Dr. Payton

I have previously written about the problem of allowing ourselves to become frightened and/or anxious by watching the news on TV as it is often about negative events with no information about what can be done positively to help stop or reduce the frequency of the event or similar events. Seeing these events on the…

I have previously written about the importance of we [humans] being aware of doing things in a moderate way. Now that doesn’t mean much unless it is defined and it’s meaning clarified. One way that I have thought about this idea of moderation recently relates to what seems to be a problem in that important…

A recent opinion pieceby Benedict Carey in the April 14, 2014 New York Times national edition, talked about suicide prevention efforts now beginning to include input from the close to one million adults in the USA who have attempted suicide. [About 38,000 americans do kill themselves every year]. Mr. Carey reports that previously, talking about…

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,…