Lamb Behavioral Health Center has been serving the mental health needs of our community for over a decade. As we wrap up Mental Health Awareness Month, we’ll reminisce about our history and share some insights for wherever you find yourself on your mental health journey.
CONTINUEIn a recent post, I shared four lessons derived from my childhood on a dairy farm. Today I will share several more cow stories and the lessons I learned about psychology.
CONTINUEWhat does a cow know about psychology? Apparently, a lot. I have learned many lessons from my dealings with cows in my youth. I grew up on a small dairy farm in Southwest Missouri, in a hilly region known as the Ozarks. The farm was approximately 20 miles from the nearest town, which got its first stop light when I was a senior in high school. To this day, the county I grew up in has more cows (74,000) than people (12,300).
CONTINUEHow often do you know what to do in a situation, but you don’t do it? Knowing what you should do and actually doing it are two different things. One of my past supervisors described this as the difference between “knowing knowledge” and “doing knowledge.” Just like music or athletic skills, patients must go through a process to use therapy skills in daily life. Therapists use the term skills transfer to describe the learning process from knowing to doing.
CONTINUEHave you ever said you would start something after you felt like it, but then the motivation never came? The truth of the matter is that waiting for motivation before acting often leaves us waiting…and waiting. Alternatively, if we start acting, motivation tends to follow. Motivation works more by pushing an action from behind rather than leading the action from the front. This is what the process of behavioral activation feels like.
CONTINUEI was introduced to self-compassion quite accidentally. Psychologists are required to complete a certain number of continuing education hours. I have earned my hours many times by attending the annual convention for the Texas Psychological Association. One year, I made a last-minute decision to drop in on a self-compassion workshop by Kristen Neff, Ph.D., a professor from The University of Texas. She was one of the first to study self-compassion.
CONTINUEOur emotions are vital to survival, but sometimes dwelling on them makes things worse. This is especially true for anxiety. When we face something that makes us scared or anxious, we feel uncomfortable. This activates our sympathetic nervous system. We call this the fight or flight system because it causes us to want to do something to get rid of this uncomfortable feeling.
CONTINUESince 2020, telehealth services have exploded. Telehealth has increased accessibility for mental health services. Many studies show that telehealth services have similar effects to traditional in-person therapy. This is particularly true when treating anxiety and depression for adolescents and adults (Abrams, 2020; Hagyari-Donaldson & Scott, 2025).
CONTINUEOne aspect of our clinic that parents, and even some clinicians, may find unusual is our requirement for parent attendance in therapy. We require parents to participate in every session for their child’s therapy appointments. The amount of time spent in the session could be a brief check-in regarding progress or attending the entire session. Typically speaking, the younger the child/lower the developmental level, the more time a parent spends in session; however, we do have some cases where the parent and older adolescent are together for the entire session. There are five main concerns I hear about our practice of involving parents. My hope is to address each concern to some degree and explain how our methods help most patients do better in therapy.
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