A recent article at Good Therapy may make it seem like Adventure Therapy is a new treatment modality for men, but in fact, Adventure Therapy has been around in some form for more than a century and has been used to treat women, teens, and families, as well as men. Traditionally, men are not as drawn to talk therapy as women are. Simple discomfort with the process can make it less effective. However, my practice, which allows clients much control over their own process, draws in many more men than I have seen in other settings, and at least half of my clients are men. Feeling personally in control is only one of the characteristics of Adventure Therapy that is appealing to men.
Adventure Therapy includes group games, problem solving tasks, trust activities, and indoor and outdoor adventures such as camping, rock climbing, canoeing, sailing, etc. It generally involves the benefits of group therapy while allowing participants to process individually and share in their own time both during and in between group processing sessions. Adventure Therapy often includes some perceived physical or psychological risk such as danger of physical harm or risk of embarrassment, which can help clients invest in treatment and experience more intense positive emotions when a task is completed. Based on a conglomeration of theories of several well-known psychologists, including Alfred Adler, Albert Ellis, Milton Erickson, William Glasser, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Jean Piaget, Carl Rogers, B.F. Skinner, Fritz Perls, and Viktor Frankl, Adventure Therapy can be defined as a cognitive-behavioral-affective approach which utilizes humanistic existential understandings. As a practicing professional, I very much appreciate this holistic theoretical approach.
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There have been a couple of cases in the news of social services moving children to live with family members after parents have seemingly ignored doctor orders to help the child lose weight for health reasons, not just in the United States but in Scotland and Canada as well. Nutrition and a healthier environment is also an argument used to determine custody and/or primary residence for a child. The courts are paying attention to the childhood obesity crisis in the United States, which can cause physical and emotional issues for children that extend into adulthood. It is certainly a controversial and inflammatory topic for many.
I admit to having high nutritional standards and being pretty opinionated about what the children in my family are fed. There are certain ingredients that can be considered contraband in my house. As a therapist specializing in adoption, particularly children from hard places, I am familiar with how attention to diet can greatly impact behavior and symptoms of several disorders including ADHD, autism, Aspberger’s, and depression. I think nutrition is vitally important to physical and mental health. In the same way, as a therapist specializing in adoption, I never take separating a child from his or her family lightly. While there are times it is necessary for the health and safety of a child, and times it is outside of anyone’s control, it will have a lasting impact on the child.
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“Gluten-free diet linked to increased depression and eating disorders” – the headline immediately caught my attention. As I read the first article, I was theorizing in my head about the chemical impact of gluten and carbohydrates in our brains and bodies, as well as the mental strain of adhering to a strict diet and the extra effort it requires. I thought a correlation between depression and a gluten-free lifestyle was possible, I thought about all my friends and family members living gluten-free, and I started digging for the actual research to investigate the experimental method used. What I found was that the alarming headline was taken from partial statements made by an experimenter, but the entire findings were not taken into account.
Unfortunately, this can be common in the news media and blogosphere where the focus is more on attention-grabbing sound bites rather than in-depth analysis and education. It is my sincere hope that everything I write (here and elsewhere) and everything you read at DietsInReview is researched and thought out, and we are not jumping to conclusions or publishing alarmist headlines simply because it is provocative.
In this case, the research found that those women with celiac disease (177 surveyed) who were most compliant with a gluten-free diet reported “increased vitality, lower stress, decreased depressive symptoms, and greater overall emotional health,” according to Josh Smyth of Penn State. This sounds like the opposite of the alarmist headline that grabbed my attention. The caveat is that those surveyed, even those managing celiac disease well through a gluten-free lifestyle, reported “higher rates of stress, depression, and a range of issues clustered around body dissatisfaction, weight and shape” compared to the general population.”
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As we hurtle toward 2012, you may be feeling inspired and resolute to make this new year a new chance to create the life that you have always wanted or to improve on the life in which you already find so much joy. As we turn the calendar to an entirely new year, it seems easier to find hope and believe in possibilities. Unfortunately, experience has shown us how powerful habits can be, and despite our purest resolutions, most of the time our goals lose momentum before January ends. It is important to find the accountability or inspiration that can keep you on track to achieve whatever goals you have resolved to obtain in 2012.
Some find celebrity weight loss stories to inspire them to begin or stick with their own weight loss 
journeys. A 15-year old boy from Mississippi named Kris was inspired to drop his weight by Patrick House, winner of Season 10′s Biggest Loser. When Jennifer Hudson lost 80 pounds using Weight Watchers, her story was very popular, even inspiring a guess appearance on Oprah. As reality television stars, Patrick and Jennifer may be more capable of inspiring us because it is easier for us to relate to them than it might be to relate to other successful celebrities. If we are able to identify with someone who has faced a similar challenge, we believe that we can experience similar results.
Writer Chamein Canton explains that her 60 pound weight loss “wasn’t inspired by Jennifer Hudson, Kirstie Alley, Valerie Bertinelli, Marie Osmond or anyone else. They were more frustrating to me than anything else because they could afford to take care of themselves with nutritionists, personal chefs, personal trainers and all of the other accoutrements that come with celebrity.” Chamein did not identify with the emotional struggles of temptation and habit change of these famous women because she saw the resources at their disposal. Despite these resources, we have watched celebs like Kirstie Alley and Oprah yo-yo gaining and losing weight over and over just like so many others who struggle with weight. This can be another aspect that helps us identify with a particular celebrity and his or her weight loss journey.
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Hoarding food is something that I talk about frequently in adoption preparation classes. It is common and to be expected that children who have not always had enough and not had parents to look out for their best interests would want to hide food for later. Parents need to be vigilant to clean out pockets so chocolate bars do not go through the wash, and clean up rooms to avoid rodents, insects, and rotting food. In cases of adoption, I encourage parents to be calm, avoid commenting on the behavior, and patiently wait for it to extinguish itself, which it will in the majority of cases.
There is less written about food hoarding in adults, although there is some written about older adults who hoard food, particularly those that have lived through the Great Depression. Primarily, hoarding food is a sign of anxiety surrounding the availability of food and sometimes it is a compulsion, something that one feels driven to do to ease anxiety. There is a slightly higher percentage of females than males that hoard food, and often the hoarder lives alone and is mostly socially isolated. Nearly three out of every four adults that hoard food do not believe that it is a problem.
Hoarding food is also a lesser discussed symptom of an eating disorder as well. It is most understood as a symptom of bulimia when a sufferer stashes away binge food items. Food hoarding can also be a symptom of anorexia, however. In the throes of anorexia, sufferers can become obsessed with food despite the fact that they will not allow themselves to ingest it. It can be comforting to anorexia sufferers to have food items available, especially if their body has transition into a starvation mode.
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