Dr Aaron Frost | Public figure
Dr Aaron Frost
Phone: +61 7 3349 5511
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25.01.2022 Pro-level accoustic treatment today to deal with a slightly annoying echo using a smaller room today to run STAP training
24.01.2022 https://www.mentalhealthacademy.com.au/telehealth 2021 State of telehealth Summit If anyone is interested, I will be speaking in early Feb at the Mental Health Summit organised by Mental Health academy and registration is FREE.... Thankfully its not just me, there will be some real heavy weights in the area of technology and mental health, including my friend and colleague Dr Tania Mc Mahon
24.01.2022 Never doubt that money talks. In brief; Ingestigative journalism discovers that massive adult website is hosting millions of GB of VERY shady and illegal content.... Massive adult website minimises the issue; isolated cases, we can't police everything users upload etc ... Visa and MasterCard turn off their payment gateway. Massive adult website discovers they can do more to remove this content https://www.pcmag.com//pornhub-purges-10-million-videos-af
24.01.2022 where did all the alien abductions go? I have been a psychologist for over 20 years and have worked in a variety of settings, including; research, in-patient, prison, drug and alcohol rehab and private practice. It occured to me recently that it's been quite a few years since I have seen someone who was abducted by aliens. It has been even longer since I have met someone who was convinced they were Jesus, Napoleon, Julius Caesar or the like. However when i first started, th...ese identity delusions were so frequent that it was not uncommon to have multiple clients in one hospital who believed they were the same historical figure; so much so that effort had to be made to keep them separated from each other due to the distress and agitation that them meeting would cause. Today, when i see delusions it is far more likely to be of a paranoid nature about devices spying on them, government conspiracies or thought control. So do delusions simply reflect prevailing social themes? Is your phone spying on you ? Absolutely !!!! but there is a pretty good chance that unless you spend your spare time planning to overthrow the government that your phone is spying on you simply to help facebook, google and the rest sell you stuff on behalf of their paid advertisers. I found the following paper fascinating, as it confirms that in fact delusional content does change over the years and it does reflect prevailing social themes. So where does this leave us ? I think there are two major takeaways from this that are worth considering, the clinical and the political. Clinically, we need to make room for the idea that delusional content may have meaning. There are absolutely underlying biological mechanisms that drive and fuel psychosis, but we still need to listen to our clients and understand the meaning of their delusions for them. (Please note: I consider sociological reductionism and suggesting that all mental illness is purely a response to trauma to be just as unhelpful) Politically, we need to start recognising that the content that fuels these delusions is a regular part of mainstream culture. Belief in conspiracy theories in rife, and as we are seeing currently can be extremely damaging. Rather than viewing people who disagree with us as somehow damaged or stupid, we need to recognise that they are the more public manifestation of what is a very real phenomena in public life. as always, interested in thoughts and feedback ? http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download
23.01.2022 Can therapy be dangerous ? ... YES !! With thanks to my colleague Scott Miller for highlighting this paper. Psychological therapy can have up to a 10% rate of harm, with some therapies more likely to produce harm.... This excellent meta-analysis following up on the work by the late Scott Lillienfeld looks to investigate whether there are some therapies where the harm is overwhelming. So how do we get this information out there ? Should the APS have a list of 'banned' therapies? should AHPRA ? should the department of health? We know that it takes a long time for research findings to make their way into clinical practice. How do we most effectively get this information out there. In the interests of that aim, the therapies we are talking about are: - Critical Incident Stress Debriefing - Bootcamp for conduct disorder - Drug abuse resistance education (DARE) - 'scared straight' for young offenders - Expressive emotional therapies - Greif Therapies CISD and Scared Straight interventions definitely failed the more likely to be harmful test, while none of the others got a clear bill of health (data being either too scant or too poorly reported to be sure). Please feel free to share this URL https://www.scottdmiller.com//Potentially-Harmful-Therapie
18.01.2022 Medicare may have lost a key reform somewhere between the Minister's desk and the drafting room A couple of days ago, I posted a summary of the proposed medicare changes. I was very supportive of two major changes that were proposed; extending the maximum session count to 20, and scrapping the 6 session review, to be replaced with a 10 session review. To recap, I supported the extra sessions because;... a) extra sessions doesn't increase workforce capacity, so costs the government nothing, and; b) the people who really need more than 10 sessions REALLY need them; c) no one is using them recreationally; I also supported the scrapping of the 6 session review in favour of clients having a whole course of 10 sessions, followed by an additional 10 if they would likely benefit. This was also a much needed reform for a number of reasons; a) the government spends a fortune on these reviews, doing less of them is a cost saver b) GPs find them tedious and annoying c) 10 sessions rather that 6 is a better refection of evidence based practice. d) a lot of clients who need the additional sessions are lost in the administrative burden of getting the review done. Overall, two solid reforms from a Health Minister struggling to keep his head above water in the midst of both a global pandemic and a state by state health department turf war. However, when the policy was finally turned into words in print rather than words from a podium, the second reform seems to have been lost. Now, instead of a 10, plus 10 system, we have a 6 + 4 + 10 system. I am trying to be open minded, but I genuinely struggle to find a rationale as to how that is good. It is just as costly and inefficient, continues to be administratively burdensome for GPs and Psychologists, and for the people who need the most help they now have to jump through two oddly spaced review hoops. The person who will need 20 sessions is unlikely to see much symptom change between sessions 6 and session 10, so why waste their and everyone else's time. It is not like GPs, psychologists or clients are sitting around twiddling their thumbs right now looking for busy work. Call me an optimist, but I am somewhat hopeful that this is either a simple administrative error in drafting, or is a temporary measure to get us to the end of this calendar year without confusing session counts for people already in the system. In order to demonstrate the harm of 6 sessions reviews, i have complied this data from our practice that shows the massive administrative drop-out burden created by these reviews. Please feel free to share this data, and if you have your own data, please share that also. It is time for policy in mental health to start being based on evidence.
16.01.2022 Which vaccination group are psychologists in ? I was curious to see where we get triaged in terms of COVID risk, so just completed the helpful checker. Please note - we are not "frontline" health care workers, this is a specific term in this context that applies to people working in COVID labs, or respiratory wards or directly dealing with patients who are affected.... So based on this, we are in group 1B. But don't take my word for it, go and check for yourself https://covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au/eligibility
14.01.2022 So Marjorie and I are watching Mary Poppins after a day of baking and tidying her room together. The feed the birds scene got me thinking. How much would that Tuppence be worth in today’s money, if he had invested it wisely in the bank. The earlier song tells us its grand to be an Englishman in 1910, King Edward’s on the throne, its the age of men... So we have 110 years to work with. A quick search for compounding interest, and conversation from pre-decimal to decimal currency reveals that his tuppence would be worth 2.88 today. More than the royalties that would be recieved by the rights owner if I played the Mary Poppins soundtrack 100 times on Spotify. Sometimes, you just need to feed the birds, buy the kite, or enjoy your tuppence now.
13.01.2022 Celebrating International Women's Day At the risk of being another man speaking about something on which I have no qualifications, today I would just like to speak personally and extend thanks to some of the women in my life. My late Grandmother Edith May who was born in the great-depression, helped raise over a dozen siblings, packed artillery shells as a factory worker during the war, gave birth to three children and buried one. May learned to drive in her 40s when my grand...father retired unexpectedly, and took a job serving food and cleaning tables at one of the UQ colleges to make ends meet. My Mother Lesley who finished her high school in Australia and struggled with the vastly different curriculum, graduated as a registered nurse and worked night shift for over 30 years to earn enough to raise a family of three and send us to good schools. My wife Rebecca who inspires me everyday with her wise blend of heartfelt compassion and fierce intellect and who rarely has a waking moment when she is not thinking about her family, her work colleagues, the clients of Benchmark or her community. The amazing female professionals who have inspired or mentored me over the years - Analise O'Donovan, Betty Headley, Leanne Casey, Leanne Geppert, Penny Davis, Marchienne Van Der Veen and others. FInally, thank you to the amazing team of women who currently or have in the past worked at Benchmark. We have had a predominantly female workforce since day one, and I would be lying if I said I had ever worked in a place with such a great culture. Thank you to each and every one of you, for the tiny acts of consideration you do every day, to the massive and inspiring acts of fortitude and strength that i know all of your jobs entail.
11.01.2022 The Show must go on The last 2 days have seen the most bizarre series of training misfortunes I have ever been a part of. Day 1 ... Included working from home awaiting a negative COVID result, getting my negative, making a last minute rush into the office when it started raining and the internet at home failed, and my phone was unable to provide sufficient bandwidth to tether ... Day 2 Involved not 1, but 2 Fire alarms 4 hours apart that involved evacuating the entire practice, and me running a 15 minute section of the training from a park bench. Huge thanks to this very tolerant group of Psychologists on Zoom.
10.01.2022 So do conspiracy theories qualify as delusions ? I recently blogged about the hypothesis that psychotic delusions represent the extreme end of a set of beliefs held with varying degrees of conviction by people who do not have a psychotic disorder. There is a matter of degrees between the person who always uses the privacy shutter on their laptops' webcam and the person who believes they are being spied on by the NSA.... But perhaps there is another element of the current conspiracy fervour that has parallels to delusion; the ability to change ones mind based on disconfirming evidence. Every undergrad psych text book will give the example of a patient with a Cotard delusion (a rare delusions in which the sufferer believes they are dead). The psychiatrist asks the man if dead men bleed, which he agrees they do not. He then asks to prick his finger, which he does and the patient bleeds. "What does that tell you?" the psychiatrist asks. "Well I guess it proves dead men do bleed" comes the speedy reply. Most of us change our minds on a regular to semi-regular basis based on evidence. I used to believe Volkswagens were excellent cars until I owned one. The person with a delusion simply expands the delusion to include the new facts. Out there in QAnon conspiracy land are the following beliefs; - The democrats plans to open gulags to lock up the 80million democrats who voted for Trump - Joe Biden is in league with the communist party of China and plans to start harvesting organs of Americans to feed the Asian black market - America will definitely become a communist country - An election was literally stolen from a rightfully elected president to allow all of this to happen - Something to do with a paedophile ring and Hillary Clinton that I must admit I cant even fathom. If all of that is true, then rioting and insurrection are rational acts. Soooo .....what happens if this doesn't happen? Do you change your mind ? What if Joe Biden comes to power and does a few billion dollars worth of stimulus, a bit of social security, a bit of re-regulation for the financial sector, and a bit of pro-environmental protection. In other words, what if he is just another slightly right of centre fiscal conservative with a nod to liberal social policy? Does the delusion grow to include shadowy forces who are rescuing the republic from within? Is he a Trojan horse for the even scarier vice president who will take over when he is too old ? My hunch is that the movement will divide between those who can change their mind and those who cant, in other words the delusional vs the not-delusional. PS - Yes, I am aware of a lot of delusion on the left of politics as well, but right now they aren't building gallows in front of the capital building, while walking the corridors with ziptie handcuffs looking for the vice president and the speaker of the house.
09.01.2022 Fifteen minute book summaries are not making us smarter, and five books that might. I keep getting advertised these apps that promise to make me as smart as the smartest of the smart by spoon feeding me condensed versions of books. The promise me that if i absorb a few hundred of these I will be able to wax erudite with CEOs professors and rocket scientists. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that some of them might see through me when I describe 'Don Quixote' as kind of l...ike game of thrones with less dragons and incest and more windmills. Reading is great; it expands the mind and fosters empathy. In fact, it is even ok to read things by authors you don't like who hold opinions you don't agree with. Sometimes they change your mind, and other times the process of wrestling with their ideas serves to strengthen your own. So today, id like to kick off a counter idea - Read one book, but really think about it. Lets crowd source this to get some diversity What are the books that you have read in the past 10 years that have had a profound impact on you? To get the ball rolling The Selfish Gene: Richard Dawkins. His description of evolutionary principles within biology is second to none but Darwin, and his application of evolutionary theories to ideas as diverse as computer science and internet memes is profoundly thought provoking. Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand. Not as a playbook for unfettered capitalism as many seem to take it, but for the hilarious image of all those hard working capitalists returning to agrarian life after going on strike. Guns Germs and Steel: Jared Diamond. One of the best roadmaps I have ever read for how we got from small tribes of humanoids to complex competitive and cooperative civilisations. This Changes Everything: Naomi Klein. The book that shook me out of my inertia about climate change and moved it to a clear and present danger in for the world I will leave to my children Thinking Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman. Amazing summary of a life's work on the type of biases that affect our ability to make rational decisions. What books have moved you this decade ?
08.01.2022 Heavy Metal and mental health Huge props to my colleague and friend Dr Gen Dingle. Gen has had a long term interest in the way in which people use music to fulfill psychological needs, and underlying science of that. Many academics will wait their entire career to get a paper published in 'The Lancet'. Gen got called up by them and asked to weigh in.... Well worth the read whether you are interested in metal or not https://www.thelancet.com//PIIS2215-0366(20)30558/fulltext
06.01.2022 Slowly getting more professional in the look and sound of STAP workshops. This year has been an incredible learning curve, and I'm looking forward to the major technology upgrade just around the corner
06.01.2022 Machine learning does not understand privacy, defamation, or sub judice Today, the highest legal figure in Australia admitted that he was the man accused of raping a 16 year old girl 33 years ago. His identify has been an open secret in Canberra for sometime, known by journalists, politicians and many political insiders. However, for various reasons (respect for the victim’s wishes, fear of defamation suits, or potentially prejudicing a trial) these people have not been nami...ng him in public. However, I took this screen shot yesterday before the announcement. Simply typing in his name linked directly to three articles about the alleged Canberra rapist. The same was not true for any of the other cabinet ministers whose names I entered. So how did google know ? Well, although none of these insiders named him publicly. Privately, they googled him. Some may have used terms like Christian Porter accusations of sexual assault to see whether there were other accusations. Some may have simply read the articles below, and then typed in his name to see what they found. Their reasons for linking their searches may have been protective, investigative or simply prurient. However each of these searches loaded the search algorithm ever so slightly, and it takes very few overlapping pattens before a strong connection is made. This has implications for the current case, but also for us as psychologists. We need to be very aware of the very real and actual implications of our curiosity. While the temptation to google a high profile client may be strong, remember that the gathering of information is not a one way street.
06.01.2022 Is it time to give up on psychotherapy ? Hear me out before you yell "NO !!!!" in all caps and very loudly at me :-) One of they keys to survival in the service industry is knowing the different between your product and your service. Any business 101 text book will give you the example of Kodak who failed spectacularly in the late 90s because they confused their product with their service....Continue reading
06.01.2022 I walked past this office today and noticed that one of our psychs has definitely learned the greatest use for the DSM 5. The DSM IV I'm a bit sadder about
05.01.2022 Further data suggesting psychological treatment not having the population level impact they are intended to. This is the second in a series of articles by Jorm and KItchener (both highly regarded researchers), showing that Psychological therapy is failing to have an impact. Whilst myself and Chris Lee wrote a published rebuttal to the first one, this one is far tighter.... If we accept the following as facts; - the work being done by psychologists is not having an impact that can be detected at a population level - roughly 25% of the population is getting access to psychological treatment Then there really are only a handful of conclusions to explain this Are we treating the wrong 25% ? Perhaps we are treating the severely and chronically unwell who are less likely to benefit, perhaps we are treating the mildly unwell who are unlikely to show much stastical improvement Are we doing a lousy job ? Drop out rates remain high, with many clients not recieveing an adequate 'dose' of therapy. Very few psychologists have active tracking of outcome data to demonstrate their effectiveness. *EDITTED* Are we allowing ourselves to be measured by the wrong metric Is populaiton level health the right variable, or should we be measuring things such as; reduced costs of hospitalisation, reduced welfare usage, reduced rates of medication, increased quality of life, family cohesion etc etc). This is the interpretation i lik the most, but then i ask, who will do that? I see a genuine shortage of academics and reearchers in this space doing this kind of analysis in Australia. I am genuinely open to more flattering interpretations. But next time cuts to Better Access are being floated as we head toward budget time, this data will surely be presented alongside the proposal to cut funding. What evidence do we have to push back ? https://sci-hub.do//journ/doi/abs/10.1177/0004867420976861
