Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

I'm officially discontinuing this blog that never really got going, in favor of my blog as www.learningact.com that is posting regular updates on happenings in mindfulness and acceptance and commitment therapy. If you are interested, go to the website to check it out.

Who is using the ContextualPsychology.org website? For those who are new to web 2.0 concepts (which is was how this website was designed), it appears that this is a major way that people will learn and interact in the future. Probably many of the people who use this site aren't very familiar with Web 2.0 concepts, as most of them are likely to be over 30 years old. But as we go along, more and more people are going to interact this way. Already online learning communities are forming around evidence-based practice and other topics of interest to mental health professionals.

Here's an interesting article on who is using web 2.0 broken down by type and age group. Are you part of the wave or behind it?

The ACBS website is part of what is generally referred to as Web 2.0 in web-lingo. It allows people to interact socially with each other by modifying the content of the site (like a Wiki). Also, blogs and podcasts are generally considered part of web 2.0.

For those interested in what the heck I am talking about, here's a good website to check out with some nice info:
http://astdcascadia.org/BlogCascadia/2007/07/12/web-20-in-learning-part-1-rss/

I thought this story could be used in teaching concepts like the arbitrariness of language (the idea of arbitrarily applicable relational responding-AARR the core of RFT) or language as function. In other words, words work the way they do because we agree, as a social system, to have certain words function in certain ways. This article shows how definitions are just things we make up, and as such, can be made up to mean different things, depending upon what is most useful. As we search for the most useful definitions in ACT (such as what is defusion? what is experiential avoidance?) its important to keep in mind that we get to make this up and that words aren't real things, but ways of speaking that can be more or less useful.

I love how there's this arbitrary argument about whether pluto will be called a "planet" anymore. It's so humorous and so human...

Pluto Demoted: No Longer a Planet in Highly Controversial Definition
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060824_planet_definition.html

Capping years of intense debate, astronomers resolved today to demote Pluto in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that is being billed as a victory of scientific reasoning over historic and cultural influences. But already the decision is being hotly debated.

Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet.

"Pluto is dead," said Caltech researcher Mike Brown, who spoke with reporters via a teleconference while monitoring the vote. The decision also means a Pluto-sized object that Brown discovered will not be called a planet.

"Pluto is not a planet," Brown said. "There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system."

The vote involved just 424 astronomers who remained for the last day of a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague.

"I'm embarassed for astronomy," said Alan Stern, leader of NASA's New Horizon's mission to Pluto and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. "Less than 5 percent of the world's astronomers voted."

"This definition stinks, for technical reasons," Stern told SPACE.com. He expects the astronomy community to overturn the decision. Other astronomers criticized the definition as ambiguous.

The resolution

The decision establishes three main categories of objects in our solar system.

* Planets: The eight worlds from Mercury to Neptune.
* Dwarf Planets: Pluto and any other round object that "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite."
* Small Solar System Bodies: All other objects orbiting the Sun.

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Pluto’s Demotion is Well Deserved and Long Overdue

Dwarf planets are not planets under the definition, however.

"There will be hundreds of dwarf planets," Brown predicted. He has already found dozens that fit the category.

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Stern called it "absurd" that only 424 astronomers were allowed to vote, out of some 10,000 professional astronomers around the globe.

"It won't stand," he said. "It's a farce."

Stern said astronomers are already circulating a petition that would try to overturn the IAU decision.

Owen Gingerich, historian and astronomer emeritus at Harvard who led the committee that proposed the initial definition, called the new definition "confusing and unfortunate" and said he was "not at all pleased" with the language about clearing the neighborhood.

Gingerich also did not like the term "dwarf" planet.

"I thought that it made a curious linguistic contradiction," Gingerich said in a telephone interview from Boston (where he could not vote). "A dwarf planet is not a planet. I thought that was very awkward."

Gingerich added: "In the future one would hope the IAU could do electronic balloting."

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Textbooks will of course have to be rewritten.

"For astronomers this doesn't matter one bit. We'll go out and do exactly what we did," Brown said. "For teaching this is a very interesting moment. I think you can describe science much better now" by explaining why Pluto was once thought to be a planet and why it isn't now. "I'm actually very excited."

Here's an excerpt from a NY Times article on research on somatization disorder that's kinda cool. Some very ACTy sounding stuff. Thanks to Mary Politi for originally posting this article on the ACT listserv.

for the full article see: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/health/22symp.html?ex=1156478400&en=ed906844e55c23fe&ei=5070

Doctors Give Hope to Patients With Long Histories of Unexplained Symptoms By DAN HURLEY

Two new studies by researchers who specialize in the baffling
condition called somatization syndrome, estimated to affect up to 3
percent of adults, suggest that the quest for a physical explanation
may take on a destructive life of its own. Instead, those with the
syndrome should focus on practical strategies to regain normal
function and relieve symptoms, the researchers say.

One study, by German scientists, sought to explain why the doctors'
reassurances were generally ineffective with such patients. The
researchers played taped comments by a doctor about a hypothetical
patient for two groups of participants, people who had the syndrome
and people who did not. Those with somatization syndrome were three
times as likely to believe incorrectly that in the course of the
comments the doctor had said the symptom had a worrisome physical
cause.

The findings, in the August issue of the online journal Public
Library of Science Medicine, offer at least a partial explanation
for why patients often go from doctor to doctor and take test after
test in a fruitless search for answers: repeated reassurances are
simply not being understood.

A second study, by New Jersey researchers, provides the first
published evidence of an effective clinical treatment. The study, in
the July 24 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, found that
patients benefited from 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy
specifically organized to help relieve their stress and increase
emotional awareness and to get them to become more socially active
and think differently about their symptoms.

"They stop their dance classes and don't go to work and don't spend
as much time throwing the ball with their kids," Dr. Allen
said. "Our treatment emphasizes changing their behaviors, trying to
change the focus of their lives from worrying about their symptoms
to re-engaging in activities they've been avoiding."

The 84-patient study, compared the behavior therapy with the
standard treatment.

NIMH just released the results from Phase II of their CATIE project. This is one of NIMH's mega intervention studies, this one with over 1400 people with psychosis. Here's a quote from the summary on their website:

"In phase 2 of this study, 543 people were studied in 57 different treatment sites to provide guidance to help doctors determine what to do next when patients need to change medications, a common occurrence in treating schizophrenia. Research has shown that patients who consistently receive treatment do much better than those who stop taking their medications, so finding the right treatment is crucial."

"Phase 2 of CATIE compared the medications, called "atypical antipsychotics," with each other in two different groups of participants. In one group, patients who had stopped taking a phase 1 medication because symptoms were not adequately relieved were randomly assigned to get one of four medications: clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, or risperidone. In that group, clozapine was the most effective. Forty-four percent of the patients who changed to clozapine stayed on it for the rest of the 18-month study, compared with 18 percent of patients who had changed to the other medications. On average, patients stayed on clozapine for 10 months, while patients on any of the other medications stayed on them for only 3 months.

However, not all patients can or want to take clozapine, because it may cause serious side effects in some people, including inflammation of the heart muscle, and agranulocytosis, which is a dangerous drop in levels of white blood cells that are part of the immune system. As a result, patients taking clozapine require close monitoring. Although the patients who took clozapine in this study tolerated it fairly well overall, one person developed agranulocytosis."

From: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/catie_phase2.cfm

Phase I results were really interesting with this surprising finding:

"Contrary to expectations, movement side effects (rigidity, stiff movements, tremor, and muscle restlessness) primarily associated with the older medications, were not seen more frequently with perphenazine (the drug used to represent the class of older medications) than with the newer drugs. The older medication was as well tolerated as the newer drugs and was equally effective as three of the newer medications. The advantages of olanzapine — in symptom reduction and duration of treatment — over the older medication were modest and must be weighed against the increased side effects of olanzapine.

Thus, taken as a whole, the newer medications have no substantial advantage over the older medication used in this study. An important issue still to be considered is individual differences in patient response to these drugs."

From: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/catie_release.cfm

Seems like many of the newer antipsychotics may be similar to the newer antidepressants, not much different than the older drugs, but with lots of hype and much bigger profits for the drug companies (Clozapine seems to be an exception for those who are treatment resistant). These newer drugs have been greatly hyped for their lower rates of movement side effects. However, most of those studies were drug company funded. This is a great example of why we need to have more studies that are not tied to drug company funding.

Anyone care to comment?

Interesting article:

The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science By ROBERT L. PARK

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation

For the full article see: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19science.html?th&emc=th

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 18 — David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and president of the California Institute of Technology, is used to the Bush administration misrepresenting scientific findings to support its policy aims, he told an audience of fellow researchers Saturday. Each time it happens, he said, "I shrug and say, 'What do you expect?' "

But then, Dr. Baltimore went on, he began to read about the administration's embrace of the theory of the unitary executive, the idea that the executive branch has the power or even the obligation to act without restraint from Congress. And he began to see in a new light widely reported episodes of government scientists being restricted in what they could say in public.

"It's no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of scientific freedom," he said. "It's part of the theory of government now, and it's a theory we need to vociferously oppose." Far from twisting science to suit its own goals, he said, the government should be "the guardian of intellectual freedom."

Dr. Baltimore spoke at a session here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Though it was organized too late for inclusion in the overall meeting catalogue, the session drew hundreds of scientists who crowded a large meeting room and applauded enthusiastically as speakers denounced administration policies they said threatened not just sound science but also the nation's research pre-eminence.

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Another speaker, Susan F. Wood, former director of the office of women's health at the Food and Drug Administration, said administration interference with the agency's scientific and regulatory processes had left morale there at a "nadir."

Dr. Wood, who received a standing ovation from many in the audience, resigned in August to protest agency officials' unusual decision to overrule an expert panel and withhold marketing approval for Plan B, the so-called morning after pill, a form of emergency contraception. She said she feared that competent scientists would leave rather than remain at an agency where their work was ignored because "social conservatives have extreme undue influence."

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"Administrative legitimacy has been violated as much as scientific legitimacy," said Sheila Jasanoff, an expert on science policy who teaches at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "You can't get the most solid possible basis for making a decision unless you have not just the most credible and legitimate form of science but also the most credible and legitimate administrative process."

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I'm gonna try out this blog thing. This blog will contain information on interesting news stories which relate to science and mental health. Feel free to look here for stories with scientific and political implications. Or suggest stories if you are aware of one's that aren't here.

I can't post the entirety of stories because of copyright limitations, but I'll post a segment and link to the rest. Enjoy!