Monday Free Download: Adolescent Suicide, Depression and Family Dysfunction

This paper investigated high school students' perceptions of their family dynamics and correlated this to levels of depression, suicidal thinking and a history of attempts. Our results suggested that high scores for dysfunction measured on the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) should flag problems when assessing adolescents. Assessment of depression and suicidality should be mandatory in these young people

Go to http://www.familyconcernpublishing.com.au

Then 'Resources'

Download here: *Adolescent suicide, depression and family dynamics 

Martin, G., Rozanes, P., Allison, S. & Pearce, C., 1995. Adolescent Suicide, Depression and Family Dysfunction. Acta Psych. Scand., 92:336-344.

Haiku on 'Bright', 'Chase' and 'Don't'

Bright

Something to ponder

Our sun has a bright future

As supernova

There was this bright light

I must have passed out, I think

A flash in the pan

Bright little people

Just adore my grandchildren

Hope for the future

Chase

Chasing each other

Thoughts tumble over visions

Tripping up the mind

Poor people chase rich

Rich people chase the dollar

Fools chasing nightmares

Foxhounds chase the fox

But greyhounds don't chase the grey

Odd language English

Don't

Mediocrity

Don't get above your station

Don't be too clever

Think outside the square

Be creative with your life

Don't be over-ruled

We all make mistakes

Don't be so hard on yourself

Give yourself a break

Haiku on 'Wasted', 'Yearn' and 'Absolve'

Wasted

Nothing is wasted

One person's ancient discards

Another's treasure

An old truism

Youth is wasted on the young

Not sure what that means...

Training of children

So much energy wasted

Just share life and love

Yearn

Yearn for your body

Its warmth, its smell, its closeness

You lie there sleeping

Yearning for silence

Away from the madding crowd

Soughing of the breeze

A jealous goddess

Pinching those who come too close

While yearning for love

Absolve

Accept and move on

Allow your mind to absolve

In meditation

Sins of omission

Fiddling while our world heats up

Cannot be absolved

I can't forgive you
Until I forgive myself
A selfie absolve

Monday Free Download: Seeking Solutions to Self-injury; a Guide for Parents and Families

This guide was developed in 2010, and specifically written for parents and family members who may be struggling to manage a teenager or young adult who is self-injuring. The guide was based on about 60 interviews with young people, and over 40 with professionals who have experience in the area. 
Please feel free to download the guide and give a copy to anyone you know who may need advice on this matter.

Go to: http://www.familyconcernpublishing.com.au 

Click on Resources in the header

Click on 'Seeking Solutions Parents' to download

Martin, G., Hasking, P., Swannell, S., McAllister, 2010. Seeking Solutions to Self-injury: A Guide for Parents and Families. Centre for Suicide Prevention Studies. Discipline of Psychiatry. The University of Queensland. ISBN 978-0-9808207-4-4

Tagged with: adolescents, deliberate self harm, families, guide, management, parents, self-injury

Transverse Myelitis and Grief

I have had TM now for nearly 4 years, and I am aware just how much I have lost. Of course with loss, comes grief.

This is an odd thing to talk about in this way, perhaps. Normally we associate grief with loss of other loved ones. But having lost parents, aunts, cousins and a child, I have come to understand the process of grief, and I think the process is very much the same - whether we lose another person, or a part of ourselves.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book 'On Death and Dying' suggested a model with five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I know I can remember the denial in the first few minutes and again over the hours to come as my paralysis spread: "I don't believe this is happening to me". "I am so fit for my age, I am a black belt in Karate, I was teaching last night". "This cannot be happening, I just don't believe what I am sensing in my body". I think the steroids given to me over the first few days helped this process: "If I just lay her and have a rest, it will all come good; my powers of recovery have always ben so good". I can remember talking with friends and family about "When I am better..." and "After this is over..."

In fact there was almost a sort of euphoria, laughing at myself when I could not do something - like turning over in bed - mixed with a determination to do what I had to and maintain 'my standards' - personal hygiene, family position and relationships, friends in reality and online  - and keep doing what I saw as 'my commitment to child and adolescent psychiatry and suicide prevention' and 'my research students' at all levels.

Probably there were left overs from my childhood (as I have described in my book ‘Taking Charge: a journey of recovery’ http://www.familyconcernpublishing.com.au ). For instance, my father instilling in me the message: “There is no such word as “Can’t!”

I am aware that I have been recurrently angry about my paralysis. In the initial stages, I was angry with myself for getting to a point of exhaustion trying to write an editorial for a journal I edit. I was angry with myself for the previous night’s karate session, where I had been demonstrating takedowns with the young people, who got really excited and kept queuing up for another turn. Could I have injured myself? It didn’t feel like it, but who knows what goes on inside the spine, when an old man pretending to be a karate teacher twists once too often.

Then I found myself increasingly frustrated and angry with emergency staff who seemed incompetent and uncaring, and later some of this transferred to the system of care in the hospital I was eventually admitted to. It was nobody’s fault that it was nearly Christmas and people wanted to take leave. Mostly, I was just angry that my body was letting me down, with paralysed legs, and bowels and waterworks over which I had no control. And so on. Waves of resentment that I had given so much of my life to medicine and helping others, and nobody could really tell me what had happened and what I could do about it...

Then you begin to bargain with yourself. Perhaps if I was a better person, I would get better more quickly. Perhaps if I really worked harder or longer at the physiotherapy it would all return to normal. If I stopped being so resentful would it help my recovery? You search through parts of your life to see whether there is something that you did wrong, for which you could make amends. If only I had meditated more regularly, then my health would have been better; OK so from here on in I will meditate every day to restore my health. Was I being punished by some higher power for my arrogance or meanness, or laziness. Well then, if I improved those things would the universe help me recover to go on with my life’s work. Should it not be MY life’s work, but rather God’s design? What would I have to do to make amends?

And then recurrently you get depressed. I have always told my patients that one way of getting over depressed feelings is to do something; don’t just sit there. But if you can’t walk far, get exhausted from physiotherapy exercises or swimming, can no longer help much around the house, get exhausted from driving, and then from part-time work, how do you DO things? So every little backward step, every perceived failure, or deficiency, makes you depressed. You feel useless, incompetent and in the way. Yes, in the way! I am slow in moving, and so often find myself in someone’s way. I need to get support from kitchen bench tops when helping out, but it is always THAT cupboard that someone needs to get to. Bowels are slow, so your appetite fades, and you really don’t feel up to eating much at home. You don’t want to be in company, that ‘lesser’ me, so you don’t want to go to restaurants or galleries or shows. In any case, you have to plan for all the toilet stops everywhere you go, so you spend more time in there than anywhere else, and public toiles are the pits. And on and on... What is the point?

And then there are good days. You have a small personal triumph, and that improves your view of yourself. Over time you get used to walking awkwardly and slowly (“there are, after all, others worse off than you”). You get used to planning the loo stops. You adapt, and from time to time accept that you are doing the best that you can for and with the new me. You begin to do all those things you wanted to do, but never had the time because you were jetting all round the country pretending to be an important speaker at conferences. You begin to accept that the handicaps are part of the aging process, and it is OK to stop pretending to be full of youthful vigour.

What interests me about transverse myelitis is that this cycle of shocked numbness that you have reached a plateau, followed by rage that you should be doing so much better, followed by more bargaining about “well if you did this, would you improve”, and then more ‘depression’, just goes on and on... It is watered down, and eventually there is more acceptance of your new reality, and an attitude of ‘just get on with it’. But the rates of acceptance are different for all of us...

My own opinion is just that this is all OK. We have to not only grieve and eventually accept the physical losses and the resultant new expectations, but we have to accept that it is OK to be angry and resentful from time to time, and depressed from time to time, as long as it does not get out of hand. If that happens we have to accept that we may need help from others. Sometimes people, grieving the loss of a close person, believe that it is such a ‘normal’ process in life that we ‘should’ be able to just deal with it. That is just not true, and from time we all need help. That is OK, guys. Well, this strange disease has led to losses – physical and emotional. We cannot be expected to smile and be wonderfully accepting all the time.

If you are feeling really awful, please pocket your pride, and seek help from friends, community resources, or professionals with the skills to help.

Sunday Haiku on 'Trust', 'Usual' and 'Vigorous'

Trust

Relationship core

Related to history

Creating deep trust

Usual

Usual evening

Dinner, then television

Then we go to bed

Holes in packaging

Larder raiders leave droppings

Usual suspects

It's been warm today

Not unusual, I guess

For early summer

Vigorous

A vigorous swim

Powering laps of the pool

Now I'm exhausted

The lemon tree died

But after rain new leaves show

Vigorous green growth

A vigorous man

Physically fit and well

Cut down in his prime

Monday Free Download: Seeking Solutions to Self-injury; a Guide for Young People

This brief self-help guide was written for young people to help them with a friend who self-injures, or perhaps to work through their own issues with self-injury. The guide was based on over 60 interviews with young self-injurers, as well as 40 professionals from a range of backgrounds who had had some experience with management of NSSI.

It may be of use to a young person you know, despite the fact it is focused on an Australian audience. Please feel free to download and use it as you see fit.

Go to http://www.familyconcernpublishing.com.au

Then click the 'Resources' Tab

Download here: Self Injury A Guide for Young People

Martin, G., Hasking, P., Swannell, S., McAllister, M. & Kay, T., 2010. Seeking solutions to self-injury: A guide for young people. Centre for Suicide Prevention Studies, The University of Queensland, Brisbane. ISBN 978-0-9808207-2-0

Haiku on 'Reserve' and 'Send'

Reserve

Troops held in reserve

Never saw frontline action

The lucky bastards

Bidding at auction

Reserve price beyond our means

Keep renting I guess

Small city reserve

Some struggling grass, two sad trees

Desert oasis

Send

Circus audience

Becoming very restless

Please send in the clowns

Send reinforcements

We are going to advance

Three and fourpence? Dance?

(In memory of 'Chinese Whispers')

Sending out signals

That go largely unheeded

Have another drink

A really hip chick

Darling you really send me

Lived through Seventies

Friday Haiku on 'Onto' and 'Prey'

Onto

Quick, get onto it

Write an instant small haiku

Be the first tonight

Finished the last job

Now onto the next problem

Stop and stare? No time

Recent election

Puffed up politician fell

Flat onto his face

Prey

Paedophilia

Intergenerational

Prey seeks prey seeks prey

Perpetuating

The natural prey cycle

Teaching blood-sucking

Such dark images

This word preys on my poor mind

Searing my haiku

Haiku on 'Morose' and 'Neat'

Morose

What a gloomy word

It just makes you feel morose

Thinking about it

OK, do the job

I refuse to feel morose

Write Haiku, then eat

In the normal curve

Half the world must feel morose

Statistical truth

Neat

Neat water, cool, clear

Fresh from a deep mountain spring

Not one additive

Freshly ironed shirt

Neat striped tie, Windsor knotted

Soulless bureaucrat

Neat silken stitches

Family tree tablecloth

Mother's legacy

Haiku on 'Kin' and 'Lively'

Kin

Common origin

I think we share grandparents

That must make us kin

I know we are kin

And that we share grandchildren

It's deeper than that

Kinetic people

Always on the move somewhere

Tend to lose contacts

Lively

Not feeling lively

Just need to curl up and sleep

Haiku have to wait

Lively argument

Free-flowing focussed debate

Advancing knowledge

Lively fighting fish

Defending territory

An empty glass bowl

Free Monday pdf Download: Seeking Solutions to Self-injury: A Guide for School Staff.

Seeking Solutions to Self-injury: A Guide for School Staff. This guide was developed in 2011, and disseminated widely to schools in Queensland to assist teachers and school authorities work through the difficulties, in the school environment, with young people who self-injure.

Please feel free to print it off, and discuss with your local high school staff, or set up a session with school authorities to see whether they understand the issue of non-suicidal self-injury, and have policies in place that make sense to the school, parents and (most importantly) the young person.

Go to   http://www.familyconcernpublishing.com.au 

Click on Resources

Download here: Seeking Solutions to Self-injury: School Staff

Martin, G., Hasking, P., Swannell, S., Lee, M., McAllister, M., 2011. Seeking Solutions to Self-injury: A Guide for School Staff. Centre for Suicide Prevention Studies. Discipline of Psychiatry. The University of Queensland. ISBN 978-0-9808207-5-1.

Feel free to scan down all the other pdfs,and download whatever interests you.