The Institute tackles topics that are of import to the community at large — not just mental health professionals — including trauma, culture, anxiety and more. St. Louis Public Radio, KWMU, has featured Institute Faculty and guest speakers, in interactive interviews. Here’s a sampling:
⇒ Understanding Anxiety in Our Children – Barbara Milrod, MD, and Lenita Newberg, MSW
TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW, CLICK HERE
Anxiety disorders affect one in eight children. That’s according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
“Anxiety is ubiquitous but an anxiety disorder is not,” said Dr. Barbara Milrod, a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
Milrod joined St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh along with Lenita Newberg, director of the Advanced Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.
“It’s not new. Kids have been anxious for a long time. I think that we are becoming more aware of the prevalence and the deleterious outcomes of anxiety,” Milrod said. “I would say that people in our culture, in general, in this country at least, are more on edge, and what grown-ups respond to filters down to kids, often without grown-ups meaning for it to filter down.”
“They’re like little radars. If they know the parents and adults are pretty scared, they can get terrified,” Newberg added.
It can be difficult to know whether children have an anxiety disorder or are experiencing a normal amount. Plus, there are genetic and environmental components that contribute to whether a disorder may manifest itself.
“If you’re an adult who’s in that child’s life on an everyday basis, you probably have a sense that something is changing,” Newberg said.
⇒ Understanding Race, Social Class, and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens – Neil Altman, PhD
TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW, CLICK HERE
St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh talked with Neil Altman about understanding race, social class and culture through a psychoanalytic lens. Also joining the discussion was Lenita Newberg, director of the Advanced Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.
Altman is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and faculty member at William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry. His practice aims to help people with serious psychological disorders understand and change complex emotional and relationship problems to alleviate distress.
He said having a psychoanalytical point of view is something that can operate on a group level. When groups of people feel they are not heard or recognized, a shared experience is created which contributes to group formations around political movements.
“The important thing at the moment is that St. Louis is at the epicenter of a lot of the tension around racial and cultural social class categories right now,” Altman said. “A psychoanalytic institute has to be able to have something to say about that if it wants to be relevant in today’s world.”
Psychoanalysts recognize when people are feeling unheard and try to respond to that. He said psychoanalysis is a constant process of consciousness raising; having to deal with what makes people feel guilty and ashamed and how people are socialized in certain attitudes.
The St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute is an educational institute that trains people in psychotherapy and analysis.
“We have a growing number of students that are mental health professionals … trying to do the work of helping people feel heard,” Newberg said.
