Voices In The Family

June 2011

6/6/11
Mental Health Care - Small Steps and Big Initiatives

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During Mental Health Awareness Month in May, we heard a lot of hopeful news regarding mental illness: mentions of groundbreaking treatments, less stigma, and better care. But are things really improving? Some experts say that despite millions of dollars spent on research, care is often inefficient and unavailable. We take a look at big initiatives and small steps. Are they making a difference for those seeking and finding support for their mental health care needs? Dan Gottlieb is joined by WHYY's Behavioral Health reporter Maiken Scott and guests:

Mark Salzer - a professor and founding Chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at Temple University. He is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities.

Edie Mannion - manager and co-founder of the Training and Education Center (TEC) at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania (MHASP).

Arthur Evans, Jr. - heads Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services.

6/13/11
The Dark Side of Happiness

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Happiness is good for us, right? Thousands of self-help books tell us how to find it...phone apps allow us to track it. The psychology of being happy has been a hot topic in mental health for quite some time. But now, there are some dark clouds on the blissful horizon. New research in the field of positive psychology shows happiness in the wrong time or place can lead to social difficulties. Too much of it could be a sign of mental illness, and the relentless pursuit of it is self-centered and a futile journey anyway. On the next Voices in the Family with Dan Gottlieb: the so-called dark side of happiness with psychologists June Gruber and Dacher Keltner. Gruber has written, in part, A Dark Side of Happiness? How, When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good. She's an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University and Director of the Yale Positive Emotion and Psychopathology (YPEP) Laboratory. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at U-C Berkeley and is the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He's written Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life.

6/20/11
ADHD Adults

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Millions of adults experience ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), yet only 11% are in treatment. And why is that? Generally ADHD begins in childhood and can look like distractibility. In adolescents, it can look like extreme moodiness. Adults often don't get diagnosed because, while they're good at multitasking, they aren't good at regulating their emotions. It's when the career and family life suffer that a need for help is clear. Of course, there are many people who are diagnosed with ADHD who really have something else. New research now brings this condition into focus, with increasing attention being paid to emotions and self-regulation. On the next Voices in the Family with Dan Gottlieb: ADHD - findings and treatments with psychiatrist Tony Rostain. Rostain is Medical Director of the University of Pennsylvania Adult ADHD Treatment and Research Program. He's a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

6/27/11
The Story of Beautiful Girl and Inhumane Institutions

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Rachel Simon’s new novel The Story of Beautiful Girl is not only a portrait of great love, it tracks the inhumane treatment of developmentally and intellectually disabled individuals who were institutionalized in the 20th century. On the next Voices in the Family with Dan Gottlieb, we discuss the book and the institutional treatment of some of our most vulnerable citizens with novelist Rachel Simon, researcher Jim Conroy, and self-advocate Jean Searle. Simons has written The Story of Beautiful Girl, which is her first New York Times Bestseller, and the 2002 memoir Riding The Bus With My Sister, which was a national bestseller. Her work has been adapted for film, television, radio, and stage. She lives in Delaware. Conroy is the founder and president of The Center for Outcome Analysis (COA), a non-profit firm founded in 1985 to perform evaluation, research, and demonstration projects in the human services and health care services. Searle was institutionalized at age 12 and released years later only as a result of the judge-ordered closure of the Pennhurst State School and Hospital for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic (Spring City, PA). She is co-president of the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance and is working on her memoir. To view Suffer The Little Children, the groundbreaking 1968 NBC10 expose on Pennhurst State School by reporter Bill Baldini, visit www.preservepennhurst.org.