Expert Interviews & Perspectives in Counseling

Telling kids to ‘just say no’ just doesn’t work. Today’s approach to drug education and substance use disorder programs has to focus, instead, on high doses of compassion and science. The stakes are high: nearly 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, but only 10 percent receive treatment; more than 90 percent of those who do have an addiction started to drink alcohol or use drugs before they were 18 years old.

Sex and gender aren’t synonyms, though they’re often treated as such on medical documents, legal forms, and in casual conversation. Therapists who intend to work with intersex and gender diverse people must understand how independent sex and gender are, in order to comprehend how they intersect.

With National Eating Disorders Awareness Week coming up in February, we explore the range of eating disorders, what types of therapies are available, and resources for those struggling with (or those interested in treating) eating disorders.

In recent years, a pipeline from the foster care system to trafficking has gained the attention of organizations like the Human Rights Project for Girls. The group published a report called “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline,” highlighting that girls who grew up in the child welfare system, especially those placed in multiple homes, are particularly vulnerable to the exploitation of traffickers, who coerce girls into compliance with promises of love and affection.

Prior to the global health crisis, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Americans were already at greater risk of mental health problems, illicit drug-use, and suicide. Gay and lesbian youth are 3.7 times as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers, and transgender teens are almost six times as likely.

As we approach the one year mark of living in a global pandemic, communities around the world are suffering from what experts are calling “pandemic fatigue”—the feeling of exhaustion of life in the new normal. The endurance and sense of unity that many of us felt months ago at the beginning of the crisis is beginning to dissipate, and in its place is a feeling of restlessness and impatience.

When the coronavirus became a household word earlier this year, the world quickly shifted. We all had to perform many daily tasks differently—from how we grocery shopped to how we cleaned our homes, from how we worked to how we cared for our children. Developmental psychologists quickly recognized how much this impacted the daily lives of parents, and by extension, that of their children.

Lockdown measures and social distancing have a critical role to play in curbing the Covid-19 pandemic, but they come with the side effects of social isolation and loneliness, which have been proven to have harmful effects on the public.

Variations of the word narcissism, which comes from a Greek myth about a handsome youth named Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection, have been around for millennia. But in the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud published a paper on narcissism, generating interest from the psychology community. It has since been seen as a legitimate psychological condition.

The pandemic of 2020 has caused worldwide suffering, but could it be what bridges the bipartisan gap in America? Read on to learn what a leadership psychology professor has to say on political persuasion.