Author: admin
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Does empathy matter?
As a psychologist, this is no surprise to me, but medical schools and physicians’ residency training programs are concluding that empathy (understanding the patient’s perspective and effectively communicating that understanding to him or her), in fact, matters quite a bit. Programs Aimed At Equipping Doctors With Empathy See Yielding Results. In a nearly 1,650-word piece,…
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Psychotherapy Helps Prevent Suicide
An article was recently published in The Lancet Psychiatry and nicely summarized in Forbes describing the benefits of even short-term psychotherapy on repeated suicide attempts and suicide related deaths. Not surprisingly, the data suggest that talk therapy serves to significantly reduce the frequency of suicide following a previous suicide attempt. The Forbes article also very…
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Should you really be scared of antidepressants?
For the past decade some of the “newer” antidepressants have had “black box warnings” that caution about a risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in young adults and kids. Though there has been controversy about this, the benefits and risks of these easily misinterpreted warnings is finally being looked at a bit more closely again…
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Blood test for Depression?
A couple months ago there were a few articles that ran about developing a blood test for Major Depressive Disorder ( see: The Chicago Tribune, CBS News, TIME, Medscape, Huffington Post, Newsweek, New York Magazine and HealthDay). This sounds great: it could revolutionize the diagnostic process making more precise distinctions between Depression and other disorders,…
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Need an antidepressant? Try exercise!
Research has shown that when depressed people exercise 3-5 times per day for 45-60 minutes per session and achieve a heart rate of 50-85% of their max heart rate, the exercise is as effective, if not more effective, than medication. The Atlantic published a nice summary of the research and relevant literature.
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Legal Lunch with Laura webinar
Last week I had the pleasure of co-presenting another “Legal Lunch with Laura” webinar with my colleague, Laura Rubenstein of Offit Kurman law firm. Laura is an employment law attorney and a wonderful speaker. Our webinar was entitled, Analysis of Common Psychiatric Illnesses and Assessment of Reasonable Accommodations in the Workplace, and we discussed common psychiatric…
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Legal Lunch with Laura (and Michael)
Analysis of Common Psychiatric Illnesses and Assessment of Reasonable Accommodations in the Workplace Join management-side employment attorney Laura L. Rubenstein of Offit Kurman, P.A. and Dr. Michael Heitt of Heitt Clinical & Corporate Consulting, LLC on Tuesday, July 15, 2014 from 12:00 noon-1:00 p.m. as they discuss the most common psychiatric diagnoses and how they…
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Michael Heitt invited to deliver the 6th annual Distinguished Workshop Series at APA
I was invited to deliver the 6th annual Distinguished Workshop Series presentation at the 2014 American Psychological Association’s convention in Washington DC on August 8, 2014. I am incredibly honored (and humbled) to be associated with former DWS presenters including Drs. Judith Beck, Bruce Wampold and Bessel van der Kolk. I will be offering a…
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Psychotherapy lasts longer than medications
A recent study in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics suggests that both psychotherapy and antidepressants are both quite effective in reducing depression. However in contrast to medication, the benefits of psychotherapy appear to be longer-lasting. The authors of the study used PET imaging, clinical evaluations and a variety of psychological instruments to measure the changes. The study…
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The 45-minute hour
When scheduling a new patient, I am often asked how long my sessions run. I welcome this question as it potentially indicates that this prospective patient values her time and mine. My response is that when I provide psychotherapy, I schedule “45-minute hours.” There was an interesting Op-Ed in the New York Times about the…