Dr. Payton

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times by T.M. Luhrmann reported on an initiative to involve members of church congregations in the care of people with serious mental illnesses. Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, has joined with the local Roman Catholic Diocese and the local National Alliance for the Mentally Ill…

Recently I stopped assessing and treating children and adolescents who were hospitalized on the Copestone Child and Adolescent Inpatient Programs on the St.Joseph Campus of Mission Hospitals. I had planned to do this for over a year and thought that I was ready and well prepared for this change and transition in my life. Some…

When my children were preschool age and a number of our neighbors also had preschool age children, I felt that the speed limit on our street was too fast.  So, I called the city traffic engineer and explained my concern about the safety of our children and why I wanted the speed limit lowered.  He…

I recently listened to a lecture presented at Google by Rick Hanson, the author with Daniel Seigel of Buddha’s Brain. I am also now reading the book.  The lecture focused on the reality of our brains being highly reactive to percieved threats and that this keeps us feeling stressed, compromises our immune sytems and leads to unhappiness…

I have previously blogged about the impact of bullying including an increased suicide risk.  There is evidence now that bullying online or via social media is at least as traumatizing as other forms of bullying. A recent study by Van Geel, et al. reported on their meta-analysis of 34 studies involving over 284,000 children.  They…

Well of course that is only a very small part of killings with guns in the world. It just gets a whole lot more attention from the media.  A recent killing rampage in California by Elliot Rodger has led to more calls for the involuntary comittment of the mentally ill as Elloit’s recent and past…

The News Update section of the AACAP News from May/June 2014 reported on a study from the United Kingdom that was epublished ahead of print in the International Journal od Obesity (Lond) by Booth, JN et al. The study followed 6,000 adolescents from age 11 to 16.  They assessed their achievement scores in English, math,…

In the News Updates section of the May/June edition of the AACAP News a study by Guy, et al. reported in the JAMA Dermatol (epub ahead of print) found that according to the 2009 and 2011 national Youth Risk Behaviors Survey using a representative sample of 15.5 million high school students each year that included…

The role of mindfulness (defined as the gentle effort to be continuously present with experience) based treatment approaches for psychiatric disorders seems to be increasing. I have previously blogged about the benefit of mindfulness approaches to reduce stress in elementary age children.  Brown, et al. JAMA Psychiatry 2014 Mar 19 reported on their randomized clinical…

Howard Thurman is quoted as saying: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman was a theologian, author, philosopher, educator and civil rights leader who influenced many people with his faith and…