The Interpreted Rock

 By Stephen C. Schultz One of the assumptions we can easily make in behavioral healthcare is that families simply need more information. There are insurance benefits to verify, levels of care to understand, providers to contact, evaluations to schedule, and treatment options to compare. It seems reasonable to believe that if we can explain the process clearly enough, families will know what to do next. After nearly twenty-five years of working with families considering residential treatment, I've found myself looking at that assumption a little differently. The challenge often isn't the complexity of the information. It's the amount of information arriving all at once. By the time many parents contact Oxbow Academy , they have been living with uncertainty, fear, and emotional exhaustion for months, and sometimes years. Many have already navigated outpatient therapy, medication management, school interventions, psychological testing, and countless difficult conversations at ...

 By Stephen C. Schultz Parents often ask me whether concerns about internet pornography are a relatively new phenomenon. Given the rapid rise of smartphones, social media, and unlimited internet access, it is easy to assume that our understanding has only recently begun to catch up with the technology. The truth is quite different. Long before today's digital world existed, physicians, psychologists, neuroscientists, and addiction researchers were already asking difficult questions about pornography's influence on the brain, relationships, and healthy development. While the internet has changed dramatically over the past twenty years, many of the concerns raised by those early researchers remain remarkably relevant. One historical example stands out. In November 2004, psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Jeffrey Satinover submitted testimony to a United States Senate committee discussing the emerging science surrounding internet pornography and its potential effects on the human bra...