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The Riggs Blog
The Riggs Blog is a mix of news about clinical work, research and educational activities from the Austen Riggs Center, as well as a source for information beyond our walls that we find interesting and thought-provoking. Senior clinical experts, researchers, and editors review all clinical content on this blog before it is published.
Austen Riggs Center Chief Nursing Officer Cheryl Puntil writes about the importance of talking about suicide, prevention and personal experience.
April is Alcohol Awareness Month, founded and sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD). As they state on their website, “Alcohol Awareness Month provides a focused opportunity across America to increase awareness and understanding of alcoholism, its causes, effective treatment, and recovery. It is an opportunity to decrease stigma and misunderstandings in order to dismantle the barriers to treatment and recovery, and thus, make seeking help more readily available to those who suffer from this disease.”
The Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center is pleased to announce the upcoming Yasmin Roberts Memorial Friday Night Guest Lecture: “Under the Skin: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Body Modification” with Alessandra Lemma, MPhil, DClin Psych: Friday, April 6, from 6:30-8:00 p.m.
How do you deal with the blank canvas? Any artist has this problem, any painter has this problem; they face thousands and thousands of blank canvases and have a lot of the same feelings and same doubts: “I have no talent,” “I don’t know how to do this,” “I don’t even know what I’m doing,” “Why bother?” But if we’re stubborn, we don’t allow that to stop the creative process.
The Austen Riggs Center is pleased to announce that Andrew J. Gerber, MD, PhD, medical director/CEO, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Massachusetts (NAMI Mass). This appointment reaffirms Dr. Gerber’s commitment to supporting community mental health services in the state and builds on his efforts at the Austen Riggs Center to positively impact the serious mental health issues we face as a society.
Part three of a four-part blog series, from a conversation with Visual Arts Instructor Mark Mulherrin
For me, addressing barriers that students bring to creating art can be like unraveling a clot of fishing line at times. How I deal with it is to be encouraging and to try to make them feel comfortable. But it is less important how I deal with it; it’s how do they deal with it.
The Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center is pleased to announce the upcoming Friday Night Guest Lecture: “Unthinkable Anxieties: Understanding and Working with Transphobic Countertransferences” with Griffin Hansbury, MA, LCSW-R: Friday, March 23, from 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Elizabeth Fitelson, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and the co-founder and director of the Women’s Program in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, talks about women’s mental health through the reproductive life cycle and her impressions of Riggs during a recent visit to deliver a Grand Rounds presentation.
Two other words that students often get confused are “skill” and “talent.” A student may say “I have no talent; can I just leave?” What they mean is “I have no skill.” Now, they might have talent, but they don't know it because they haven't tried to see if it’s there.
When the Activities Program staff meets with patients (who are students when they work with us) shortly after being admitted, I hear similar sentences come up again and again: “I can’t draw.” “I’m not creative.” “I have no imagination.” Though any of the disciplines can elicit these responses, it seems most intense around the visual arts which is frustrating because I think it's arising out of a misunderstanding about what visual art is and how it is made.
Get to know Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute for Education and Research Jane G. Tillman, PhD, ABPP.
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