Quantum Units Education

People who have never suffered the loss of a loved one tend to believe that the bereavement process has a far more destructive and devastating effect on a person compared to those who have actually suffered such a loss in the past, according to a new study by the University of Haifa’s International Center for the Study of Loss, Bereavement and Human Resilience.

The study was presented on April 10 at a conference organized by the Center entitled “Memorial Days and Other Days.”

“Loss is a personal experience, but it’s also a social and cultural one,” says Prof. Shimshon Rubin, who heads the Center and was one of the study’s authors. “The way society relates to people who have suffered a loss is critical to the way the grieving process is managed, because the social component is very important in coping with bereavement.”

The study, which was conducted with psychologists Hagar Tehelet-Rubinov and Maya Halevi, questioned more than 200 men and women of different ages, a portion of whom had suffered loss or trauma in the past. Participants filled out a variety of questionnaires that included stories of people who had suffered different types of trauma or loss. The participants were asked to rank the severity of that person’s situation based on the way he coped with the painful event he had experienced.

Full story of emotional loss at Science Daily

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

NEW! Biomarkers and Alzheimer’s Science

4 CE hrs. $12
This course covers recent scientific research on Alzheimer’s disease, including biomarkers that have been identified, modifiable and genetic risk factors, drug research, studies on the effects of different kinds of care, and discoveries from basic science research.

New! Ethics for Licensed Professional Counselors and National Certified Counselors

2 CE hrs. $6
This short Ethics course is based on the Code of Ethics by NBCC – The National Board of Certified Counselors. It’s applicable to all Licensed Professional Counselors and National Certified Counselors.

New! Generation Alzheimer’s

2 CE hr. $6
This basic course is intended to provide participants with information about the personal, social and economic costs of Alzheimer’s Disease now and in the coming half-century, and why we should support research on finding a cure.

New! Screening for Drug Use in Medical Settings

10 CE hrs $30
This course is intended to provide in general medical settings the screening tools and procedures necessary to conduct screening, brief intervention, and/or treatment referral for patients who may have or be at risk of developing a substance use disorder.

New! Supporting Families Impacted by Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Trauma

10 CE hrs. $30
Besides the difficult task of raising children—often while working full-time, many caregivers deal with added stressors such as mental health problems, substance abuse, and a history of trauma. The aim of this course is to build a responsive community: a community that has as its goal to respond as sensitively to the needs of a family as a committed caregiver does to his or her child.

For these new courses and many more, visit Quantum Units Education

A marker for later cognitive problems may be starting to show up in the brain tissue of former National Football League players.

According to a study published Monday in JAMA Neurology, researchers found that cognitive problems and depression are more common among aging NFL players with a history of concussion.  But brain damage and mood problems among some segments of the NFL population is not stunning news anymore.

What has got scientists slightly giddy are those markers:  Poor performance on cognitive tests also showing up on sophisticated brain scans.  It suggests that damage post-concussion could some day be detectable by scanning the brain.

"We found some interesting markers that may help explain what is going on in the brain when people start developing (long-term) problems," said Dr. John Hart, medical science director of the Brain Health Institute for Athletes at the University of Texas at Dallas and lead author of the study.

Hart and colleagues studied 34 former NFL players, and were able to do brain scans on 26 of them; they measured blood flow and white matter changes in their brain tissue.

White matter is brain tissue that acts as a sort of conveyor belt for signals traveling to different brain regions.  When white matter is damaged – think about that conveyor belt veering off-course or stopping altogether – problems crop up with cognition, or thinking ability.

Full story of NFL players with brain issues at CNN Health

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

School shootings such as the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, may have long-lasting consequences, but with proper support, many children are able to move on, experts say.

Children need to be with their families as quickly as possible after exposure to such horrific events, said Steven Marans, director of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence/Childhood Violent Trauma Center at Yale University’s Child Study Center.

Marans and colleagues are making themselves available to Connecticut officials, including the governor’s office and state police.

The good news is that most kids do bounce back from a single incident of trauma, said James Garbarino, professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago and author of "Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them." If children can get back into their normal routines and get proper support, he said, they will do well.

Full story of kids trauma support at CNN Health

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

By Victoria Colliver

Researchers are getting closer to being able to predict who might be more vulnerable to stress even before they experience trauma.

A study of Bay Area and New York police academy recruits by researchers at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, UCSF and New York University is considered one of the first and largest studies to look at biological stress indicators before and after traumatic events.

“This study is unique because it looks at people before they’ve actually been exposed to trauma,” said lead author Sabra Inslicht, a psychologist at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF.

Nearly 300 academy recruits took samples of the waking levels of a stress hormone called cortisol. The results, published in last month’s issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry, found that recruits with higher cortisol levels shortly after waking up in the morning were most likely to have stressful reactions to trauma years later as police officers.

Full story at San Francisco Chronicle