Motivating people to make changes (ii)

The second of a series about using values and empathy to help people make choices
The first installment in this series looked at why people might not be doing what we think they ‘should’ and how they might show this. This installment looks at developing rapport and reviews the essential interpersonal skills that are needed.
Rapport [...]

PsyBlog - a psychology blog by Jeremy Dean

The great thing about the internet is the way you can randomly stumbleupon (oooops! no advertising meant) someone’s blog and find something really special. Jeremy’s blog is full of bits and pieces of well-written psychological info that has stood the test of time - he’s been posting since 2004. I recommend at [...]

Motivating people to make changes (i)

The first of a series about using values and empathy to help people make choices
Most of our training in health care provision assumes that:

the people we will be working with are ready to receive our knowledge/expertise
we know more than they do (about what they should [...]

Motivate Healthy Habits

Rick Botelho and his Motivate Healthy Habits site is one of my favourite authors and websites on motivation and self management especially in primary care.
Take a moment or two to read through this site, it gives some of the foundation information on health change for individuals.
I’ve also included a great powerpoint presentation by Rick Botelho [...]

Movember! (shameless plug for men’s health)

If you think back to the dark old ’70’s and all that hair - and shudder - do NOT go to this website!

Men’s mortality is in many parts of the world sadly forgotten - with all the awareness about women’s health, and in particular cervical and breast cancer, we do forget that men also get [...]

Hypnosis

Just included in this blog - my brief description of hypnosis and imagery in pain management! This is located in the ‘Coping Skills’ section - either click on the header above, or on the title on the link to the right.
If you have any questions or experiences using hypnosis, drop me a comment! [...]

Mirror therapy for phantom limb

This article highlights a therapy that has been used in some form for a couple of years for both phantom limb pain and complex regional pain syndrome
It seems that visual feedback using a mirror to reflect the intact limb in the place of the amputated or dysfunctional limb can ‘fool’ the brain into thinking that [...]

The gift of Fibromyalgia - one woman’s view

A quick link to a wonderful post by Moonbeammcqueen on her blog ‘FibromyOWgia’. I loved her representation of the opportunities that something like chronic pain can give - depending on one’s view of it. From adversity comes change and triumph and discovery. Not a bad way to view life I think. [...]

Postgraduate distance-taught papers in pain and pain management

If you haven’t started planning 2008 postgraduate study yet - there are a couple of ‘down-under’ papers that you can choose from.
University of Otago, Christchurch has the Postgraduate Diploma in Musculoskeletal Medicine (for medical practitioners), which includes a number of papers that can be credited to Masters of Health Sciences. These papers cover a [...]

Changing the inner critic - positive statements

How often do we mutter to ourselves ‘ahh! you stupid xxx, that’s going to hurt’, or ‘I don’t want to do that, it’s never going to work’!
In pain management, challenging negative statements is a tool that is often used. This requires a good deal of work on the part of the person with pain [...]