US Congressman Authors Mindfulness Book

A colleague passed on this tidbit from The Plain Dealer. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Congressman and Democrat, has authored a book an mindfulness that will hit the shelves in March. It's entitled, A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit.

That's all I know about it!

ACT for Zombies

The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy people try not to take each other too seriously. Each year at the main ACT conference--the Association for Behavioral Contextual Science--they hold a "Follies night" where people poke fun aat ACT and some of the key ACT people. Created by Joe Oliver and Eric Morris, this video was unveiled at the most recent conference.

WARNING: There's some graphic violence, so it's not for the faint-hearted!

Watch the wide-screen version on YouTube.

Mindfulness Journal

A posting on a professional journal reminded me of this: there's a journal called Mindfulness that's been around since March 2010. The journal is dedicated to mindfulness-based research. The reason why I mention it is that you can download all the articles for free. That's right--free!

Most scientific journals require that you pay--either by the article or through a subscription. Colleges and universities usually have subscription packages, as do some public libraries, although the public libraries tend to be more limited.

I don't know how long Mindfulness will be offered for free. My guess is that when it becomes popular enough to charge for, the publisher will start charging. In the meantime, download what you want.

You can check out Mindfulness here.

NYT Article on Marsha Linehan and Dialectical Behavior Therapy

We've written in the past in Scientific Mindfulness about Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), one of the early pioneers in mindfulness-based treatments. DBT is also hugely important in providing effective treatment for extremely suicidal people who how have difficult regulating their emotions--often diagnosed as borderline personality disorder. These are the kind of clients that many therapists still shy away from.

In this New Yorker Times article, University of Washington professor and core DBT originator Dr. Marsha Linehan talks about her own struggles with suicidality. This is the first time she's publicly come out about being hospitalized for 26 months when she was a teenager. During this time she was placed in seclusion, strapped down, and given electroconvulsive therapy. Dr. Linehan eventually devoted her life to helping people with the types of problems she had struggled with. As she says, 

“I decided to get supersuicidal people, the very worst cases, because I figured these are the most miserable people in the world — they think they’re evil, that they’re bad, bad, bad — and I understood that they weren’t,” she said. “I understood their suffering because I’d been there, in hell, with no idea how to get out.”

It's a stunning, public revelation from a very important researcher, clinician, and figure in psychology. To read the full article, click here.