Marriage/relationships are always in a state of motion. We would hope that means growth as conflict in relationships provides us excellent opportunities for growth as we continue our relationship or marital journey. We need to become proficient at resolving conflict and moving on with what we have learned in the relationship. Even when times appear to be there  darkest we can still find light if we develope good conflict resolution skills-Robert Heard.

Conflict in Marriage – The Causes

Conflict is a normal and major problem in marriage irrespective of who are involved in marriage. It is common to hear people say that they want to marry someone who are compatible to them. That is good and advisable, but it does not remove the chances of conflict. Compatibility, depending on it parameter, can even increase conflict in marriage. If it is only based on material, intellectual or physical content, it can create insubordination, pride and rubbing of shoulders. Consider the high rate of crashed marriages among celebrities, and you will understand what I am talking about.

The conflict in marriage I’m talking about is not that which has gone out of control or come to public knowledge. I am referring to their nascent stage when they are yet issues between the husband and the wife; when it is yet a bedroom affair. It is the inability of the couple to manage it at that low level that will worsen it and make it almost unmanageable. We must note that if an angel, in his perfect state comes to marry a human being on earth, there will be conflict. In fact, there will be more conflict as heartache and other problems will wear the person out. While the angel will be too perfect for the human being, the imperfections of the human being will be horrible for the angel. Yet, that is a combination of perfect and imperfect individuals. Consider, therefore, what will be when you have a combination of imperfect, flawed and a mortal with infirmity.

Why is conflict normal in marriage? The simple truth is that two of you are different one from the other. You have different backgrounds, different ideals and life goals, different levels of exposure and experience in life, different levels of educational attainment, and most importantly, different upbringing. Despite all these differences, two of you came to live together for the rest of your life. There will surely be moments when those differences will come into play in your union, irrespective of how long you courted before marriage. However, the consolation is that is how God, in his infinite wisdom, made it. Besides, it has been so, and will remain so, in all marriages including the most successful ones. So, your own is not an exception, and should not be.

What compounds conflict in marriage are selfishness, pride, impatience and harshness by one or all of the partners. Over-expectation is another cause. When the excitement and enthusiasm of courtship create over-expectation, disappointment will set in if those expectations are not met. But we should know that no matter how long courtship lasts, it is only a mirror which at best shows only the half picture. And the excitement of that period will make the two persons to ignore faults of each other because of the simple fact that they do not stay together all the time. When they begin to stay together it might be difficult for them to ignore or forgive readily. The point is that in marriage there is nothing to hide or pretend about because the real and full image will be on display. Marriage weddings that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars crash after few months or years as a result of this.

Having examined the likely causes of conflict in marriage, the question is how do you overcome them? In my next post I will outline the practical ways of conquering conflict in marriage.

Technorati Tags: marriage, conflict, growth

The idea of the good marriage is built into our psyches. We want it; we seek it; we enjoy life more and live longer when we are in a good marriage. We are hard-wired to seek communion with another human being.

Conversely, if you have ever been in a marriage that wasn’t working, you felt you were in the loneliest place on earth.

The young man the movie, “Into the Wild,” sought happiness by venturing alone into the Alaskan wilderness. In the end he wrote, “Happiness isn’t real unless it’s shared.” Perhaps he was right.

A good marriage is fulfilling for both parties on all levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. And it lasts through all the personal growth and change that each will go through in life…

Marriage as a Sacred Container

Think of marriage as a sacred container, with the container being made up of agreed-upon characteristics or closely followed rules:

• Love. You view each other with open hearts.
• Fidelity. You are physically and emotionally faithful to each other.
• Respect. You see each other as unique individuals.
• Trust. Trust is a work in progress, so the commitment is to continue to grow in self trust, trust in the universe and trust in each other.
• Acceptance. You accept each other as you are and as you evolve and change throughout life.
• Commitment. You agree to be together for the long haul so you can invest fully in your relationship.
• Care. You are protective of each other’s well being.
• Open communication. Communication takes place at the physical, emotional and spiritual levels. You never stop listening to understand and talking to connect.
• Honesty. Half truths and lies break trust.
• Support. You support each other in times of need and growth.

Don’t Mess with the Container

These are the basics of the marriage container. The marriage container brings the important element of predictability to the marriage, an essential if it is to last.

I call marriage a sacred container because the elements are inviolable—you don’t touch them.

On a more spiritual level the experience of developing a deep connection with your partner may be primary in you learning to be aware of your energetic/spiritual connection to others. And awareness of your spiritual connection to others is a gateway to conscious connection to God and the universe.

If you have a propensity to drama and adventure, “predictability” and “rules” may sound alarm bells about boredom. And you would be right; the marriage container is indeed boring. But wait…

Within that sacred container we call marriage, you can do almost anything. You can raise children, go back to school, paddle the Amazon, pursue artistic interests, write a book, build a business empire, race motorcycles, run for public office, meditate, walk the North Coast Trail, go bankrupt, sit with a dying loved one, volunteer, travel or read.

When you look back on your life you will find that many of the constraints on your adventures were self imposed or imaginary. It wasn’t your marriage that stopped you.

Any kind of drama or adventure is possible within the container, except to say, “Never mess with the container.” If you protect the container, your marriage can last a lifetime.

Accidental or indirect container damage, however, can and does occur. For example, if one of you develops an alcohol addiction, denial, half truths and outright lies inevitably creep in. Hiding the truth damages crucial parts of the container, honesty and trust. Without repair to the container, that is, without addressing the addiction, the marriage slips from connection to alienation. Sometimes the deterioration is fast; sometimes it’s painfully slow.

Accidents do happen, but without corrective action the accidents become, not accidents, but direct assaults on the marriage just as surely as infidelity.

To read on please click here

Conflict Resolution – Ten Conflict Resolution Mistakes To Avoid

Conventional wisdom (and research) says that good communication can improve relationships, increasing intimacy, trust and support. The converse is also true: poor communication can weaken bonds, creating mistrust and even contempt! Here are some examples of negative and even destructive attitudes and communication patterns that can exacerbate conflict in a relationship. How many of these sound like something you’d do?
1. Avoiding Conflict Altogether:
Rather than discussing building frustrations in a calm, respectful manner, some people just don’t say anything to their partner until they’re ready to explode, and then blurt it out in an angry, hurtful way. This seems to be the less stressful route—avoiding an argument altogether—but usually causes more stress to both parties, as tensions rise, resentments fester, and a much bigger argument eventually results. It’s much healthier to address and resolve conflict.

2. Being Defensive:

Rather than addressing a partner’s complaints with an objective eye and willingness to understand the other person’s point of view, defensive people steadfastly deny any wrongdoing and work hard to avoid looking at the possibility that they could be contributing to a problem. Denying responsibility may seem to alleviate stress in the short run, but creates long-term problems when partners don’t feel listened to and unresolved conflicts and continue to grow.

3. Overgeneralizing:

When something happens that they don’t like, some blow it out of proportion by making sweeping generalizations. Avoid starting sentences with, “You always…” and “You never…”, as in, “You always come home late!” or “You never do what I want to do!” Stop and think about whether or not this is really true. Also, don’t bring up past conflicts to throw the discussion off-topic and stir up more negativity. This stands in the way of true conflict resolution, and increases the level of conflict.

4. Being Right:

It’s damaging to decide that there’s a ‘right’ way to look at things and a ‘wrong’ way to look at things, and that your way of seeing things is right. Don’t demand that your partner see things the same way, and don’t take it as a personal attack if they have a different opinion. Look for a compromise or agreeing to disagree, and remember that there’s not always a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’, and that two points of view can both be valid.

5. “Psychoanalyzing” / Mind-Reading:

Instead of asking about their partner’s thoughts and feelings, people sometimes decide that they ‘know’ what their partners are thinking and feeling based only on faulty interpretations of their actions—and always assume it’s negative! (For example, deciding a late mate doesn’t care enough to be on time, or that a tired partner is denying sex out of passive-aggressiveness.) This creates hostility and misunderstandings.

6. Forgetting to Listen:

Some people interrupt, roll their eyes, and rehearse what they’re going to say next instead of truly listening and attempting to understand their partner. This keeps you from seeing their point of view, and keeps your partner from wanting to see yours! Don’t underestimate the importance of really listening and empathizing with the other person!

7. Playing the Blame Game:

Some people handle conflict by criticizing and blaming the other person for the situation. They see admitting any weakness on their own part as a weakening of their credibility, and avoid it at all costs, and even try to shame them for being ‘at fault’. Instead, try to view conflict as an opportunity to analyze the situation objectively, assess the needs of both parties and come up with a solution that helps you both.

8. Trying to ‘Win’ The Argument:

I love it when Dr. Phil says that if people are focused on ‘winning’ the argument, “the relationship loses”! The point of a relationship discussion should be mutual understanding and coming to an agreement or resolution that respects everyone’s needs. If you’re making a case for how wrong the other person is, discounting their feelings, and staying stuck in your point of view, your focused in the wrong direction!

9. Making Character Attacks:

Sometimes people take any negative action from a partner and blow it up into a personality flaw. (For example, if a husband leaves his socks lying around, looking it as a character flaw and label him ‘inconsiderate and lazy’, or, if a woman wants to discuss a problem with the relationship, labeling her ‘needy’, ‘controlling’ or ‘too demanding’.) This creates negative perceptions on both sides. Remember to respect the person, even if you don’t like the behavior.

10. Stonewalling:

When one partner wants to discuss troubling issues in the relationship, sometimes people defensively stonewall, or refuse to talk or listen to their partner. This shows disrespect and, in certain situations, even contempt, while at the same time letting the underlying conflict grow. Stonewalling solves nothing, but creates hard feelings and damages relationships. It’s much better to listen and discuss things in a respectful manner.

Technorati Tags: marriage, conflict

Does your child have behavior problems? Your relationship with your child likely needs some attention.By Jeanie Lerche Davis

You know the checkout line scenario: 3-year-old child wants this toy, this candy, this something — and she wants it nooooow! The crying starts, escalating into a full-blown tantrum.

In his new book, The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Laurence Steinberg, PhD, provides guidelines based on the top social science research — some 75 years of studies. Follow them, and you can avert all sorts of child behavior problems, he says.

After all, what is the goal when you’re dealing with children? To show who’s boss? To instill fear? Or to help the child develop into a decent, self-confident human being?

Good parenting helps foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance, self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness, says Steinberg. It also promotes intellectual curiosity, motivation, and desire to achieve. It helps protect children from developing anxiety, depression, eating disorders, anti-social behavior, and alcohol and drug abuse.

“Parenting is one of the most researched areas in the entire field of social science,” says Steinberg, who is a distinguished professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. The scientific evidence for the principles he outlines “is very, very consistent,” he tells WebMD.

Too many parents base their actions on gut reaction. But some parents have better instincts than others, Steinberg says. Children should never be hit — not even a slap on a toddler’s bottom, he tells WebMD. “If your young child is headed into danger, into traffic, you can grab him and hold him, but you should under no circumstances hit him.”

Ruby Natale PhD, PsyD, professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Miami Medical School, couldn’t agree more. She offered a few of her own insights. “Many people use the same tactics their own parents used, and a lot of times that meant using really harsh discipline,” she tells WebMD.

A parent’s relationship with his or her child will be reflected in the child’s actions — including child behavior problems, Natale explains. “If you don’t have a good relationship with your child, they’re not going to listen to you. Think how you relate to other adults. If you have a good relationship with them, you tend to trust them more, listen to their opinions, and agree with them. If it’s someone we just don’t like, we will ignore their opinion.”

Steinberg’s 10 principles hold true for anyone who deals with children — coach, teacher, babysitter, he says.

The 10 Principles of Good Parenting

1. What you do matters. “This is one of the most important principles,” Steinberg tells WebMD. “What you do makes a difference. Your kids are watching you. Don’t just react on the spur of the moment. Ask yourself, ‘What do I want to accomplish, and is this likely to produce that result?’”

2. You cannot be too loving. “It is simply not possible to spoil a child with love,” he writes. “What we often think of as the product of spoiling a child is never the result of showing a child too much love. It is usually the consequence of giving a child things in place of love — things like leniency, lowered expectations, or material possessions.”

To read on please click here

Raising children demands a vast set of complex skills that can’t be distilled into a Top 10 list like you’d see on Letterman. Still, the lofty fundamentals — love, respect, morality — are surprisingly easy to reduce to simple, achievable daily goals.

Hey, it worked for Moses, the other guy with the Top 10 list.

None of these goals will make you smack your forehead and wonder why you never thought of them before. In fact you probably do many of them already, three days out of four. It’s a matter of being mindful of what you’re doing, rather than acting on reflex. Here are ten little ways to do something good for your kids — today.

1. Really listen to your child.

Nowhere are we more likely to act on reflex than when responding to our kids’ talk. Sometimes it’s the knee-jerk “no” — the easiest of parental answers to a request. It also shows up in our tendency to half-listen, giving our kids the impression that what we’re doing — even if it’s emptying the lint trap on the dryer — is more important than what they’re saying.

Or we interrupt them. “For some parents, there’s a tendency to correct misinformation or try to teach as we’re listening,” says Janice MacAulay, who works with the Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs in Ottawa. “That doesn’t allow enough time for what’s really important to come out.” If your preschooler says, “Mom, I really gots to tell you something…” it’s not the time to correct her grammar, or you may never hear what she gots to say.

MacAulay believes it’s important for every kid to get focused attention — that means putting down the lint trap and sitting down to look him in the eye. “A little attention goes a long way, and when we give it, it has to be 100 percent.”

2. Do Something Familiar.

It’s not just toddlers who love repetition — rituals and routines are comforting for everyone. Some follow religious or ethnic customs, others are weirdly idiosyncratic. Either way, they help shape a family’s identity.

Carolyn Monaghan and her husband, Glen, look forward to what she calls “a pleasant, predictable sequence of events” each night with their five-year-old daughter, Heather. “At bedtime we ask her, ‘What are you going to dream about?’” says the mother of two from Langley, BC. “She’ll say she is going to dream about something we did that day, or what she’s looking forward to. Then we tell her what we’re going to dream about.”

Alyson Schäfer, a Toronto parent educator, says a fun family ritual — whether it’s Sunday brunch at a pancake house or a weekly basketball game in the driveway — can be an oasis for families where there’s a lot of friction. “You may not be able to solve all of your family’s woes,” she says, “but by doing more of what’s fun, you change the ratio of good times to bad times, and just by doing that you have a happier family.”

3. Kiss your partner in front of your child.

Yes, your kids may cover their eyes and say you’re being gross. But public displays of affection nurture your marriage and model a healthy relationship.

As Schäfer notes, the arrival of children puts a whole new stress on a couple’s bond. “There’s a mistaken notion that your marriage will wait,” she says. “I’ve seen parents with six-year-olds who have never left their child with a babysitter, never gone on a holiday or even gone out for dinner or a movie.”

They might learn something from Kennan Silva of Edmonton. “My husband, Todd, and I do little things for each other. Sometimes he’ll bring me a chocolate bar, or I’ll have coffee ready for when he gets home from work. We hope that when our children are adults, they find the same kind of loving relationship and will not settle for less than what they deserve.”

4. Read together.

This must be the most common public service message out there (after the one about erectile dysfunction), but regular story time can tail off as soon as kids learn to read by themselves. For families who do continue, the rewards go beyond literacy.

“My girls are seven and nine and we read to them about five nights a week,” says Jen Hrabarchuk of The Pas, Manitoba. “Reading to them gives us an opportunity to have cuddle time, which becomes rare at this age. Plus, we get to see how much they actually comprehend from longer stories. Over the past year we’ve read The Hobbit, Little House on the Prairie and A Wrinkle in Time.”

Helen Whitehorn and her husband, Mike, of Newmarket, Ontario, take turns being the narrator with their eight-year-old son, Matthew. “Sometimes he will read a page, we’ll read the next. Sometimes we read and he just listens, and sometimes he will read to us. He likes non-fiction and finds it fascinating to learn new facts. If he doesn’t understand something, he and Dad will talk about it together.”

5. Touch your child.

No one needs to remind parents to cuddle their infants. But like bedtime stories, hugs and kisses often taper off as kids get older and find them embarrassing. Even so, physical affection doesn’t have to mean giving your 12-year-old a zerbert on the belly while his skateboarding pals are visiting.

“For some people it’s awkward, so find the ways that are OK with you,” MacAulay suggests. It may be lying down together at bedtime, a relaxed hair brushing, a wrestling match or even a half-hour on the couch in front of the tube. MacAulay knows of a mom with lots of teenagers who once told her, “I don’t really like television, but I do sit and watch, mostly because I’m hip-to-hip with a couple of kids.”

6. Laugh during a tense moment.

Leah Johnson of Chilliwack, BC, learned first-hand how a laugh can defuse a volcanic situation. She was in the minivan with Graham, six, and Sydney, four, when the bickering got to her. “I felt a yell starting in my throat, and I tried to think of a good threat. Since I couldn’t follow through with the old ‘knock it off or you’re both walking home,’ well, I barked at them!”

Johnson says there was instant silence in the back seat. “Four very round eyes looked back at me in the mirror. Graham started giggling, and the next thing we knew we were all howling with laughter. They both started barking right back at me, and it was a very noisy but happy trip home. I’ve used it quite a few times since then. I wonder if it will still work when they’re teenagers.”

7. Find out one important thing about your child’s day.

For some parents and kids, catching up comes naturally around the dinner table, before bedtime or in that most popular of family meeting places — the car. Others may need a conversation starter. “One way to get kids to open up is to briefly share your own experiences with them first,” MacAulay says. Some families even have a ritual in which parents and kids share one good thing and then one bad thing that happened to them during the day.

Like everything else, though, there needs to be a balance, MacAulay says. As kids mature, they need space to grow and that means we shouldn’t be involved in every aspect of their daily lives. “It’s important to become comfortable with not knowing.”

8. Resist the urge to be a saviour.

This isn’t the best advice when your preschooler decides to try out dad’s acetylene torch or explore a divided highway. However, when your 11-year-old forgets her school project (after you reminded her twice), or when your son’s T-ball swing isn’t going to get him to the majors, you sometimes just need to back off.

“I like to talk about developing a child’s psychological muscle,” says Schäfer. “We want to prepare our kids for life, not protect them from it. Otherwise we interfere with important developmental processes.” When the consequences aren’t huge, allowing our kids to fail helps teach them to succeed next time. And we can give a nudge to their problem-solving abilities. “You forgot your homework today? What do you need to do so it won’t happen tomorrow?”

9. Do something nice for your caregiver.

Finding and keeping good child care is difficult, but the payoff is big for your peace of mind and your children’s comfort. Whether they’re live-in nannies or workers at a daycare centre, caregivers don’t like to be treated like indentured servants. Take the time to let them know you appreciate what they do for your kids.

A survey of nannies on Todaysparent.com revealed that many don’t even get a gift on their birthdays or at Christmas. Those who did made it clear that it meant a lot. “One family I worked for would leave me little notes, flowers or baking as a way to show that they valued the work I did for them,” says Vicki Sims, nanny to two girls. “It does take a bit of effort, but it’s worth it.”

10. Don’t worry about the previous nine items.

Half a century ago, a guy named Dr. Spock told parents, “You know more than you think you do.” Then along comes a blasted magazine article to point out all the things you’re forgetting.

Of course, that’s not the point. All the goals we’ve listed are worth striving for, but no one will ever accomplish all of them, every day. So don’t beat yourself up trying to do the impossible. And while there may be dads who have hang-ups about bringing the best cupcakes to daycare, this is mainly a chick thing. “Their expectations are going through the ceiling,” Schäfer says of moms. “Look for improvement as opposed to perfection.”

It’s easier to be realistic if you spend time with others in similar situations. “So many women tell me one-on-one how awful they feel because they don’t like to play Barbies for four hours. They think that’s what good mothers do, and that every mother is doing it.”

Schäfer feels it comes down to cutting yourself the same slack you give your children. “Parents get the concept of encouragement when it’s applied to their kids, but they forget they need to be self-encouraging as well.”

To read on please click here

Are you constantly searching the latest on parenting to make sure you are doing everything exactly right? It’s time to relax. Temple University psychologist, Laurence Steinberg, says that perfect parents just don’t exist.

“Most parents are pretty good parents,” says Steinberg, “But I’ve never met a parent who is perfect 100 percent of the time. We all can improve our batting average.”

Sports analogies are useful to Steinberg, the concept of the book came from his own desire to improve his golf game. “I was reading, probably for the 10th time, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Golf Book,” he says. “It is built around a series of very short essays that cover very basic principles.

“As I was reading it, I was thinking that this might be a good way to teach people how to be better parents.”Steinberg, the Distinguished University Professor and the Laura Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple, wrote the newly released The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting (Simon & Schuster). This easy to follow how-to book uses the formula that works for golf to improve parenting. He believes it is the perfect format for today’s busy parents.

Here is a quick overview of the Ten Basic Principles:

1. What you do matters.
“Tell yourself that every day. How you treat and respond to your child should come from a knowledgeable, deliberate sense of what you want to accomplish. Always ask yourself: What effect will my decision have on my child?”

2. You cannot be too loving.
“When it comes to genuine expressions of warmth and affection, you cannot love your child too much. It is simply not possible to spoil a child with love. What we often think of as the product of spoiling a child is never the result of showing a child too much love. It is usually the consequence of giving a child things in place of love—things like leniency, lowered expectations or material possessions.”

3. Be involved in your child’s life.
“Being an involved parent takes time and is hard work, and it often means rethinking and rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you want to do for what your child needs you to do. Be there mentally as well as physically.”

4. Adapt your parenting to fit your child.
“Make sure your parenting keeps pace with your child’s development. You may wish you could slow down or freeze-frame your child’s life, but this is the last thing he wants. You may be fighting getting older, but all he wants is to grow up. The same drive for independence that is making your three-year-old say ‘no’ all the time is what’s motivating him to be toilet trained. The same intellectual growth spurt that is making your 13-year-old curious and inquisitive in the classroom also is making her argumentative at the dinner table.”

5. Establish and set rules.
“If you don’t manage your child’s behavior when he is young, he will have a hard time learning how to manage himself when he is older and you aren’t around. Any time of the day or night, you should always be able to answer these three questions: Where is my child? Who is with my child? What is my child doing? The rules your child has learned from you are going to shape the rules he applies to himself.”

6. Foster your child’s independence.
“Setting limits helps your child develop a sense of self-control. Encouraging independence helps her develop a sense of self-direction. To be successful in life, she’s going to need both. Accepting that it is normal for children to push for autonomy is absolutely key to effective parenting. Many parents mistakenly equate their child’s independence with rebelliousness or disobedience. Children push for independence because it is part of human nature to want to feel in control rather than to feel controlled by someone else.”

7. Be consistent.
“If your rules vary from day to day in an unpredictable fashion, or if you enforce them only intermittently, your child’s misbehavior is your fault, not his. Your most important disciplinary tool is consistency. Identify your non-negotiables. The more your authority is based on wisdom and not on power, the less your child will challenge it.”

8. Avoid harsh discipline.
“Of all the forms of punishment that parents use, the one with the worst side effects is physical punishment. Children who are spanked, hit or slapped are more prone to fighting with other children. They are more likely to be bullies and more likely to use aggression to solve disputes with others.”

9. Explain your rules and decisions.
“Good parents have expectations they want their child to live up to. Generally, parents overexplain to young children and underexplain to adolescents. What is obvious to you may not be evident to a 12-year-old. He doesn’t have the priorities, judgment or experience that you have.”

10. Treat your child with respect.
“The best way to get respectful treatment from your child is to treat him respectfully. You should give your child the same courtesies you would give to anyone else. Speak to him politely. Respect his opinion. Pay attention when he is speaking to you. Treat him kindly. Try to please him when you can. Children treat others the way their parents treat them. Your relationship with your child is the foundation for her relationships with others.”

There is no guarantee that following these guidelines will result in perfect parents… remember, there is no such thing!

“Raising children is not something we think of as especially scientific,” says Steinberg. “But parenting is one of the most well-researched areas in the entire field of social science. It has been studied for 75 years, and the findings have remained remarkably consistent over time.”

“The advice in the book is based on what scientists who study parenting have learned from decades of systematic research involving hundreds of thousands of families. What I’ve done is to synthesize and communicate what the experts have learned in a language that non-experts can understand.”

Good parenting, says Steinberg, is “parenting that fosters psychological adjustment—elements like honesty, empathy, self-reliance, kindness, cooperation, self-control and cheerfulness.

“Good parenting is parenting that helps children succeed in school,” he continues. “It promotes the development of intellectual curiosity, motivation to learn and desire to achieve. It deters children from anti-social behavior, delinquency, and drug and alcohol use. And good parenting is parenting that helps protect children against the development of anxiety, depression, eating disorders and other types of psychological distress.”

“There is no more important job in any society than raising children, and there is no more important influence on how children develop than their parents.”

To read on please click here

Another study purports to find that, for most people, Prozac and the other members of the antidepressant family of pharmaceuticals are no better than sugar pills. Expect Big Pharma to object, but not too loudly. At least, don’t expect them to expend too much effort and money denouncing the findings. We’ve heard this before, and it would seem that neither patients nor the doctors that prescribe antidepressants care much about whether or not the drugs actually do what their makers claim they do.

What is it about us that we just do as Doctors tell us? They do as big pharma wants and the payoff to all is huge except the patient. This is what is called “Barnyard Medicine”. Which means very limited help for patients and big profits for pharma and doctors.

Big Pharma and profit priorities: why business ethics never trickle up

One of the things I’ve observed while doing public speaking, being a part of business councils and interacting with a lot of well-connected people in society, is that many people work with the pharmaceutical company known as Merck. Merck seems to be everywhere, with drug reps, consultants, marketing people, email marketing people, scientists, lobbyists and so on. It seems impossible to go anywhere in society without running into somebody who works for Merck.

At the same time, I’ve never met a person who worked for Merck who wasn’t a really interesting and capable person. Every person I’ve met has been intelligent and appeared to be honest. So you may wonder: If Merck is made up of lots of ethical, professional people, how is it that Merck could ultimately be an organization that so aggressively markets products that inarguably cause widespread harm to patients? How can this contradiction exist?

Ethics don’t trickle up
There are several parts to this answer. The first part is that in most of these organizations, like with Enron, the so-called “evil” people are at the top of the company making the decisions. They are not the everyday people you meet at conferences and seminars. By and large, the regular employees for Enron, Merck, the FDA or any other large company are hardworking, honest people. Most people who have these jobs are intelligent, have good ethics and try to do a good job. But at the top of these organizations, you often find a few decision makers who guide the company into actions and decisions that are ultimately destructive to society.

I believe this is true at the FDA, where the bureaucrats make decisions that override the good sense of the FDA’s drug safety scientists. This was true at Enron, where a few greedy executives padded their pockets at the expense of investors and workers. I believe it’s also true at Merck, where a few top executives are making the big decisions, while overlooking the positive intentions of the company’s employees. But there’s more to it than just that. It also has to do with the nature of the corporation itself, something that supersedes any intention of any individual employee or decision maker.

Corporations exist to generate profits, period.
When you look at drug companies and their reason for existence, you have to acknowledge that they exist only to sell pharmaceuticals (to generate profits for shareholders), and that if they are going to be more successful, they have to continue to sell more pharmaceuticals to more people. Thus, because we have a capitalistic society, and because public companies like Merck have to answer to shareholders, the battle cry or operative mantra, so to speak, turns out to be “Make more money,” not “Serve the public good.”

You see, it is the nature of the corporation itself that can ultimately be destructive to society, regardless of the positive intentions of those who work there. In this case, the intention of the corporation is quite simply, “Maximize profits.” And that intention clearly collides with broader issues like serving humanity or actually healing people. To be more specific, if you teach people how to PREVENT cancer, heart disease or diabetes (three diseases that are at least 90% preventable, by the way), then you lose billions of dollars in profits as a drug company (because people who aren’t sick don’t need drugs). Thus, the idea of teaching disease prevention stands opposed to the obligations of the corporate leaders: to make more money! This is one reason why disease prevention is simply not taught in this country.

Now, to give you an extreme example of all of this in action, it is useful to look back at Nazi Germany, and the rise of the Nazi party and the atrocities that were committed by it. If you were to go back in time and interview many of the German citizens who were the common working folk of the Nazi party – the accountants, the factory workers, the truck drivers, the paper pushers – you would find that nearly all of them were individually honest, hardworking, friendly people, much like the everyday people who work for Merck or Enron or the FDA. Yes, they were part of a terrible machine of human suffering and destruction, but it does not mean that those low-level individuals themselves are evil people. The evil intent came from the top and trickled down. It was Hitler who set the tone, who made the law, and who allowed the atrocities to unfold. The vast majority of Nazi party supporters were just “following orders.” Unfortunately, they were doing so without any sense of ethics, because most of those orders never should have been carried out — and they wouldn’t have been carried out if the individuals had the presence of mind, the personal ethics, and the courage to stand up and say, “No!”

In a very real sense, the drug reps, drug scientists, drug marketing experts and others involved in the massive pharmaceutical racket playing out in America today are also just “following orders” to keep their jobs. They’re not looking at the big picture… the truth that they are merely a cog in a gigantic profit machine designed to expand disease and exploit human suffering in order to generate obscene corporate profits. Both the Nazi party and Big Pharma have killed millions of innocent people. The Nazis did it for political power, Big Pharma does it for financial power. Neither is morally justified.

Whether we’re talking about Merck, or Nazi Germany, or the FDA or even the Bush Administration, it’s usually only a few people at the top of these organizations that deserve to be labeled as evil. In the Nazi party example, that would of course be attributed to Hitler and his closest advisors who set the tone that allowed atrocities to occur. In the Enron example, there are a few top bureaucrats who have been convicted and are now facing jail time for being responsible for that company’s financial fiasco. At the FDA, there are a few key decision makers at the top who are the driving force of the agency. A full 90 percent of FDA scientists are actually dedicated, caring people who applaud the actions of whistleblowers like Dr. David Graham (also an FDA drug safety scientist).

I’ve met people from all of these companies over the years, and that includes people from Merck and Eli Lilly and even the FDA, and I’ve never run across a person that I would characterize as evil or overtly destructive. The people that I’ve met have always been positive people, even while they work for organizations that I believe are ultimately causing untold human suffering and creating a negative impact on society.

Where are our priorities?
Here are a couple of additional thoughts on this. First, it’s oversimplified to label an entire organization as being evil or destructive and to apply that label to everyone who works in that company. That’s simply not accurate; the situation is more complex than that.

Second, it is useful to recognize that sometimes the very nature of our capitalistic society motivates the prioritizing of economic gain over a sense of ethics. That’s a whole different topic, and it deserves treatment in a separate essay concerning the education of ethics in American society, because we have worshipped the dollar and economic growth for so long that we have forgotten to teach basic ethics to our children. And as they grow up, they become adults without ethics. And that ultimately leads to situations like Enron, or drug companies knowingly selling dangerous drugs, or FDA bureaucrats who seem to put public safety as their lowest priority. It all starts with what we teach our children.

Ethics education, in fact, may be the ultimate solution to this problem, because without ethics, we are a soulless economy. We may be very good at manufacturing drugs, marketing those drugs and selling electricity futures (as in the case of Enron), but we’re not very good at propagating an honest, ethical business model that creates a positive effect not just for employees and shareholders, but also the customers and the public at large.

And if you ever meet someone who works for Merck, don’t expect to find a dark, sinister figure shrouded in evil intent. You’ll probably meet a nice, regular, everyday person. A person who’s just doing their job and following orders.

Examine your own life and ethics: who do you work for?
Here’s a question for those people reading this who actually work for drug companies, hospitals, medical clinics or federal regulators: maybe it’s time you looked at the bigger picture here. What system are you contributing to? If you were a German citizen living in the time of Nazi rule, would you have accepted a job managing a bullet factory? Would you have taken a job as an accountant for the Nazi party? If your company was awarded the winning contract on the manufacture of gas chambers, would you have accepted the bid if it meant millions of dollars in personal wealth? Many people would have (and did).

At what point are you willing to give up personal gain for the greater good? Because if you’re not, then the evil in the world isn’t “out there,” the evil is in you! And corporate America is merely reflecting the evil in your own heart. But if you are willing to say NO to being part of a destructive machine, then you help HEAL the world, starting with yourself.

That’s a philosophy I’ve learned to live by. I was once offered $75,000 / month to conduct search engine services for a wealthy online casino. I turned it down, because I do not wish to support the online gambling industry. Similarly, a company I own was once offered a $150,000 contract from a tobacco company to help introduce a line of cigarettes to an Asian country. I didn’t even have to consider it: instant no. I want no part in an industry that promotes cancer, suffering and death.

And this it how I made my way to an industry of health, healing, and integrity. Thanks for reading. This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, offering commentary for Truth Publishing.

Technorati Tags: pharma, profits, corruption, dishonest

Antidepressants: Widely Used, But Practically Useless? : The Low Density Lifestyle

In yesterday’s article entitled Drugged-Out Nation, I mentioned how antidepressants were the third most popular class of drugs dispensed in 2008, with over $9.5 billion in sales.

And over the last ten years, their use has nearly doubled in the U.S., while the use of psychotherapy by those prescribed antidepressants has declined.

Ten percent of the U.S. population is now being treated with an antidepressant during the course of a year, whereas ten years ago, five percent of the population was being treated with antidepressants.

One exception to the trend involved African-Americans. Ten years ago, 3.6% of African-Americans were on antidepressants and currently that number stands at 4.5%. The reason for this, according to some studies, is that African-Americans have lower rates of depression than whites.
Perhaps this woman could be helped just with psychotherapy

Perhaps this woman could be helped just with psychotherapy

In regards to psychotherapy, ten years ago 31% of people on antidepressants also took part in psychotherapy. Now the number of people both taking antidepressants and participating in psychotherapy is 20%.

There are a number of factors that explain the increasing use of antidepressants. One is that there has been broad and growing acceptance of antidepressant medicine in the U.S..

The other is that over the last ten years, several new antidepressants have come on the market, and they’re big money makers.

Unfortunately, it’s well-known that in mild to moderate depression, psychotherapy is as good as or better than medications. And in the population as a whole, most depression is mild or moderate.

Yet, antidepressant use has skyrocketed while psychotherapy use has declined.

And now new research has shown that half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief.
prozac_bones_070625_mn

Prozac – one of the first of the new generation of anti-depressants

Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei has toppled two strongly held beliefs about depression. One is that stressful life events are a major cause of depression. The other is that an imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain triggers depressive symptoms.

Both findings are significant because these beliefs were the basis for developing drugs currently used to treat depression.

Redei, the David Lawrence Stein Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern’s Feinberg School, found powerful molecular evidence that quashes the long-held dogma that stress is generally a major cause of depression. Her new research reveals that there is almost no overlap between stress-related genes and depression-related gene.

And antidepressants treat stress, not depression. “That is one key reason why current antidepressants aren’t doing a great job,” Redei noted.
Is continually pumping the brain with anti-depressants the answer?

Is continually pumping the brain with antidepressants the answer?

She said another reason current antidepressants are often ineffective is that they aim to boost neurotransmitters based on the popular molecular explanation of depression, which is that it’s the result of decreased levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. But that’s wrong, Redei said.

“The medications have been focusing on the effect, not the cause,” she said. “That’s why it takes so long for them to work and why they aren’t effective for so many people.”

And so, in our drugged-out nation, we have so many people taking antidepressants, and yet the great percentage of people taking them should not be.

But why should the drug companies care? They’re making healthy profits off of depression.

Technorati Tags: antidepressants, abuse, ineffective, useless

Antidepressants are a complete waste of time and money. Doctors are not trained at all in depression and cures, big pharma are in it for the big bucks. DO NOT take antidepressants as they are the medical professions answer to something. But, they don’t know what. I have heard that antidepressants have been used in rat extermination. DO YOU WANT THIS IN YOUR BODY? The only answer to depression is through psychotherapy.

Do AntiDepressants Work?

A Sober Look at the Happy Pills

Talk about it:
info@livereal.com

Your trusty LiveReal Agents
asking the tough questions
and searching out the tough answers . . .

With so many people in our pill-crazed culture taking antidepressants . . . we just have to ask:

Are they actually working?

Have we solved the problem of human suffering? Are we any happier? Is this the best solution we have?

So we went looking for answers,
and so far have found . . .

This excerpt from
The Wall Street Journal, June 12th, 2002:

First there was Prozac. Then came Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor and Celexa. Now the FDA is poised to approve what could be the next blockbuster in the enormous antidepressant market . . .

The arrival of Lexapro, made by Forest Laboratories Inc., is expected as early as this month, and many patients and doctors are eagerly waiting. “Everyone’s going to want to try it on some patient,” says Philip Muskin, a Columbia University psychiatrist. He explains: “You keep hoping that the next one is going to solve all of the problems.”

But both science and past experience suggest that many people are bound to be disappointed . . .

Though demand for antidepressants is huge and growing – they are now the second-most prescribed drugs after anti-infectives, such as antibiotics - the frustrating reality for many patients and physicians is that they either don’t work very well or have intolerable side effects.

Few patients realize that half of the people who go on antidepressants stop taking them after three months. Add that to the fact that Lexapro is, in part, amarketing maneuver. It is nearly identical in its chemical make-up to Celexa, which Forest also makes. And Celexa works very similarly to the other top-selling antidepressants. But doctors and analysts expect demand for the new drug to be huge, partly because so many patients cycle through antidepressants . . .

Sibyl Shalo, 32 years old, ran through four different antidepressants between 1994 and 2000. They either didn’t work well or lost their benefits over time. Now she’s on Celexa, which improves her depression but also causes constipation, diarrhea and fatigue. “If this is the best I’m going to get, that’s not such a good thing,” says Ms. Shalo. So she’s awaiting Lexapro. “Now there’s something else for me to try,” she says.

Even the most popular antidepressants on the market work on only about half of the people who try them. Though the medicines have been life saviors for some patients, as many as 30% of those who are clinically depressed aren’t helped by any existing drug, according to Datamonitor PLC, a London market-analysis company. Moreover, all antidepressants can cause troubling side effects – for example, 37% of patients on antidepressants experience sexual dysfunction, according to a recent study by Anita Clayton, a University of Virginia psychiatry professor.

The National Institute of Mental Health estimates about 19 million Americans – 1 in 10 adults – suffer from depression at some point each year. About half of them, eight million people used antidepressants last year, according to Datamonitor. If you count those who used the drugs to treat anxiety, such as panic disorder, as many as 10 million Americans may have taken the medications in 2001.”

John Williams, a Honda salesman living in Seattle, enrolled in a Lexapro Trial after finding he couldn’t tolerate the loss of sexual appetite he suffered taking Paxil. On Lexapro, the sexual side effects almost entirely disappeared and he felt he could handle the others – ringing in his ears and a spacey feeling in the morning.

When the clinical trial ended in April, he had to go off Lexapro, but began taking the closest thing on the market, Celexa. “They seem to be identical,” he says. But while the drugs diminish his depression and anxiety, his symptoms aren’t gone.

And so Mr. Williams is already wondering what new treatment is coming. His doctor just told him about a trial for yet another antidepressant starting soon, and he says he’s thinking about enrolling.”

- excerpt from The Wall Street Journal,
“Approval Is Near On a New Drug for Depression,” June 12th, 2002

. . . and this excerpt from WebMD:

The latest scientific study to weigh in on the subject finds that theantidepressants worked only marginally better than placebos in a group of studies submitted to the FDA. Study participants taking the dummy pills had approximately 80% of the response seen in patients taking one of the six most widely prescribed antidepressants.

Lead researcher Irving Kirsch, PhD, tells WebMD that in many of the studies, while the difference between drug and placebo was significant from a statistical standpoint, it did not represent a significant difference for patients. His study appears July 15 in the American Psychological Association’s electronic publication, Prevention and Treatment.

“We are not saying that people don’t respond to these medications,” says Kirsch, who is a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut. “On the contrary, the response is very large, and that is why there has been this so-called revolution in the treatment of depression. The catch is that the response to placebo is almost as large” . . .

“People may be better off exploring other treatment options such aspsychotherapy or exercise, which has been shown to reduce depression. And the side effect of physical exercise is better health. That is much better than the loss of sexual function, tremors, agitation, diarrhea, and nausea that are side effects of SSRIs.”

Psychologist Roger P. Greenberg, PhD, says it is understandable that the SSRIs have become so popular in such a short time, despite the lack of data showing them to be effective. Both patients and their physicians, he adds, have adopted a“fast-mood mentality,” where the quick fix is expected for the treatment of depression. Greenberg heads the psychology division at SUNY Upstate Medical University and has written two books on the limits of treating depression with drugs.

“The notion that depression is caused by a biochemical imbalance that is easily treated with drugs has taken hold in recent years because it provides this easy solution,” he tells WebMD. “Biochemical imbalance is a handy catch phrase, but there is not a lot of evidence that there is such a thing.”

- excerpts from “Are Antidepressants Effective?
They’re Just Slightly More Effective
Than Dummy Pills,
Research Shows”
by Salynn Boyles, WebMD

. . . and this excerpt from USAToday, January 22nd, 2004:

(LiveReal Editor’s Summary of the Article:
Could antidepressants – those very things that have so often been hailed as the cure for depression . . . cause suicide?
“We don’t know,” experts say. “Maybe.”)

Could antidepressants prescribed for more than 1 million U.S. children and teenagers cause some of them to attempt suicide?

The Food and Drug Administration’s first public hearing on this question Feb. 2 is expected to draw polarized and emotional testimony. But the evidence needed for an answer won’t be in for several months, says Russell Katz, director of the FDA’s neuropharmacological division.

The FDA is re-examining 20 studies of eight antidepressants used in children. The studies didn’t document a single drug-related suicide. But preliminary findings suggested that suicidal thoughts and attempts, though rare, were more common in kids taking the drugs than those on sugar pills. . .

. . . The FDA has asked drug companies for more information . . .

(Editor’s Note:
Is there something wrong with this scenario?
Is the best way to gather real “information”
really to ask the folks whose very livelhood depend on the answers?)

. . . in December, Britain’s equivalent of the FDA advised giving none of the SSRIs to children except for Prozac, saying it’s the only one whose benefits outweigh risks . . .

. . . There’s relatively little controlled research on SSRIs in school-age children “and zippo on kids under 5,” says John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. . .

. . . “The lack of supporting data, considering their widespread use, is surprising and disturbing,” says Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., and author of Should I Medicate My Child? . . .

. . . However, prescribing patterns and medical economics work against the eagle-eye monitoring needed, some say. General practitioners and pediatricians, often not experts in the field, write the majority of SSRI prescriptions for kids. Also, HMOs may restrict access to busy specialists and pay for pills but not therapy . . . says David Fassler, a child psychiatrist in Burlington, VT . . .

. . . Mark Miller, 54, of Overland Park, Kan., believes antidepressants cost the life of his 13-year-old son, Matthew. He’ll testify at the FDA hearing.

After a family move in 1996, Matthew had trouble adjusting at his new school. On the advice of school counselors, the Millers took him to a psychiatrist the next summer, though he seemed happier.

The doctor gave Mark antidepressants, and he began to act fidgety, Miller says. The morning after Mark took his seventh pill, Mark’s mom found him hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

“We have no family history of depression and didn’t even have a package insert because he gave us samples,” Miller says. An autopsy showed his son’s body had SSRI levels suitable for a 250-pound body, though the boy weighed less than 100 pounds, he says.

But other parents will tell the FDA that SSRIs saved their kids’ lives.

Sherri Walton, 45, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., says major depression runs in her family. Walton’s daughters, Jordan, 14, and Katie, 12, started Prozac in the past 18 months after episodes of severe depression.

“They didn’t even want to dance anymore, even though they’re avid dancers; they didn’t want to live, and now they’re normal kids,” Walton says. “I’m going to tell the FDA, ‘Don’t take away what gave my kids their lives back.’ ”

The agency expects to have enough evidence to answer the questions on suicide risk by summer, the FDA’s Katz says. Another hearing is likely then, and at that time the FDA might issue a new recommendation on SSRIs and children.

Parents who want their kids off the antidepressants now should consult doctors on how to do it gradually because stopping abruptly can be harmful, he adds.

For undecided parents, new interim guidance might come Feb. 2, Katz says. “All we can say right now is, use with caution.”

- excerpt from USA TODAY, January 22nd, 2004
“Antidepressants and Suicide”
by Marilyn Elias

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