Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs

24 Jun

Does Bedtime Media Use Harm Children’s Sleep? Only if They Struggle to Self-Regulate Behavior

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, one concern for many parents has been the impact of additional TV or computer screen time on their children and their already disrupted sleep habits. According to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, media use in the hour preceding bedtime impacts the sleep only of children who struggle to self-regulate their behavior. Frequent media use before bed in these children predicted later bedtimes and less sleep, but it had little…

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23 Jun

Pioneers, Mentors, and Diversity in Animal Behavior Science

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

Mentors and awards can really make a difference. That’s one lesson from a new paper by Dr. Danielle N. Lee (Southern Illinois University) that looks at the history of diversity within the Animal Behavior Society. Another finding is of the important contributions made by under-represented minorities to the field of animal behavior. Amongst early contributions highlighted in the paper are those of Charles Henry Turner (1867–1923) who, in 1907, was the first African American to get a Ph.D. (in…

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22 Jun

Who Uses Drugs and Why?

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

Psychologists have long been interested in understanding what factors influence whether a person takes recreational drugs. Personality traits are well known to influence many areas of a person’s life, and drug-taking is no exception. Several studies on the subject have looked at the Big 5 personality traits: openness to experience, which relates to the breadth and complexity of a person’s mental life; conscientiousness, which relates to organization and self-discipline; extraversion, related both to sociability and pleasure-seeking; agreeableness, related to cooperation and consideration for others; and neuroticism,…

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18 Jun

Poor sleep significantly linked with teenage depression

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

In a paper published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, researchers analysed self-reported sleep quality and quantity from teenagers and found that there was a significant relationship between poor sleep and mental health issues. The team, based at the University of Reading, and Goldsmiths and Flinders Universities found that among the 4790 participants, those who experienced depression reported both poor quality and quantity of sleep, while those with anxiety had poor quality of sleep…

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16 Jun

The Supreme Court Rules In Favor of LGBTQ+ Workplace Rights

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists

On June 15th, 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that gender identity or sexual orientation are protected characteristics under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The President of the Human Rights Campaign, Alphonso David, referred to this ruling as a, “landmark victory for LGBTQ equality.” In addition to improving workplace rights, could this historical event also help to improve LGBTQ+ mental wellness? Gender and sexual minorities are more than twice as likely to experience a serious mental health concern. Ilan Meyer highlighted that a key reasoning for…

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15 Jun

Adult stem cell study shows fish oil may help with depression

Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

Using stem cells from adults with a clinical diagnosis of depression, the University of Illinois at Chicago researchers who conducted the study also found that fish oil, when tested in the model, created an antidepressant response. UIC’s Mark Rasenick, principal investigator of the study, says that the research provides a number of novel findings that can help scientists better understand how the brain works and why some people respond to drug treatment for depression, while…

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11 Jun

Can Repetitive Negative Thinking Speed Up Cognitive Decline?

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

In a 2015 paper, “Cognitive Debt and Alzheimer’s Disease,” Natalie Marchant and Robert Howard, who is a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at University College London (UCL), proposed a novel concept called the “cognitive debt hypothesis,” which posits that repetitive negative thinking (RNT) might be linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Recently, a follow-up study led by Marchant investigated the association between RNT and various markers of Alzheimer’s (the most common form of dementia) in a cohort of 292 people…

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09 Jun

Counselor considerations for disclosing LGBTQ+ identity

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

The question of what is appropriate to disclose about ourselves to clients is one that all counselors face, whether it be about an upcoming vacation, an emotional reaction to a client or how our own past struggles may parallel those of a client. Beyond these more common self-disclosures, we also may choose to disclose aspects of our identity that are not inherently visible, such as our sexual orientation, gender identity or even religious beliefs. These…

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08 Jun

How Dreaming Helps the Brain Consolidate Memories

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists

The past century of “sleep and memory” research has established that sleep facilitates the retention of memories in both humans and animals. However, the exact brain mechanisms that help mammals consolidate memories while they sleep was unclear to neuroscientists until recently. Since the 1950s, neuroscientists have suspected that dreaming facilitates memory consolidation during the rapid-eye-movement (REM) stage of sleep. In 1957, William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago published a landmark study (Dement & Kleitman, 1957)…

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05 Jun

Wearable sensor may help to assess stress in healthcare workers

Counseling CEUs, Counseling Continuing Education Courses, Marriage & Family Therapist CEUs, Psychologists, Psychology

A wearable biosensor may help monitor stress experienced by healthcare professionals, according to a study published in Physiological Reports. In the study of 12 healthy male volunteers, a wearable biosensor that is placed on the chest, called the VitalScout, provided an accurate assessment of physiological parameters — heart rate and respiration rate — that are used to calculate stress. Furthermore, the biosensor’s metrics correlated strongly to those obtained using breathing analyses, and they could discriminate changes…

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