help ward off intrusive thoughts

July 29th, 2010

Want to forget something disturbing?

Try to remember an overseas trip rather than a domestic one, or a memory in the more distant past.

When you are daydreaming, it is difficult to remember what was going on before you stopped paying attention. Well, psychologists say that context is important to remembering. If you leave the place where the memory was made - the context of it - the memory will be harder to recall.

Previous studies have also found that thinking about something else, whether it’s daydreaming or mind wandering, will block access to memories of recent past.

Psychological scientists Peter F. Delaney and Lili Sahakyan of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Colleen M. Kelley and Carissa A. Zimmerman of Florida State University studied if the content of your daydream affects the  ability to access a recently acquired memory.

Participants were told to look at a list of words as they appeared on the computer screen, one at a time. Next, they were told to think of either home (where they’d been that morning) or their parents house (where they were several weeks ago). The participant was then shown a second list of words.

At the end of the test, participants were asked to recall as many words possible from the two lists.

Partipants who thought about home, the place they’d been two hours ago, remembered more of the words from the first list than participants did who thought about several weeks ago.

The same was true for memories about place, which was tested in a similar second experiment.

People who thought about a vacation in the US remembered more words than those who thought about a vacation overseas.

A practical application of the research may be helpful for people who are trying to forget things.

“If there’s something you don’t feel like thinking about, you’re better off remembering a more distant event than a close event, to try to put it out of your mind for a while. It can help you feel like you’re in a different situation,” said Delaney.

The study was  published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Boomerang Kids

May 20th, 2010

Adolescence is defined as a transitional stage of physical and mental human development that occurs between childhood and adulthood. The end of adolescence varies by country, culture, and function; even within a single culture there can be different ages when an individual is considered by society mature enough to do certain tasks.

An increasing amount of college graduates have received their degree only to move home. In a sense, this post grad home life is a new form of prolonged adolescence. Obviously the twentysomething age group is physically grown up, yet they are still dependant on mom and dad for room and board.

Children of baby boomers (boomerangs) would be perplexed at the idea of their own 22-year-old mom or dad moving back in with grandma and grandpa. Baby boomers are more independent and self reliant, growing up in an age where they questioned both the status quo and established authority systems. As adults, baby boomers are extremely hard working and may define themselves by their professional accomplishments. Boomers may criticize younger generations for their lack of work ethic or commitment to the work force.

Boomerangs leave home to go to college only to graduate from college and move back home. This can be a mixed blessing for parents, emotionally and financially. Many kids move home due to the lack of availability of a job and student loan debt. Financially, for students graduating with $23,000 in debt, it makes sense to move home and save money. Some reports list numbers as high as 80% of college graduates as moving back home.

But what about the 21-25 year olds who are at community college or are not enrolled in school who are living with mom and dad?  There’s a seeming lack of motivation and independence which was previously possessed by their baby boomer parents. Perhaps home life was too good to them, house too nice, to the point where they never want to leave.

If your boomerang child flys home, or if you want to make your child independent enough to leave home, here are several tips for parents:

  • Have a serious discussion. The conversation should occur early on to ensure you and your child have the same expectations about living arrangements. Figure out why your child has decided to live at home: to start a career and save money, prepare for graduate school, or take a break from everything?
  • Set clear expectations. Talk about your expectations regarding chores and expenses. Discuss whether he or she can have dates over for dinner, or if boy/girlfriends can spend the night. If your child is sleeping out, should s/he call home first? Setting and enforcing expectations can help children learn the skills they need to live independently.
  • Set a time limit. If your ultimate goal for your kid is independence, set a limit as to how long he or she can live in your house. You can adjust the deadline later if necessary. If everyone is on the same page it will avoid the resentment that may arise from getting the boot out of the house.
  • Keep promises.  If parents and adult children hold to their agreements and continue to respect one another, they won’t encounter many problems. Resentment can arise when parents or children are not doing what they’ve agreed upon. If things start to unravel, have a family meeting to discuss expectations and boundaries.
  • Charge Rent (?). For some parents, charging rent seems ridiculous. But for other parents trying to create independence in their child, charging rent, even a minimal amount, helps prepare their adult child for living independently.

When it comes to debt and helping out your child financially, here are tips to remember:

  • Help them restructure debts, rather than bailing them out. Teach them how to avoid new debt. One option is to match debt-reduction payments; for the child to put away credit cards and live within their means. Credit card bills should always be paid on time!
  • Don’t sacrifice your own financial future. Decide how much you can afford to and want to help. Remember that your children have decades to build their financial security, while you may be only a few years away from your retirement date. Ironically, if you are not careful, you could end up depending on your children for help in your old age.
  • Stay organized. Having children return home can be stressful and one way to manage stress and anxiety is to stay organized. Know where important papers, such as life insurance or student loan bills are kept.

Bill Coplin, author of 25 Ways to Make College Pay Off,  said boomerangs moving home for financial reasons may have a downside as well.

“First, the graduate lives at an unrealistic level of comfort, making a break for independence difficult,” Coplin says. “Second, the financial pressure to stick [with] a job and work hard is not there if he can quit and not become homeless. Third, it’s frequently a sign that the new graduate is unwilling to be an adult.”

To the college graduate moving back home, here are tips for you:

  • Set a mutually agreed upon time limit; a clear timetable for how long you will live at home.
  • Be actively pursuing a graduate degree or looking for employment.
  • Make sure you save money. Not having to pay for rent or food will save a substantial amount of money, don’t spend it at the bar or partying with friends.
  • Do as much as you can do for yourself. Pay your own bills on time, and handle your own comings and goings. Don’t stay out late if you have a job interview the next day, or don’t blow off applying for jobs to hang out with friends. The longer you wait to apply, the less likely you’ll get the job you want.

Even employed boomerangs may live at home because they cannot afford a house or the cost of renting an apartment. One statistic listed house prices as five times the average income, compared to two to three times twenty years ago.

The best case scenario is when the adult boomerang kid works and contributes to the house. The worst case scenario is when there’s no job, no contribution, no end date, and parents are at odds over the child’s presence.

Joseph Tecce, a psychology professor at Boston college, thinks that parents have to realize that their adult kids are no longer children. He doesn’t believe in charging rent or setting time tables, but says that there must be some guidelines.

“Parents are not running a hotel. Everyone should say this is a chance for us to enter into a cooperative venture. We love each other and we’re going to help each other out,” said Tecce.  As for benefit of the parents, the child can refill the empty nest and “make a contribution to enrich the parents’  lives.”

Tecce also said that boomerangs shouldn’t feel like a failure due to their loss of independence, as “Who would have ever thought the economy would be this bad?”

Since 1975, the relative earnings of young employees has fallen. Back then, the average 23 year-old would get 90% of the average salary. Today, they get 70%.  After three and a half years of work, most graduates are still not earning about the median salary. They have a high tax burden for student loans repayments, along with federal tax and car and health insurance.

Unless parents can afford to finance a second house or an apartment for you, many times the only option is to return home. There is a job shortage due to the recession; experts speculate there is one job to four or five people applying for it.

As a result of boomerangs coming home, baby boomers are really part of the sandwich generation, looking after older kids and even older parents.

For the boomerangs, living at home for most means living far from the city - the city that big banks, advertising, publishing, and politics are centered around. Those who don’t live close, or can’t afford to, won’t have access to the internships and low paid jobs needed to enter certain careers.

Nagging parents who are irritated that their children are sitting around the house won’t help the mental well being of the boomerangs. Unemployment can lead to depression, and depression doesn’t help self motivation, a vital trait needed to seek employment and one that is crucial in meeting new people in the work field. If your boomerang kid is depressed, seek help at Apex Behavioral Health!

Postpartum Depression in Fathers

May 20th, 2010

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found 10% of men have prenatal and postpartum depression; more common than previously thought.

James Paulson, the author of the study who works at the department of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical school, said “It’s not screened for and caught enough in women, and I would say in practice it [depression in new fathers] is virtually unknown. Most clinicians and most moms and dads aren’t aware that there’s an increased risk of depression for fathers.”

Depression in fathers has potential negative implications for the family, along with the child’s development, behavioral, and emotional health.

The study also found that depression in fathers had an association with depression in mothers; when moms were more depressed, so were dads. However, more research is needed to see how the two are related, for one parent’s mood has not been proven to cause the other’s.

Researchers analyzed 43 studies of documented depression in fathers between the first trimester and the first year after childbirth between January 1980 and October 2009, which led to data on more than 28,000 participants.

The study found that about 25% of new fathers had depression in the first 3 to 6 months after childbirth. While the study did not examine causes, the author suggests that leaves of absence from work normally expires around 3 months; care for the infant changes as do sleep schedules.

The United States had the highest rates of fathers’ depression at 14%, while countries abroad had depression rates of about 8%. The countries analyzed in the study were primarily from developed countries.

The reasons for the differences are unknown, but Paulson theorizes that the U.S. has comparatively stricter family-leave policies in the work place than some European countries do.

“In the U.S., there’s a known problem with men seeking help for depression and a documented stigma with mental health,” said Paulson, citing possible additional causes.

Limitations of the study are that it drew from a large pool of studies that had different methodologies and different ways of reporting and measuring depression. Therefore, the authors can’t determine what the prevalence of depression is in any specific time frame.  Additionally, the overall analysis may include bias inherent in the studies that put it together.

Regardless, the findings do point to a need for greater screenings of depression in expecting fathers. The authors wrote that the connection between parents’ depression suggests that depression in one parent should prompt clinical attention to the other.

The study said, “prevention and intervention efforts for depression in the parents might be focused on the couple and family rather than the individual.”

Depression rates among men of different age groups were not compared, and the study did not have any teen fathers.

 Postpartum depression symptoms in men include sadness, anxiety, and worthlessness. Men may experience it more in the forms fo anger, irritabilty and withdrawal than in sadness, which is a common symptom in women.

Paulson says that the first step in addressing the problem is to get both spouses and physicians to recognize that new and expecting fathers are at increased risk for depression and may need treatment such as psychotherapy and medication.

“Actually getting fathers to the point where they’re talking to a doctor about it is the most difficult challenge,” he said. “Once fathers are in the appointment, I think they have a much better chance of getting effective help for depression.”

No Job & 5 Kids, Man Wrote It Is “Better To End Our Lives”

May 6th, 2010

Los Angeles - In late January 2010, a man fatally shot himself, his wife, and their five young children: Brittney, 8; twins Jaszmin and Jassely, 5; and twins Benjamin and Christian, ages 2 years and 4 months.  Before the killings, Ervin Antonio Lupoe faxed a note to a television station claiming him and his wife were fired from their hospital jobs and planned the killings together, as an escape for the whole family.

Lupoe Family

Lupoe Family

The station called the police after receiving the fax and a police dispatcher received a call from a man stating, “I’ve just returned home and my whole family’s been shot.”   The police believe the man was Ervin. Officers rushed to the home around 8:30 a.m., minutes after the killings, only to smell gun powder lingering in the air.

The fax alleged that Ervin’s wife, Ana Lupoe, helped plan the killings of the family but police Lt. John Romero said Ervin was the suspect; a revolver was found next to his body.  Ana’s body was found in an upstairs bedroom with the bodies of the couple’s twin 2-year-old boys. The bodies of an 8-year-old girl and twin 5-year-old girls were found alongside Ervin Lupoe’s in another bedroom.

Ervin removed three of his children from school a week and a half prior; the school prinicipal said that they were moving to Kansas.  

Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles released a statement confirming both Lupoe and his wife had worked there; both were medical technicians.

The letter indicated that Lupoe and his wife had been under investigation for misrepresenting their employment to an outside agency in order to obtain childcare. Ervin alleged that an administrator told the couple on December 23 that “You should have not even bothered to come to work today, you should have blown your brains out.” The couple complained to human resources and were offered an apology. However, they were fired two days later.

In his fax, Ervin wrote: “ They did nothing to the manager who stated such and did not attempt to assist us in the matter, knowing we have no job and five children under 8 years with no place to go. So here we are.”

In a statement, the hospital said it was  “saddened by the despair in Mr. Lupoe’s letter faxed to the media, but we are confident that no one told him to take his own life or the lives of his family.”

“After a horrendous ordeal, my wife felt it better to end our lives; and why leave our children in someone else’s hands? We have no job and 5 children under 8 years with no place to go. So here we are,” wrote Lupoe.

One news outlet reported Lupoe was $600,000 in debt.

The letter concluded with, “Oh lord, my God. Is there no hope for a widow’s son?”

“Today our worst fear was realized,” said police Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner. “It’s just not a solution. There’s just so many ways you find alternatives to doing something so horrific and drastic as this.”

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 30,000 people kill themselves each year. The CDC notes that there was a job loss or financial hardship present in a significant number of cases.  Researchers say that unemployment alone does not cause suicide, but can act as a stresser.

The loss of a job combined with financial uncertainty, loss of retirement savings, stress of overdue bills or debt, and mortgage or rent payments can leave the individual feeling that suicide is the only way out. For some, this may involve taking one’s family with them.

Several studies have found that suicide and domestic violence increase during unemployment.  A 1998 study in the British Medical Journal found “the link between suicide and unemployment is more powerful that other socio-economic measures.”

Unemployment can become harder to deal with when other stressers, such as losing the family’s house and loss of savings, are present. Economic turmoil may also lead to more frequent abuse and increasingly violent abuse when domestic violence already exists.

Jacquelyn Campbell at John Hopkins University School of Nursing found in 2003 that unemployment is the single strongest predictor in cases where men murder their wives. The study, published in American Journal of Public Health, stated that an abuser’s lack of a job increased the risk of murder.

The abuser’s access to a firearm increased the risk to more than five times, and threats to kill her and threats with a weapon also were strongly associated with homicide after taking the other factors into account.

“In the United States, women are killed by intimate partners more often than by any other type of perpetrator, with the majority of these murders involving prior physical abuse,” said Campbell.

Roughly 90% of people who commit suicide have some form of untreated mental illness which compounds their feelings of hopelessness and depression. Financial problems and job loss can be triggers, especially for men, reported the Association for Suicide Prevention.

“It creates a lot of anxiety,” said Mary Jane Landrock, a social worker at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. “People start feeling hopeless, or that their life is out of control. They feel trapped, like there’s no way out.

“Most people have no idea how much structure going to work provides to your day,” she said. “You go to work, typically where your friends are. Being laid off can be very shameful for people, a lot of anger involved.”

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