ABSTRACT: Clinical hypnotherapy has been soundly established as an effective treatment for the symptoms associated with cancer and its associated therapies, including chronic and acute pain, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and mood disturbances. Its use produces strong tendencies toward improvement of patients’ quality of life and of treatment cost. As the etiology and progression of various forms of cancer become better understood, the potential of hypnotherapy for increasing survival rates by improving medication response and even slowing or reversing the progression of the disease increases. Given the lack of risks to patients and the wide potential for benefit, additional research and clinical experimentation into this area are encouraged, and recommendations for this type of hypno-oncological exploration are discussed. An experimental hypnotherapy script which attempts to reverse the course of the disease while addressing multiple symptoms is included as Appendix I.

PDF: Hypno-Oncological Interventions, Understandings, and Potentials.

INTRODUCTION: According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), more than five million individuals meeting criteria for serious mental illness “perceived themselves as having an unmet need for treatment in the year prior to the survey” (Bender, 2003). Of these, almost half cited inability to afford treatment as the primary reason for their needs not being met. This means that mentally ill individuals who want appropriate treatment but are unable to afford it constitute more than one percent of the entire adult population of the United States, a condition which represents a public health crisis and should be addressed.

There are a number of ways in which this issue can be conceptualized and corresponding actions which can be taken. One way in which legislators and advocacy groups have attempted to remedy the problem is through the proposal and institution of “parity” measures for mental health service coverage as it applies to American workers and other insurance consumers. Mental health parity, as an ideal, would make mental health and substance abuse services available to consumers on a level equal to the availability of general medical and surgical services. This can be accomplished either by forcing employers to add the additional benefits onto their group insurance plans, or by forcing insurance companies to include equal mental health coverage as a standard part of all health plans that they offer. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the arguments for and against mental health parity as well as the implications of the available alternatives.

PDF: Mental Health Parity: A Brief Policy Analysis

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of methamphetamine use among men who have sex with men (MSM) ranges from 10-30% in major US cities, and presents a serious public health issue (Shoptaw & Reback, 2006). While the use of methamphetamine is by no means limited to the gay community, its use represents an important part of that community’s response to the undue psychosocial pressure that its members face. As the reader will see, an understanding of the psychological purposes of methamphetamine use can be understood by examining the social role that it plays among the particular high-risk gay subcultures in which its use has become ingrained. The literature in this area almost uniformly includes MSM as a whole rather than only gay-identified individuals, although it is clear that many of the psychological issues involved in this epidemic are tied to gay identity and the effects of gay stereotypes. This paper will explore the ways in which socially responsible practitioners, by adopting a teleological understanding of methamphetamine use among MSM, can plan and implement highly cost-effective strategies for addressing this important social issue.

PDF: Methamphetamine Use and High-Risk Sexual Behavior Among Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Review of the Literature and Plan for Intervention

INTRODUCTION: The “medical model” that currently guides the majority of psychological research, assessment, and treatment is a deeply entrenched historical, social, and political phenomenon (Maddux, Snyder, & Lopez, 2004; Laungani, 2002) which has no empirical support whatsoever (Wampold, 2001). This article will outline some of the problems that the widespread acceptance of the medical model poses for the field of psychology.

Wampold, Ahn, & Coleman (2001) list five components of the medical model of psychotherapy: to begin with, the patient presents with symptoms of a classifiable disorder or disease; from the existing research and accepted materials, a psychological explanation for the disorder is available; the knowledge of this specific disorder and the theoretical conceptualization of such are sufficient that a potential mechanism for psychological change can be identified; having identified these properties, the therapist logically derives a set of specific psychotherapeutic ingredients and administers them to the patient; these specific ingredients are responsible for the benefits of the psychotherapy thus administered. “The last component,” Wampold, et al. (2001) explain, “which is often referred to as specificity, is critical to the medical model of psychotherapy and gives primacy to the specific ingredients rather than common or contextual factors.” This is particularly significant in that no research has yet to provide any empirical backing for this principle of specificity in psychotherapeutic interventions, whereas a growing body of research is being accumulated in support of alternative, contextual models of psychotherapy (Wampold, 2001).

PDF: The Medical Model of Psychology: Problems and Solutions.

INTRODUCTION: The issue of repressed memory is surprisingly heated, and comes loaded with the weight of several fundamentally different conceptions of the human mind. The real issue, hidden away in the word “repressed,” is whether a memory once repressed can be unleashed, or “recovered.” Thus we find ourselves in the awkward scientific predicament of having, for each paper published presenting evidence of repressed and recovered memories, at least a few papers published expressly to disclaim it. This article will attempt to make some sense of the available literature, drawing in alternative paradigms in addition to empirical studies.

PDF: Recovered Reality: A Review of the Literature on Recovered Memory Phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION: Everybody “knows” what happened in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. At the behest of their charismatic leader, all the members of the Peoples Temple religious cult—the residents of Jonestown—“lined up in a pavilion in front of a vat containing a mixture of Kool-Aid and cyanide” and “drank willingly of the deadly solution” (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2005, pp.4-5). That citation is taken from a popular Social Psychology textbook, and is a resounding demonstration of the phenomenon that this paper will attempt to explore: you see, the authors of that textbook are so secure in their conception of the events surrounding the deaths in Jonestown that they feel no need to provide a reference for it. It is entered into the student consciousness as common knowledge. The fact that the popularly-accepted truth that Aronson, et al are parroting in this example is plainly false is almost beside the point, although this paper will provide a brief examination of some of the evidence which contradicts that accepted truth. The problem is much broader than the debunking of a single myth, and demands that some very important and difficult questions receive systematic evaluation: how is it that entire populations “know” things that contradict all available evidence, and what can be done to mediate this effect?

PDF: Jonestown: The Social Psychology of Official Stories and Accepted Truths.