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This presentation covers Psychotherapy and Psychopharmacotherapy for Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Watch the full presentation here.
We offer both virtual / online and in-office treatment options.
For more information, please contact The Center for Treatment of Anxiety and Mood Disorders in Delray Beach, Florida at 561-496-1094 today.
Across the country, another year of college is in full swing. Although some schools have gone to strictly virtual learning in an effort to control infection spread among their students, many are combining this option with in-person classes, thus creating more potential for exposure to the virus. Also, many campuses are dealing with students who flaunt social distancing guidelines and gather for parties, which spreads it even more. While many young people were eager to get back to school after being fairly isolated during the summer, these seemingly reckless situations are negatively affecting the mental health of many students.
When the American College Health Association collected information for their Spring, 2020, National College Health Assessment, an average of 49.6 percent of the 50, 307 respondents reported moderate stress levels. Another 24.9 percent said they were experiencing high levels of stress – and that survey only included schools who had begun their data collection prior to March 16, 2020, when many states began shutting down. Today, those numbers are much higher.
In fact, according to a study done at nine public research universities across the U. S. and led in part by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), the incidence of major depressive disorder has more than doubled since Spring, 2019.
One of The Center’s founders, Andrew Rosen, Ph.D. was recently a guest on The Experts Speak, a free podcast series from The Florida Psychiatric Society, to discuss some of the changes, themes, and pivot points that telemedicine and the Covid crisis have produced, and how it may modify – or not — the styles and goals of psychotherapy.
Listen to the full podcast here.
We offer both virtual / online and in-office treatment options.
For more information, please contact The Center for Treatment of Anxiety and Mood Disorders in Delray Beach, Florida at 561-496-1094 today.
As the 2020 – 2021 school year begins, many parents and children are experiencing a form of separation anxiety over sending kids back into the classroom during the pandemic. The beginning of the new school year can be threatening to a child during normal times, but the prospect of going into a situation where the coronavirus is likely to be present has raised anxiety levels in many families.
For parents who live in school districts that offer a choice between virtual or in-person learning, it can be overwhelming to make a decision over which is best for their child. Being safe at home means that kids who have special needs or who learn better in person will lose out on many learning opportunities, while children who are fearful of being in a classroom will struggle if they have to go back into the school.
All this stress can bring up separation anxiety and school refusal in kids, not to mention heightened school anxiety in parents.
Sometimes it seems as if we’ve all become trapped in a movie that is playing out worldwide. The coronavirus pandemic is like nothing we’ve ever seen before and has indelibly changed our lives. This time last year, people would have laughed if you’d predicted the shuttering of schools and businesses, that face masks would become a fashion statement, or that our normal lives would be turned upside down so completely. Yet, despite this upheaval, there are still good things that have come from the pandemic.
A first time patient comes into my office. I attentively listen to their story, ask pertinent questions, order tests when necessary, make an assessment and recommend a course of treatment. The prescription of medication is often involved. Thankfully, most people get better. But why do they get better? Was it the medication, the talking therapy or just the “tincture of time?” I would like to think that it was my careful choice of medication while the psychotherapist will want to take credit for their role. I think that the honest answer is more than the sum of these parts.
I would like to suggest that there is a component of treatment often ignored. It is the power of hope. Hope you say! What does this four letter word have to do with medical care? It certainly has no relationship to the tremendous advances in medical science and technology that exist today. I don’t want to minimize the power of medical science. But I contend that in fact the power of hope provides an essential component of the therapeutic process.
Does your anxiety begin before you even hit the alarm button in the morning? Or maybe you are waking up early with anxious thoughts about the day ahead already coursing through your mind. Morning anxiety is common simply because stress is common, and it’s usually nothing to worry about. If you find that you are frequently anxious about the everyday tasks and situations that most other people aren’t threatened by, however, you may have developed an anxiety disorder.
Never before in modern memory has the human race been faced with such a stressful and anxiety provoking foe. The novel coronavirus or COVI-19 has resulted in untold emotional unrest and fear among all nations and peoples of our world. There has been a lot of talk about the “invisible enemy,” an RNA based complex protein that looks like a World War 2 anti-ship mine with spikes sticking out of its surface. We are informed daily by the media that young and old victims of this virus are ending up on ventilators for weeks at a time if they survive. To “flatten the curve” and avoid overwhelming our hospitals we have had to become socially isolated, settle in place in our residences, wear masks when going out and remembering to wash our hands and not touch our faces. And after three months of dealing with this enemy of grown ups we are now being informed that children who we believed were not at risk of being made seriously ill have suffered as cases of a strange multi system inflammatory syndrome much like Kawasaki disease began to appear at hospitals.
The reality of this plague is bad enough to fathom by any rational person. The facts we are presented with certainly evoke fear and apprehension. Our frontline healthcare providers who are by their profession somewhat desensitized to run-of-the-mill suffering as they treat patients with terminal illness, heart attacks, metastatic cancer or debilitating strokes, find themselves traumatized by the COVID crisis.
So what is generating this degree of emotional suffering? Much of it comes from the unseen enemy, this virus that is only visible under special microscopes. Some of it comes from the fact that its genetic structure is novel. No human being had been exposed to it prior to its appearance in Wuhan so our immune systems had no defense against its onslaught. It is extraordinarily infectious so that an infected person will infect several people in close proximity over time.
For months we’ve been hearing about the spread of the coronavirus and rising COVID-19 death rates. Some areas of the country have begun to slowly reopen, but others still remain either locked down or people are very restricted. While we tend to think of the virus in terms of health and physical illness, there is also a mental health toll to the fear and stay-at-home orders that have resulted from the pandemic.
For months we’ve been hearing about the spread of the coronavirus and rising COVID-19 death rates. Some areas of the country have begun to slowly reopen, but others still remain either locked down or people are very restricted. While we tend to think of the virus in terms of health and physical illness, there is also a mental health toll to the fear and stay-at-home orders that have resulted from the pandemic.