Yes, long overdue!

Coming to terms with potential near term extinction of our species, and many others along with it, is a macro-level reflection of the personal and inescapable, existential crisis that all human, and other living beings have to contend with, our own personal, individual mortality. Our personal death can also be interpreted as an extinction event - all appearances are extinguished.

The self-created eco-crisis, with accelerating degradation of nature cannot help but touch a nerve because it is now becoming a daily reminder of our collective vulnerability, Mortality salience of this scale can create enormous amounts of anxiety. We can no longer hide from our mortality when the news is blaring large scale changes every few weeks. It leaves us feeling helpless...just like we are at the time of our own personal death.

In a world that is in denial of death, as pointed out by Ernest Becker in his 1973 Pulitzer-prize winning book of the same title, the signs of a climate system and biosphere in collapse is a frightening reminder of our own death.

Straying from the natural wonderment each human being is born with, we already condition ourselves to live with an existential dread as Becker pointed out:

"Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever."

Beckerian writer Glenn Hughes explores a way to authentically confront this dread, citing Socrates as an example. Three paragraphs from Hughes article point this out, citing Socrates as exemplary:

"Now Becker doesn’t always emphasize this second possibility of authentic faith. One can get the impression from much of his work that any affirmation of enduring meaning is simply a denial of death and the embrace of a lie. But I believe the view expressed in the fifth chapter of The Denial of Death is his more nuanced and genuine position. And I think it will be worthwhile to develop his idea of a courageous breaking away from culturally-supported immortality systems by looking back in history to a character who many people have thought of as an epitome of a self-realized person, someone who neither accepts his culture’s standardized hero-systems, nor fears death: the philosopher Socrates."

"Death is a mystery. Maybe it is annihilation. One simply can’t know otherwise. Socrates is psychologically open to his physical death and possible utter annihilation. But still this does not unnerve him. And if we pursue the question: why not?–we do not have to look far in Plato’s portrait of Socrates for some answers. Plato understood, and captured in his Dialogues, a crucial element in the shaping of Socrates’ character: his willingness to let the fact of death fully penetrate his consciousness. This experience of being fully open to death is so important to Socrates that he makes a point of using it to define his way of life, the life of a philosophos–a “lover of wisdom.” " "So we have come to the crucial point. The Socratic catharsis is a matter of letting death penetrate the self. It is the acceptance of the perishing of everything that will perish. In this acceptance a person imaginatively experiences the death of the body and the possibility of complete annihilation. This is “to ‘taste” death with the lips of your living body [so] that you … know emotionally that you are a creature who will die; “it is the passage into nothing” in which “a corner is turned within one.” And it is this very experience, and no other, that enables a person to act with genuine moral freedom and autonomy, guided by morals and not just attraction and impulses."

https://ernestbecker.org/lecture-6-denial/

PsyArXiv Preprints | Music in times of COVID-19. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2022, from https://psyarxiv.com/z94fq/

Delz, Louise Aurora Katharina, Keith Gaynor, Ellen Somers, Rachel O. Connor, and Luisa Schmieder. ‘A CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS OF A COGNITIVE MODEL OF COVID-19 RELATED DISTRESS’. PsyArXiv, 18 February 2022. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zmf5d.

Iketani, S., Liu, L., Guo, Y., Liu, L., Huang, Y., Wang, M., Luo, Y., Yu, J., Yin, M. T., Sobieszczyk, M. E., Huang, Y., Wang, H. H., Sheng, Z., & Ho, D. D. (2022). Antibody Evasion Properties of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Sublineages (p. 2022.02.07.479306). bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.07.479306

Fernandez-Castaneda, A., Lu, P., Geraghty, A. C., Song, E., Lee, M.-H., Wood, J., Yalcin, B., Taylor, K. R., Dutton, S., Acosta-Alvarez, L., Ni, L., Contreras-Esquivel, D., Gehlhausen, J. R., Klein, J., Lucas, C., Mao, T., Silva, J., Pena-Hernandez, M., Tabachnikova, A., … Monje, M. (2022). Mild respiratory SARS-CoV-2 infection can cause multi-lineage cellular dysregulation and myelin loss in the brain (p. 2022.01.07.475453). https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.07.475453

Yale researchers develop RNA-based therapy that clears SARS-CoV-2 from mice. (n.d.). EurekAlert! Retrieved January 9, 2022, from https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/934454

Wagner, D. N., Marcon, A. R., & Caulfield, T. (2020). “Immune Boosting” in the time of COVID: Selling immunity on Instagram. Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, 16(1), 76. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13223-020-00474-6

Kilian, C. (2018, November 1). Polio and Vaccination: A Memoir of What We’ve Forgotten. The Tyee; The Tyee. https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/11/01/Polio-Vaccination-Lessons/

Inasaridze, K. (2021). Therapy of depression by the method of behavioral activation. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rfq79

Inasaridze, K. (2021). Cognitive restructuring. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/82pwz

Inasaridze, K. (2021). Behavioral activation method for depression therapy [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ge8s3

Summers, C. (2021, June 8). Oxygen shortages are killing thousands. Why aren’t we doing more about this? | Charlotte Summers. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/08/oxygen-shortages-killing-vaccines-drugs

Bahrampour, T. (n.d.). For those who lost loved ones to covid, there is no return to normal. Washington Post. Retrieved June 9, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/covid-widows-reopening/2021/06/07/7a55f9e6-c3bc-11eb-8c18-fd53a628b992_story.html

Clinical Key

The RECOVERY trial in Oxford, with 5795 patients who were randomly allocated to receive convalescent plasma treatment and 5763 who received usual care alone, found that there was no statistically significant difference for 28-day mortality (24% for both groups, p-0.93) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital within 28 days (66% CP vs 67% control, p=0.50) for the two groups. Additonally for patients without mechanical ventilation, there was no stastically significant difference in the intubation rate (28% CP vs 29% control, p=0.79).

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.09.21252736

The trial showed convalescent plasma therapy had no benefit to patients with COVID-19. As a result the UK's health service has stopped collecting convalescent plasma from patients who had recovered from COVID-19.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55681051

Additonally the NIH have halted a convalescent plasma trial for COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms stating that the "study shows that the treatment is safe, but provides no signifcant benefit in this group".

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-halts-trial-covid-19-convalescent-plasma-emergency-department-patients-mild-symptoms

"private facebook page" is the dumbest thing on this page..

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/11/795010044/feeling-artsy-heres-how-making-art-helps-your-brain

https://oefy.com/blogs/art-therapy/art-therapy-to-process-emotions

Bizarre...

Anonymous. (2021, January 20). This is what it’s like to be an intensive care unit nurse right now. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/20/intensive-care-nurse-eu-europeans-health-britain

I think this is an awesome mission statement and that this owner/website designer took a business class and they understand mission, values, and vision.

some literature on organizations such as [[MyPsySpace]] and [[Virtual Reality Medical Center]]

[[micro-tonal therapy]] that uses empathy as resonance

This solution based therapy focuses on trying to get people active and engaged with life even when depressed.

It is important to help patients experience those little positive events. These events can help people get back on track.

This is all about solution based therapy. We need concrete ways of fixing our problems.

Vagueness is a cognitive avoidance strategy. It is a way to avoid digging deep.

It is safer for our feelings to stay vague, but that is not where we need to improve.

Just as one would expect, it appears that antioxidants can protect against this type of damage. Note that the study was in rats, but we have every reason to think it would work in humans. In particular, several studies showing that dietary antioxidants protect skin from sunlight in humans; it's should be essentially the same thing for the eyes.

This is not in the least surprising. Dietary antioxidants also protect the skin during sunlight exposure.

Oxidative stress likely also plays a role in diabetic retinopathy. It plays a role in the aging process itself. That said, there is probably a limit to protective powers of antioxidants. Nonetheless, I don't think that that limit has ever been realized in any population. I doubt we've even come close in rats.

Ponchner, D. (n.d.). Costa Rica Readies Horse Antibodies for Trials as an Inexpensive COVID-19 Therapy. Scientific American. Retrieved September 8, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/costa-rica-readies-horse-antibodies-for-trials-as-an-inexpensive-covid-19-therapy/

What is the success rate of these programs? They DO NOT work... People with addiction problems need one on one help so they can understand their situation and what's going on i in their heads, and how they are impacting their children....

The groups give them a swamp/ place to dwell. With Lillian, it was a place for her to feel sorry for herself and for others to "comfort" her. When she came home, we were the bad guys for not understanding.

• programs are not a one size fit all. If they work at all.

[[TalkSpace]] has had some questionable pratices around ethics recently - source

Services like [[InkBlot]], your works [[Health Care Spending Account]] - in the past I had good luck with the Aspiria - they got me setup with a good therapist from Shift Collab Therapy

Even trying to figure out what my starting point was too much - but being able to use a service like that to help connect me was really important.

Gorey, C. (2020, June 29). RCSI team to start trial for promising Covid-19 therapy for severe infections. Silicon Republic. https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/rcsi-trial-covid-19-therapy-alpha-1-antitrypsin

Ferreira, L. M. R., & Mostajo-Radji, M. A. (2020). Plasma-based COVID-19 treatments in low- and middle-income nations pose a high risk of an HIV epidemic [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/cyqx8

Qin, M., Cao, Z., Wen, J., Yu, Q., Liu, C., Wang, F., Yang, F., Li, Y., Fishbein, G., Yan, S., Xu, B., Hou, Y., Ning, Z., Nie, K., Jiang, N., Liu, Z., Wu, J., Yu, Y., Li, H., … Lu, Y. (2020). An Antioxidant Enzyme Therapeutic for COVID-19. BioRxiv, 2020.07.15.205211. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.15.205211

Science Facebook Live: Understanding SARS-CoV-2 structure informs vaccine design, clinical trials. (2020, March 20). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOzEx3OpKe8

Luban, J., Sattler, R., Mühlberger, E., Graci, J. D., Cao, L., Weetall, M., Trotta, C., Colacino, J. M., Bavari, S., Strambio-De-Castillia, C., Suder, E. L., Wang, Y., Soloveva, V., Cintron-Lue, K., Naryshkin, N. A., Pykett, M., Welch, E. M., O’Keefe, K., Kong, R., … Peltz, S. (2020). The DHODH Inhibitor PTC299 Arrests SARS-CoV-2 Replication and Suppresses Induction of Inflammatory Cytokines. BioRxiv, 2020.08.05.238394. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.05.238394

Chaudhuri, S., Lo, A. W., Xiao, D., & Xu, Q. (2020). Bayesian Adaptive Clinical Trials for Anti‐Infective Therapeutics during Epidemic Outbreaks (Working Paper No. 27175; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27175

Kominers, S. D., Pathak, P. A., Sönmez, T., & Ünver, M. U. (2020). Paying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design (Working Paper No. 27143; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27143

Free webinar gives top tips on effective video therapy | BPS. (2020, April 24). British Psychological Society. https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/free-webinar-gives-top-tips-effective-video-therapy

Nohelty, K., Hirschfeld, L., & Miyake, C. (2020, June 17). A Measure for Supporting Implementation of Direct Telehealth Therapy with Treatment Integrity. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pe5z8

Wade, S. L., Gies, L. M., Fisher, A. P., Moscato, E. L., Adlam, A. R., Bardoni, A., Corti, C., Limond, J., Modi, A. C., & Williams, T. (2020). Telepsychotherapy with children and families: Lessons gleaned from two decades of translational research. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 30(2), 332–347. https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000215

Freeston, M. H., Tiplady, A., Mawn, L., Bottesi, G., & Thwaites, S. (2020, April 14). Towards a model of uncertainty distress in the context of Coronavirus (Covid-19). https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/v8q6m

Blanchard, M. A., & Heeren, A. (2020). Why We Should Move from Reductionism and Embrace a Network Approach to Parental Burnout? [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y34cq

Arslan, G., Yıldırım, M., Tanhan, A., Buluş, M., & Allen, K.-A. (2020). Coronavirus Stress, Optimism-Pessimism, Psychological Inflexibility, and Psychological Health: Testing the Psychometrics of the Coronavirus Stress Measure [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/n6dcj

Lipsitch, M., Perlman, S., & Waldor, M. K. (2020). Testing COVID-19 therapies to prevent progression of mild disease. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30372-8

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Fischer, R., Karl, J. A., Bortolini, T., Zilberberg, M., Robinson, K., Rabelo, A. L. A., … Mattos, P. (2020, April 22). Rapid review and meta-meta-analysis of self-guided interventions to address anxiety, depression and stress during COVID-19 social distancing. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ndyf4

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British Psychological Society. Responding to Coronavirus: Resources and support. https://www.bps.org.uk/responding-coronavirus

COVID-19. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2020, from https://www.wwtf.at/covid/index.php?lang=EN

Abdulla, A., Wang, B., Qian, F., Kee, T., Blasiak, A., Ong, Y. H., Hooi, L., Parekh, F., Soriano, R., Olinger, G. G., Keppo, J., Hardesty, C. L., Chow, E. K., Ho, D., & Ding, X. (n.d.). Project IDentif.AI: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Rapidly Optimize Combination Therapy Development for Infectious Disease Intervention. Advanced Therapeutics, n/a(n/a), 2000034. https://doi.org/10.1002/adtp.202000034

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Clinical trials will most certainly first include those patients with the highest risk of relapse. However, long term, everything will depend on the risk/ benefit trade off: if an effective, simple, well-tolerated and cost-effective treatment was available (let's imagine a single short low-dose PD1 for any early Melanoma patient) that prevented progression for most patients would be very different from a highly toxic, expensive treatment that doesn't work for everyone (think Ipi 10mg/kg adjuvant)- so everything is in the trade-off

I quibble with the use of the word "extreme" here. The examples in this article seem more like issues of strong beliefs or unthinking comments, but hot moments also include deeply personal disclosures. Reserving counseling for "extreme" cases is stigmatizing, especially as we see more students in higher ed who have experience of mental health treatment. Many students involved in "hot moments" might benefit from being referred to the resources available in student life offices and/or counseling and faculty should be aware enough of these resources to suggest them with comfort.

writing = therapy :)

therapy with horses

Isn't the flipped experiment a clear indication that FTT (fecal transplant therapy) can help alleviating IBS? If the reverse is true, there might be great value in getting your microbiome fixed/infused by healthy microbiota from donors.