When addressing moral injury, there is a need to help patients learn to compartmentalize their experiences. But it doesn’t stop there. Patients then need to be able to step back and see all the pieces of themselves in order to move forward.
Despite an extensive history of punitive practices towards what we know today as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, LGBTQ people have served in the United States military since its inception (GSAFE, 2018). Those LGBTQ Veterans who served during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War did so at a time when the military defined homosexuality as a mental disorder, with support from the organized medical community (e.g., APA).
Winter has many associations that stir a range of emotional responses. Some may look forward to the holiday season, colder weather, and burrowing indoors with the comforts they have come to seek over the years. Others may find themselves longing for sunshine, wishing they could fast-forward to warmer months. In Hawaii, winter usually consists of cooler temperatures, rain, a shifting swell (from the south shore to the north shore), and relatively shorter days. The changes that accompany the seasons, whether drastic or nuanced, can serve as reminders that we, too, are changing.
In working with Psychology Interns, Psychiatry Residents, Social Workers, and all other types of mental health providers from the most experienced to least, I’ve found that people often forget the basis of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE). CPT is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and PE is a form of Exposure Therapy. They are not unique theories.
In 2015, the National Center for Health Statistics found that in the U.S. alone, 9.8 million adults endorsed having serious suicidal thoughts, and 1.3 million adults reported a suicide attempt during the past year (World Health Organization). Suicide experts advocate for restricting access to lethal means as an effective strategy to reduce suicide rates. In this blog, I plan to review the efficacy of reducing access to various lethal means.