anxiety Archives | Research & Innovation

Prof awarded new research chair in autism spectrum disorders

muellerm — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Professor and clinical psychologist Jonathan Weiss of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health is the new Chair in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Treatment and Care Research, the federal government announced Monday at 91��ɫ.

The chair, which will receive some $2 million in funding over five years, will study ways to improve the mental health and well-being of people with ASD and their families in Canada.

Jonathan Weiss speaking at the announcement Monday

and his team will examine why people with ASD are prone to develop mental health problems, evaluate novel treatment strategies to help youth and adults with ASD deal with these issues, as well as other stressful events like bullying. It’s estimated that between 40 and 70 per cent of people with ASDs have at least one co-occurring mental health problem, including anxiety, depression and anger.

91��ɫ President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri congratulated Weiss, saying “91��ɫ's Faculty of Health is home to some of Canada's leading researchers, who work collaboratively to improve health promotion, disease prevention and health care in the community. I am proud of their commitment to bettering the health of the nation.”

Mamdouh Shoukri

The first $1 million of funding will come from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in partnership with Autism Speaks Canada, the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Alliance, Health Canada, NeuroDevNet and the Sinneave Family Foundation. 91��ɫ will match those funds, along with its community partner, the Spectrum of Hope Autism Foundation.

ASDs are a group of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioural challenges. The number, kind and severity of symptoms varying from one person to another and includes children and adults.

Colin Carrie

“The majority of people with autism will experience mental health problems at some point in their lives. Good mental health translates into better outcomes for these individuals and for their families, and to a reduced demand on our health and social systems, which benefits all Canadians,” said Weiss, who also holds a New Investigator Fellowship from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation.

His team will work with people with autism, families, service providers, and government to share cutting edge research that will inform mental health care policy and practice across the country.

Weiss is also looking to hear from people with ASD, their families and service providers to help direct the research questions his team will ask. To that end, a new website – – was launched Monday where people can subscribe to learn more about what the program is doing. He will also be putting together an advisory and working group in January to provide input, determine the best way to answer the research questions, inform stakeholders of what is learned and transform that knowledge into improved policy and practice. He hopes that as the program of research grows, the advisory group will attract national representation.

Harvey Skinner

Faculty of Health Dean Harvey Skinner believes Weiss is up for the challenge, saying he was impressed by the breadth of Weiss’ perspectives, as well as how he reaches out and bridges the gap with the community.

Parliamentary Secretary Colin Carrie, who was at the announcement on behalf of Leona Aglukkag, minister of health, said he understands at a personal level the need for this kind of research. He has a son with ASD who is now in university. He added that he was heartened to hear about the research work that will be done by the new chair.

Mike Lake addresses the crowd with his son

“Our Government is committed to helping Canadians maintain and improve their health. That’s why we are supporting research that will use innovative approaches to improve the health of Canadians who live with autism,” Carrie said.

MP for Edmonton Mike Lake brought his son, who has been diagnosed with ASD, to the announcement. He said he also understands the challenges faced by families who have a member with ASD. With a nod to the organizations in the autism community, Lake said they “provide a valuable link to Canadians affected by ASD and their families and they will be critically important to the success of the research program and implementation of the results.”

Robert Thirsk, vice-president, Public, Government and Institute Affairs, CIHR; Dan Goldowitz, scientific director of NeuroDevNet; Dr. Margaret Clarke, senior vice-president of the Sinneave Family Foundation; Jill Farber, vice-chair, Autism Speaks Canada; and Frank Viti, CEO, Autism Speaks Canada, were also at the announcement.

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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Youth with autism face higher rates of bullying, says study of parents

fmaquito — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience higher rates of bullying, which are associated with a higher incidence of mental health issues, according to a study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders this month by 91��ɫ researchers.

“Very little research has been done to assess the relationship between bullying and mental health in youth with ASD. It’s always been suspected there was a link, but this study confirms that,” says 91��ɫ Psychology Professor Jonathan Weiss, lead researcher of the study and co-author of the article, along with Debra Pepler, Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology, and first author M. Catherine Cappadocia, PhD candidate in clinical-developmental psychology.

M. Catherine Cappadocia

“In the study, those youth with ASD who experienced little or no victimization, less than two or three times in the past month, compared to those victimized at least once a week, exhibited less anxiety, self-injury and over-sensitive behaviours,” says Cappadocia. She, Weiss and Pepler, who is scientific co-director of the Promoting Relationships & Eliminating Violence Network (), are all members of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

In “”, the researchers surveyed 192 parents whose children, between the ages of five and 21 and enrolled in elementary or secondary school up to Grade 12, had been diagnosed with ASD. The authors examined the parents’ reports of victimization, along with the association between the rate of victimization experienced and mental health issues. Seventy-five per cent reported their child with ASD had been bullied within the last month at school, 23 per cent reported victimization two or three times, 13 per cent reported victimization once a week and 30 per cent two or more time a week. Fifty per cent of the youth with ASD had experienced victimization for more than a year, and that can lead to anxiety, depression, self-injury, hyperactivity, over-sensitivity and a lower self-concept, says Cappadocia.

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Jonathan Weiss

“It’s one of the first studies to look at bullying in youth with ASD. It’s important as it shines a light on youth with ASD and victimization,” says Weiss. “I think it really highlights that chronic victimization is common for some of these youth. A large percentage of the youth in this study experience chronic victimization. Those are the youth that have significantly more mental health concerns.” In addition, he says, one in 110 children has been diagnosed with ASD. “It’s one of the most common identifications in the school system.”

One factor that puts youth with ASD at risk for victimization is when they have more difficulty being assertive and making friends at school. They often lack social and pragmatic skills, and their parents may be less empowered to effect change as a result of the number of major stresses in their lives. “These are a lot of the same factors that are found in the general population of kids that are bullied,” says Weiss. “What really stands out in this study is the association with these risk factors.”

A lack of friends is a significant risk factor for bullying even in the general population and leaves these children unprotected by their peers. That means no one is going to stand up for them when someone starts to bully them. “Eighty-five per cent of the time when bullying happens, peers are watching,” says Cappadocia. “If a peer stands up, 50 per cent of the time the bullying stops. Peer support makes a huge difference and represents a robust protective factor these kids are missing.”

Debra Pepler

Youth with ASD may also be more vulnerable because they lack the skills needed to react effectively to victimization when it does occur. “When children with ASD are targeted, there can be a more intense behavioural reaction, which may encourage the child who is bullying to continue,” she says. “If a child with ASD has a strong emotional or behavioural reaction, the bullying can become chronic, especially if peers tend to jump in and encourage the child who is bullying. It can keep escalating.”

Weiss, Pepler and Cappadocia all do clinical work in addition to research. In her clinical work, Cappadocia frequently sees youth with ASD who have been bullied. “Part of the interest in pursuing this particular research came from being interested clinically in how to help these children.”

The next step is to find interventions to help these children and their classmates, which would then translate to the general population, says Weiss. He is looking to run groups at 91��ɫ next year for youth with ASD who experience bullying, which will look at all facets of the problem, from peers, the school, their family, as well as the child.

He is also interested in looking at what makes some youth with ASD, who’ve been victimized, resilient. He’ll be examining what the peer, family and school relations are like, and why they may buffer the potential mental health impact of victimization.

Cappadocia received support through the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child & Youth Mental Health at CHEO Graduate Award and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships Doctoral Award. Weiss was supported by a New Investigator Fellowship from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, while Pepler was supported by Networks of Centres of Excellence through its support of PREVNet.

For more information, visit the website.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Boys shrug off pain, girls 'catastrophize': 91��ɫ U study

fmaquito — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Teenage boys who experience “persistent” pain aren’t all that fazed by it – at least not compared to girls – a 91��ɫ study finds.

The study, conducted at the Ontario Science Centre, looked at more than 1,000 children and adolescents from ages eight to 18. While boys and girls reported the same frequency of persistent pain – lasting three months or more – teenage girls experienced more anxiety and tended to catastrophize over pain to a greater degree than their male peers.��

“Boys who experience pain may feel less comfortable expressing their feelings because they are deemed socially inappropriate – or it may be that boys simply experience less anxiety in relation to pain,” says study lead author Samantha Fuss (MA ’10), a PhD student in psychology at 91��ɫ. “Even teenage girls who haven’t experienced persistent pain showed significantly higher levels of pain anxiety than boys their age.”��

Overall, 27 per cent of participants reported experiencing persistent pain. The study is published in the latest issue of the journal .

Study co-author Joel Katz, a 91��ɫ psychology professor and , says more research is needed to understand the psychological factors relating to pain in youth.

Left: Joel Katz

“Persistent pain in children and teenagers isn’t a rare occurrence. There are gaps in our understanding of the time course of pain and the developmental trajectories,” Katz says. “For example, how does the presence of pain in these life stages relate to pain in adulthood?”

Researchers looked at psychological variables including anxiety, anxiety sensitivity and pain catastrophizing – a tendency to worry about pain and feel helpless in the face of it.

Boys 12 to 18 years of age were significantly more likely to experience persistent pain than younger boys, while there was no difference between age groups for girls.

Fuss points out that girls more frequently seek medical attention for illness and pain than do boys – which makes their findings all the more intriguing.

“Our sample wasn’t drawn from a clinical setting – such as interviewing patients at a walk-in clinic,” she says. “This is a fairly representative sample of Toronto children and adolescents who happened to be visiting the Science Centre with their parents.”

Katz notes that the greater prevalence of chronic pain in women versus men may be tied to psychological factors that appear in childhood.

“Anxiety sensitivity is thought to be a vulnerability factor for the development of chronic pain. The finding that girls had higher levels of anxiety sensitivity than boys may partly explain why the prevalence of chronic pain is greater in women than men,” he says.

“It’s a complex web to untangle in terms of physical versus psychological,” says Fuss. “Is it that the psychological experience of pain differs between the sexes – or even age groups – or is it differences in the physical experience of pain? How are they linked? These are certainly important questions in terms of diagnosis and pain management.”

Fuss’ research is supervised by Katz. Their work is funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship to Fuss, and a Canada Research Chair in Health Psychology to Katz.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Psychology Professor Ian McGregor explores links between anxiety and compensatory convictions

fmaquito — Mon, 16 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Research sheds light on human belief in Friday the 13th, Bigfoot, fate, heaven and hell

It was during this week, in the lead-up to today’s supernaturally inclined date of Friday the 13th, that I learned the similarity between believing in Bigfoot and believing in The One, wrote columnist Micah Toub in :

This somewhat unsettling information was delivered to me not by the Weekly World News, but by Ian McGregor, a 91��ɫ psychology researcher [Faculty of Health]. With assistance from his grad student , McGregor has been studying what those in his field call “compensatory conviction”. I had been curious to find out about the usefulness of pinning one’s romantic hopes and dreams on things like astrology, synchronicity and fate. As it turns out, there is some.

In his lab, McGregor has his guests perform activities and answer questions that are meant to put them in an anxious mood. He then asks them to rate their level of confidence that they’ve found, as he puts it, “their soul mate or the person they are meant to be with.”

When they were rattled, subjects consistently rated their current relationship higher on the magic scale, using their partner as a balm to ease anxiety about other matters.

“If you’re feeling uncertain about a particular domain in your life – economics or academics or family, for instance – you’ll find another domain to find certainty,” McGregor explained. “Relationships can become an attractive domain for irrational conviction.”

Similarly uncertain subjects, McGregor told me, also calm themselves by exaggerating beliefs in supernatural phenomena, like heaven and hell. And yeah, Bigfoot.

. . .

In hindsight, it seems somewhat silly, but according to McGregor, a certain amount of silliness can be a good thing. He actually called it an “optimal margin of illusion,” which will also be the title of my first album. “People have a lot of illusions to protect them from anxiety,” McGregor told me. “But sometimes, positive illusions can actually come true. Sometimes people eventually develop better relationships because of them.” In other words, if your belief in astrology makes you optimistic about your current love interest, that superstitious optimism might be the thing that turns the two of you into a scientific fact.

For those who place themselves firmly on the skeptical side when it comes to the universal energy flow’s influence on love, McGregor pointed out that this doesn’t mean you're immune to illusion. “People can delude themselves about how great their partner is and how great they are,” he said, adding that these people who put too much faith in the awesomeness of their own will can become equally out of touch with reality.

He went even further: “The personal confidence illusions can spin into narcissism, where the person is living in their own mind, leaving a wake of rubble behind them as they flex their grandiose muscles.”

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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91��ɫ Autism Research Alliance shares research findings with wider autism community

fmaquito — Tue, 03 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Some 24 outside agencies came to the inaugural 91��ɫ Autism Research Alliance’s Research Showcase at 91��ɫ last week to hear what researchers were working on – everything from isolating three to 20 genes potentially responsible for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to looking at how children with ASD process visual and auditory information.

“The take home message is that autism research here at 91��ɫ isn’t just one thing,” psychology Professor Jonathan Weiss, chair of the 91��ɫ Autism Research Alliance (YARA) in the Faculty of Health, told the audience. “We want you to have a picture as you walk away from today of the breadth at which different faculty members with different areas of expertise are doing research.”

Left: Dorota Crawford (standing, left) and Jonathan Weiss answering questions from the audience

YARA is an interdisciplinary team of researchers at 91��ɫ that has been in existence for about two years. This was the first time it has reached out to a large range of community service providers as a group. The event was sponsored by .

“The goal was to provide an overview of the incredible range of autism research at 91��ɫ and reach out to service providers and start a conversation with them,” said Weiss. “It’s really about knowledge exchange. This was the first step in that exchange, and they can let us know what they are interested in. Rather than a one way street, it breaks down the academic silos.”

Weiss has just finished two pilot projects using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with people with ASD – one used CBT to help reduce anxiety and the other used it to help build anger management skills. Weiss wants to know if the interventions that already exist can be adapted to help children with ASD, who also suffer from things like anxiety and aggression.

Right: Kari Hoffman explains her research at the inaugural showcase of the 91��ɫ Autism Research Alliance

But that’s not all; he is also interested in knowing whether the level of health care and access to service for families with a teenager or adult with ASD is lacking in various parts of the province, what health care services they need and their experience of the system, and has embarked on a study to find out.

Dorota Crawford, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science, told the gathering she is researching whether genes or the environment are responsible for ASD. One of the things she is doing is trying to identify the genes responsible for specific symptoms of ASD and determine how they affect brain function. She has so far recruited 20 families with a child with ASD to give genetic material samples through a mouth swab to be able to compare genes. She is hoping her research will lead to an earlier diagnosis (before the age of two), earlier intervention and development of specific pharmaceuticals.

“The incidence of autism in the last three decades has increased dramatically,” she said. In 1977, only one in 2,500 people were diagnosed with ASD, while in 2009 one in 106 people were diagnosed. Of those being diagnosed, males are four times as likely as females to have ASD.

Left: From left, Jonathan Weiss, Adrienne Perry, James Bebko, Dorota Crawford, Jennifer Steeves, Maz Fallah, Louise Hartley, director of the 91��ɫ Psychology Clinic, and Tania Xerri, director of the Health Leadership & Learning Network

Psychology Professor Kari Hoffman told the audience about her work with social and emotional processing, the destination points for processing and the routes taken, which may be different in people with ASD than in a typical person.

School of Kinesiology & Health Science Professor Maz Fallah is interested in what things people with ASD pay attention to that may differ from others, what is the reason for that and what interventions could help. People who have an ASD have a persistent preoccupation with parts. “They cannot see the forest for the trees,” says Fallah, and that might have to do with an object-based attention deficit, for instance.

As psychology Professor Jennifer Steeves says, “There’s a lot we take for granted when we look around the room, but there’s a lot of computations that are taking place in the brain.”

This plays into what psychology Professor James Bebko is researching. Children with ASD don’t seem to be able to combine visual and auditory cues into a single unit, which is needed to assess emotion when watching and listening to someone talking. Their sensory systems seem largely intact, he said, so it may be that the problem lies in the processing or the transitional skills needed before the processing occurs.

What psychology Professor Adrienne Perry is looking into is the effectiveness of Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI), the program of choice for treating children with ASD. But Perry says the results in the field are variable compared to those in a controlled situation and she wants to know why. She is looking at the predictors of how well IBI works, such as age, IQ and severity of autism, as well as parent involvement.

“It’s great to see that research is going to look at family stress and at the IBI. We really struggle in the community to know what to do,” said Penny Diamantopoulos, a case manager with the child and family team of the (Central CCAC).

Dawn Ullman, also a case manager at Central CCAC, says she hopes the alliance does some follow up with the community in the next year or so. She would like to know what the results are of some of the research the professors highlighted. “I really want to know the bottom line” as the person working with the families.

For more information, visit the 91��ɫ Autism Research Alliance website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professors Darke and Greenglass on how post-recession anxiety is getting better of investors

fmaquito — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:00:00 +0000

The recognition that emotions such as fear can drive investment choices is a relatively new one. Classical economics long viewed people as hyper-rational. But in the 1960s, a new ﬁeld called behavioural economics emerged to show that’s far from the case, reported Dec. 1:

Julie Tyios was already a savvy investor by her mid-20s, when the Great Recession hit. “I had played the markets before, and watched my parents live off their stock portfolios,” she says. But the small-business owner wasn’t prepared for seeing half of her portfolio wiped out in 2008, an experience that was, to say the least, “very upsetting.” Since then, Tyios has avoided the stock market altogether. The fear of losing so much again overshadows the possible joy she may glean from a gain. “As much as I would love to invest, the recession did a lot of damage to the market.” And, more than that, it did a lot of damage to the psychology of today’s investors.

. . .

, a professor of marketing at 91��ɫ’s , has been looking at the effects of fraud on investment behaviour, and he’s found that fraud by one firm induces an irrational suspicion among investors that causes them to lower their investments in other, unrelated firms. In other words, fear spreads fast and can spoil otherwise safe investments in people’s minds. This negative bias even applies to very well-known and otherwise trusted institutions, like Canadian banks. “While rationally you recognize you can trust the Royal Bank, motivationally you’re not willing to take a chance,” he says. “People become irrationally suspicious.”

Financial fears can also affect more than just stock choices. At 91��ɫ, , a psychology professor in the , has been conducting an international study that looks at the emotional and psychological effects of the economic downturn. So far, she’s found that people’s personalities (their fears and anxieties) impact things like their financial health and even their ability to find a job. “We are finding that debt, employability and financial well-being are all related,” she says. “If a [person] believes they are not going to get a job in the future, their financial well-being is lower.” Feelings of financial doom are also correlated to higher rates of anxiety and depression.

These findings reinforce the view of behavioural economists that “the way people approach the economy is not rational. Emotional factors influence how we react to the economic situation and to our own ﬁnances,” Greenglass says.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Soraya Mehdizadeh, undergraduate psychology student, finds Facebook fiends tend to be narcissistic and insecure

fmaquito — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Narcissists and those with low self-esteem gravitate toward Facebook as a self-promotional tool and tend to be heavier users of the site, according to a study by a 91��ɫ psychology student.

Soraya Mehdizadeh of 100 users at 91��ɫ ranging in age from 18-25 years old. Her study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, found that individuals higher in narcissism and lower in self-esteem spent more time on the site and filled their pages with more self-promotional content.

“We all know people like this. They’re updating their status every five minutes and the photos they post are very carefully construed,” says Mehdizadeh. “The question is, are these really accurate representations of the individual or are they merely a projection of who the individual wants to be?”

Mehdizadeh says she was struck by the fact that those with lower self-esteem were more apt to use this social networking tool.

“I believe the next question to be answered is whether or not the use of such websites could be used to improve one’s self-esteem and overall sense of well-being. This sort of finding may have great implications in the lives of the socially anxious or depressed,” she says.

In the study, five features of participants’ Facebook pages were assessed for self-promotion: the “about me” section, the main photo, the first 20 pictures on the “view photos of me” section, notes, and status updates.

For the purpose of the study, self-promotion was defined as any descriptive or visual information that attempted to persuade others about one's own positive qualities. For example, facial expression (striking a pose or making a face) and picture enhancement (using photo editing software) were assessed in the main photo and “view photos of me” sections. The use of positive adjectives, self-promoting mottos, and metaphorical quotes were examined in the “about me” section. Self-promotion in the notes section could include posting results from Facebook applications including “my celebrity look-alikes,” which compares a photo of the user to celebrities, or vain online quiz results.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to measure participants’ self-esteem. Narcissism was assessed using the Narcissism Personality Inventory.

Mehdizadeh also looked at the role of gender: she found that men displayed more self-promotional content in the “about me” and notes sections, whereas women demonstrated more self-promotion in the main photo section. No significant difference between the sexes was observed with regards to content in “view photos” or status updates.

The research was conducted as part of Mehdizadeh’s undergraduate thesis in the Bachelor of Psychology program in 91��ɫ’s .

“I thought this was an interesting way to apply theoretical paradigms in psychology to online self-presentation, which is still a fairly new concept,” she says.

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer.

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Professor Leslie Greenberg's emotion-focused therapy clinic brings international therapists to 91��ɫ for training

fmaquito — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

When 91��ɫ psychology Professor Leslie (PhD '96) was first developing his emotion-focused therapy (EFT) approach, he was bucking a trend that put the emphasis on controlling and suppressing emotions, rather than working with them. That was in 1986. Today, EFT is catching on as a therapeutic approach of choice and therapists are coming to 91��ɫ from all over the world to learn from Greenberg.

Last week, 16 therapists from as far as Israel, Hong Kong, Denmark, Portugal and Australia, as well as the United States, were at 91��ɫ for four days of in-depth skill training at the Emotion-Focused Therapy Level Two 2010 Summer Institute led by Greenberg. The week before, Level One was offered. Both sessions, which were full and had a waiting list, were held at the new at the 91��ɫ Psychology Clinic (YUPC).

Right: Leslie Greenberg instructs therapists from around the world on emotion-focused therapy

“It’s the only place in the world they can do this in-depth training that I developed with my collaborators, and it’s becoming a world-recognized approach,” says Greenberg, who and the 2010 Carl Rogers Award from the American Psychological Association's Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32).

Although ideas about EFT began percolating when Greenberg was completing his doctorate in psychology at 91��ɫ, the approach really started to come together in 1993 following the book , co-authored by Greenberg. He has since authored and co-authored several books on the subject, including . It was in 1995 that Greenberg began doing evidence-based research to support the approach.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) was the dominant treatment at the time and had already generated evidence that it worked, but as Greenberg says, “it’s not an in-depth approach to how humans function. It’s good at helping people cope, but not really good at dealing with the core problems people have. So it seemed important to develop a much more in-depth approach to human emotions.” And in the 1980s, there was a greater understanding of the role emotions played. “More and more scientific evidence began to show how important emotions were in life.” That included some of the unpleasant emotions.

Left: From front left, therapists Timothy Downing Brown from the United States and Ben Shuhar from Israel, and from back left, Nels Klint Karsvang and Belinda Lange from Denmark, in the Emotion Focused Therapy Level Two 2010 Summer Institute at 91��ɫ

There is strong evidence now that EFT, with its focus on developing emotional intelligence and the importance of secure relationships, helps couples having marital difficulties, as well as individuals suffering from depression, anxiety and eating disorders, says Greenberg, who was awarded the 2004 Distinguished Career Award by the Society for Psychotherapy Research, an international, multidisciplinary, scientific organization.

EFT is designed to help people accept, express, regulate, understand and transform emotion, not deny or suppress it. Emotion alerts people to what is important in any given situation and acts as a guide to what is needed or wanted, says Greenberg. Working with these emotions helps people to figure out what they should do.

Right: From left, Eve Alon from Israel, Leslie Greenberg, Chui Fan Yip from Hong Kong, Melissa Harte from Australia, Candice Knight from the US and João Salgado from Portugal were just a few of the therapists who came to 91��ɫ to learn emotion-focused therapy

“EFT focuses on helping people become aware of emotions, express their emotions in the right way at the right time, learn to tolerate and regulate them, and to reflect on them to make sense of them and transform them,” says Greenberg. It is not enough to learn about emotions; people need to experience them in a safe environment, such as in a therapy session, and learn how to manage and use them in a flexible manner. It’s not about eliminating emotions, but working with them.

Therapeutic approaches such as CBT and psychoanalysis have their place and have helped a lot of people, but they don’t address the whole picture, he says.

Now that EFT is an internationally recognized approach, Greenberg will be spending much of his upcoming sabbatical training therapists around the world who couldn’t make it to 91��ɫ this summer, starting in his home country of South Africa.

The Emotion-Focused Training for Couples 2010 Institute is the next session Greenberg will offer for therapists at the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic from Nov. 22 to 25.

For more information or to register for future training institutes, visit the YUPC Continuing Education Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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New 91��ɫ Times covers Professor Yvonne Bohr's study on satellite babies

fmaquito — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

The phenomenon of American-born children who spend their infancy in China has been known for years to social workers, who say it is widespread and worrying, reported :

About 8,000 Chinese-born women gave birth in New 91��ɫ last year, so the number of children at risk is substantial, according to the Chinese-American Planning Council, a social service agency that hopes to get a grant to educate parents about the pitfalls of the practice and help them find alternatives.

The phenomenon of American-born children who spend their infancy in China has been known for years to social workers, who say it is widespread and worrying. About 8,000 Chinese-born women gave birth in New 91��ɫ last year, so the number of children at risk is substantial, according to the Chinese-American Planning Council, a social service agency that hopes to get a grant to educate parents about the pitfalls of the practice and help them find alternatives.

But no one tracks the numbers, and the issue has only recently seized the attention of early-childhood researchers like , a clinical psychologist at 91��ɫ in Toronto, who calls such children “satellite babies.”

Their repeatedly disrupted attachments to family members “could potentially add up to a mental health crisis for some immigrant communities,” Dr. Bohr wrote in an article in May in The Infant Mental Health Journal. She cited classic research like the work of Anna Freud, who found that young children evacuated during the London blitz were so damaged by separation from their parents that they would have been better off at home, in danger of falling bombs.

Dr. Bohr, who is undertaking a longitudinal study of families with satellite babies, cautions that the older research was shaped by Western values and expectations. Chinese parents, including university-educated professionals she has studied, are often influenced by cultural traditions: an emphasis on self-sacrifice for the good of the family, a belief that grandparents are the best caretakers, and a desire to ground children in their heritage.

Sending babies back to grandparents is also done in some South Asian communities, she said.

Bohr is a professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health, director of the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research, and the lead author of "Satellite Babies in Transnational Families: A Study of Parents’ Decision to Separate From their Infants," which was published May 11, 2009 in the Infant Mental Health Journal.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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