Mental Illness | Susan Bodnar PhD

And the violence, it goes round and round . . .

June 11, 2014 by Susan Bodnar

Let me make one thing clear. As of May 2014 there have been at least 70 mass shootings or shooting sprees with legally purchased guns, according to Rolling Stone. As Ezra Klein reported in 2012, while violence in general declines, more episodes of a lone individual, or team, involved in killing sprees or mass murders […]

Filed Under: mental illness, politics, young adults Tagged With: gun control and school shootings, gun violence, mass murders, mental health and school shootings, Oregon school shooting, preventing school shootings, psychology of lone gunman, Sandy hook shooking, Santa Barbara shooting, school shootings, shooting sprees

Affluenza doesn’t excuse wrongdoing

December 13, 2013 by Susan Bodnar

from “The Guardian” Ethan Couch’s lawyer defended him by stating that he was not responsible for driving drunk and killing four people because he had “affluenza”.The legal argument dazzles. Psychological research doesn’t support it.

Filed Under: diagnosis, diversity studies, identity, mental illness Tagged With: affluenza, does affluenza exist, Ethan Couch, is affluenza just, is affluenza real

Underage Drinking: The Real Problem

June 3, 2013 by Susan Bodnar

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that alcohol use by those under the age of twenty- one is a major health problem. Research continues to demonstrate that teenage alcohol use endangers brain, liver and endocrine function. Binge drinking can also be lethal to young bodies. In New York City alone emergency visits due […]

Filed Under: adolescence, mental illness Tagged With: adolescent alcohol abuse, adolescent alcohol misuse, adolescent drinking, alcohol abuse by teens, alcohol and hooking up, high school alcohol abuse prevention, high school drinking, teen alcohol abuse prevention, teen drinking, teen social pressure, underage drinking

The Harmful Consequences of Diagnostic Categories

April 12, 2013 by Susan Bodnar

Youthful Tendency Disorder, a term coined by The Onion, pokes fun at diagnostic categories. It satirizes the modern psychiatric and psychological observation of pathology in normal behavior. Given the numbers of people suffering from serious and sometimes life threatening mental illness, is this humor fair?

Filed Under: human interaction, mental illness Tagged With: alternatives to psychiatric medication, David Gups, Overdiagnosis, overmedicatiing, relationships and mental illness, Richard Fee, Ted Gups, youthful tendency disorder

Mental Health as a Management Strategy

January 27, 2013 by Susan Bodnar

I was pleased to see Elyn R. Sak’s article in the New York Times today. Her story opens a new dialogue about mental illness. Instead of cultivating “patient” status and transforming people into fractions of who they could otherwise be, treatment for serious mental illness should focus on the management of symptoms. In this way […]

Filed Under: mental illness, Uncategorized Tagged With: Elyn R. Saks, managing mental illness, proactive mental health, strategies for mental illness, successful and schizophrenic, taking care of mental illness

Is it the weather?

January 25, 2013 by Susan Bodnar

Many people felt rather blue this week, feeling kind of sad and even hopeless. Each person had their own personal reasons for feeling depressed. I certainly wouldn’t want to underestimate depression’s depth of feeling nor challenge its force. It is my life’s work to help others untangle that mighty web that threatens to strangle a person’s sense […]

Filed Under: mental illness Tagged With: causes of depression, conquering depression, depression, influences in depression, moods

The Fallacy of Isolation

January 21, 2011 by Susan Bodnar

Is Jared Loughner a lone isolated individual suffering from schizophrenia, or another severe psychiatric disorder? Is there a correct and superior way to be a mother, whether it be Chinese or otherwise? While the Jared Loughner’s presumed killings and Amy Chua’s publicity piece in the WSJ have nothing in common, many of the discussions […]

Filed Under: human interaction, mental illness, parenting, Uncategorized Tagged With: Amy Chua, chinese mothers, discussions of Chua, discussions of Loughner, human contexts, Jared Loughner mental illness, jared loughner schizophrenia, mothering, superior mothers

Why Civility Matters

January 9, 2011 by Susan Bodnar

Palin aide Rebecca Mansour comments that drawing a line between the shootings in Arizona and Palin, or presumably any other, political rhetoric is “obscene”. She adds “where I come from the person that is actually shooting is the one that’s culpable.” Well, it is actually far more complicated. I would like to add a psychological […]

Filed Under: human interaction, mental illness Tagged With: arizona shootings, civility and violence, crosshairs map, did rhetoric enable Loughner, Loughner and political rhetoric, Matt Bai political discourse, psychological perspective of rhetoric, relationship between rhetoric and violence, response to mansour, tucson shootings, why civility matters, why rhetoric matters

A Yearning for the Past

April 29, 2010 by Susan Bodnar

The dark hair of a twenty-year-old female college student gleamed against her long-sleeved white shirt. Her rounded collar denied even the possibility of cleavage. Her denim skirt fell well below the knees and she wore stockings with her sneakers. She complained that her matchmaker thought she was too picky. If I had met this woman […]

Filed Under: human interaction, mental illness, politics, relationships, Uncategorized Tagged With: conservativism, explanation of tea partiers, longing for the past, old fashioned values, orthodoxy, return to the past, social contribution to mental health, social convention, too much excess, traditional lifestyle

Diagnosis, Flow and Motion

March 16, 2010 by Susan Bodnar

“Don’t tell me what is going on with me, help me understand the how of me.” AJ, a 24 year old male. With the release of the proposed draft revisions (version 5) to DSM disorders and criteria, new questions have arisen about psychiatric diagnosis. Articles like the very in-depth analysis by Louis Menand in The […]

Filed Under: human interaction, mental illness Tagged With: DSM-V, human relationship to nature, human relationships, Jonah Lehrer, Louis Menard, mental health, mind nature relationship, psychiatric diagnosis, psychological diagnosis, psychological disorder, psychopathology