An article about mental health and college students appeared in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago, just in time for the newly admitted group of college freshman and their parents to address the expected challenges encountered after children leave home. While most teens appear exhilarated about entering this new life phase, many also feel the anxiety and uncertainty that accompanies change. As reported in the article, the statistics for the treatment of anxiety and depression for college-age youngsters […]
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Joyce and Judith Scott: Disability and the Arts
A colleague of mine shared this inspiring article about Judith Scott, an acclaimed sculptor who made abstract works of art out of fibers and found objects. Judith died ten years ago. She was born with Down syndrome, was deaf, and lived most of her life in an institution. Judith was sent to an institution at age seven. In the article, her twin sister, Joyce, explained how devastated she felt, missing her playmate, having few opportunities to visit her, and being confused […]
Multiple Marital Mayhem
Suppose you are preparing to marry your soul mate, only to belatedly realize that this person is not truly yours alone? That may be because your mate’s soul is already intricately intertwined with others: a twin, triplets, perhaps a group of quadruplets. This quote is the opening paragraph of a New York Times article that appeared in the titled Wed Once, but Seeing Triple: Marrying a Twin (and Her Sister) by Alyson Krueger. Krueger writes about the sadness and confusion […]
My Twin Journey Poem
Katie is an identical twin who has just graduated from the University of Gloucestershire in Gloucestershire, England. Her dissertation is entitled “My Twinship Journey: A Study that Explores How My Twin Sister and I Use Our Language to Express Our Identities in Relation to the Membership Category of Twinship.” Her research highlights their ongoing differentiation as both sisters confront and work through issues of identity and separateness. Katie describes how language choice and speech intonations recorded in separate interviews with […]
Selective Mutism in Twins
A few weeks ago I came across a terrific article about the treatment of selective mutism in five-year-old male twins written by a prominent psychologist named Dr. Katherine K. Dahlsguard. She is the lead practitioner of the Anxiety Behaviors Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In the case described in the article, she astutely ruled out a language disorder in the twins, explaining that the boys exhibited normal language development as toddlers. Additionally, she pointed out that idioglossia—the technical term for […]