December 2011
7 posts
Poor mental health harming productivity, report...
Mental disorders are harming productivity in Europe. About 40% of the workforce suffers from some on going mental condition, the most common is depression. Productivity with that part of the population is 15% below the productivity of healthy people. In addition people with mental disorders are more likely to be unemployed than healthy people. This situation won’t change until governments and the...
The deep regret of a trained killer: the journey...
This year there is a lot of publicity examining the underneath results of violence. The implications of brain damage that hockey enforcers suffer is echoed in a recent book Crack In The Armor written by a trained police officer who had a very difficult time coming to terms with a death he caused in arresting a citizen. What emerges is that we don’t teach people to handle the downside of life. It...
Depression at work
Depression at work, depression at home they all go together, depression is now a curse of our age. One in five suffers from it and that may be a low number. We are stressed out to one degree or another, and it is reasonable to assume that stress and depression go hand in hand. You might ask well doesn’t stress go with anger? The answer is stress goes with depression, and with anger. There cannot...
Montreal Massacre 22 years later
Every year in group work we spend this week’s session on the Montreal Massacre initially using the NFB film clip, which highlights the dramatic impact that the massacre had at the time. No one had ever thought that the shooting was a deliberate targeting of women until the body count mounted. The aspect of shock and how could this be? are front and centre in the movie. These last two years we...
Kingston canal trial hears expert testimony on...
We have many clients from different cultures who believe they must control their wives, otherwise they will feel weak. This is the classic twist that patriarchy in its worst form can take one. The basis of most male dominating attitudes is men’s fear of being vulnerable. The expert witness testified “If a man cannot control his own household, which is represented by the behaviour of the female...
The Bully Mob (Toronto Life Jan 2012)
This article just preceded the legislation making bullying a criminal offence in Ontario. With the number of juvenile suicides recently there has been enough publicity to move this problem to a public issue. Too long a blind eye was turned on bullying, with school boards refusing to take a stand.
There have been some inroads into dealing with bullying, some form of empathy training has been...
November 2011
17 posts
Hems up, claws out in the office
A recent study by an Ottawa professor on aggressive behavior indicates 51% of workplace bullies are women. There is a real dislike between women employees particularly around the area of looks. The study showed attractive women who dressed provocatively were reacted to differently than those dressed conservatively. When the provocative or sexy woman was in the office they would be stared at ,...
2 tags
Study raises doubts about effect of tough...
Challenging drunk drivers to respect their problem is itself a problem. The recent study reveals that sending offenders to jail doesn’t motivate them to stop driving while drunk. We can spend all the money we like by locking them up, but this has little effect. What does that mean? The driver does not respect his problem. Part of the recovery process takes clients through the Stage of Change and...
Hate speech: tweeting against cyber-sexism
According to Ms. Zerbisias and Mallick reactions from the feminist website MenCallMeThings has been full of hate by men against women. The attacks consist of calling them names, sarcasm and plain hate. In anger management terms it implies the men feel like helpless victims whose only remedy to what they don’t like is to rant like a two year old having a tantrum. It is the ultimate form of weakness...
Limits of harm reduction
In the treatment of addiction harm reduction has become an accepted method of treatment. Originally abstinence was the only accepted method going back to the original ideas from AA. For a certain segment of the population harm reduction is the preferred way, less alcohol is preferred to more alcohol, smoking pot is less harmful than crack cocaine, methadone is preferable to heroin. Moreover there...
Women are the new face of alcohol advertising
While advertisers and alcohol suppliers rub their hands in joy over women being the new market, underneath is a disturbing phenomenon. The fastest growing sector of the population getting addicted to alcohol are women.
As women achieve social equality with men, so comes the downside as well. The trappings of success include social drinking. As the series of articles in the Star shows, social...
89% of us think we are overworked
Two years ago the figure was 64% felt they were overworked so now it is rising very fast which probably reflects the worry about the economy overall. “Excessive work loads, lack of work/life balance, unclear or conflicting job expectations and inadequate staffing, and fears of losing a job” None of this contributes to a happy world. In business it means absenteeism’s, disability claims. At home...
If alcoholism is a disease, does anonymity promote...
This is a question posed in the article ‘Alcoholics(not) Anonymous’. Since AA was formed back in 1935 attitudes have shifted about society’s stigma of alcoholism. However the idea of anonymity provides a safe stepping stone for any newcomer. An overriding feeling of the alcoholic is one of personal shame. This also applies to many of our anger management clients, whose level of low self esteem is...
Cyclists and motorists must learn to get along
As the article in the globe says they don’t get along. The clash of cultures comes out on the needs of the road users. Each side looks at the other with resentment and hostility with no real desire to resolve differences. Each would say the other has to change leaving each side unaccountable for their own actions. As with most angry clients it’s the other side that is wrong. “They (who ever...
Top Mountie’s first job is dealing with sexual...
The ugly prospect of dealing with sexual harassment in the RCMP is being acknowledged. Sexual harassment is Abuse. In Canada it is a criminal offence, in Europe freedom from sexual harassment is a fundamental human right.
As in the domestic abuse program, one sees that men don’t have the same understanding as women about the topic. Frequently men are unable to respect the demeaning aspect, the...
Broken Windows: a cure for crime? Probably. A cure...
The Broken Windows concept implies that a clean neighborhood is less damaging than a messy one. If something is damaged the best thing is to clean up the mess and re-open for life as normal as soon as possible. It helps bring order out of chaos and people feel safer.
From a crime perspective it was introduced in the 1980’s in New York by Mr. George Kelling a probation officer who said clean...
And the top 10 words of 2011 are. .
Happily, according to the Toronto Star, the top words were ‘royal wedding’ unhappily also in that category were “The top five phrases of 2011 were rounded out by “anger and rage,” characterizing the mood of the global electorate, “the great recession”, To put it mildly, people are angry. The people’s sit ins, the anti austerity riots, political stalemates are all signs of underlying rage and...
Ignoring abuse
The recent scandal at Penn State University about the officials who had been aware of sexual abuse for ten years before doing anything about it unfortunately exemplifies a normal yet disturbing aspect of human behavior. The same situation has come to light with Scouts Canada and the Catholic Church is rife with examples of priests being protected at the expense of the childhood victims.
What is it...
Until he asks why he keeps doing this,the hurt...
Until he asks why does he keeps using anger to live with his anger problems ,the hurt will continue for the Mr Scala.
The dispute between Mr. Scala and his neighbours in the Junction area is back in the spotlight as he is alleged to have breached his bail conditions by hanging around his home on Quebec Avenue having been convicted of serious harassment and property damage charges. The neighbours...
For those depressed dads: more about depression
The result of depression is that our energy shuts down. The frontal cortex, where smart decisions are made, stops functioning. All we are left with is our emotional brain (the limbic system ) pumping out negative messages saying that “This is too much” or “I can’t cope”. The natural response is to bury our head in the sand with the prayer that we hope this will go away. We drink too much, we hide...
