Dover Beach Meaning

DELAWARE: Lack of psychiatrists takes toll on kids

But finding a child psychiatrist to manage those medicines has been a frustrating, barrier-filled experience.

"I have a good job. I have a good health plan, so that isn't the issue," said Parsons, who is an assistant manager in a bank's fraud department. "The issue is doctors ... turning people away from care."

While the number of Delaware children in need of immediate psychiatric help has not been tracked, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates an average of nearly 8 percent of youths age 12 to 17 experience depression. And more than 14 percent of Delaware children ages 4 to 17 have ADHD, the fourth-highest rate of children diagnosed with it in the nation, according to a federal report released in November.

In the First State, fewer than 15 child psychiatrists are actively practicing, meaning patients must face long waits and travel long distances.

"I have people coming from as far as Salisbury [Md.] and from Lewes and Bethany Beach," said Dr. Constantine Azarcon, a child psychiatrist in Talleyville. "And the wait can be as long as one or two or sometimes three months for an evaluation."
Long waiting lists

While psychologists can provide therapy, they cannot prescribe medicine.

Pediatricians don't encounter many children with mental illness during their residencies. So while they can prescribe medicine, many are uncomfortable handling mental health issues without the support of a child psychiatrist.

There's also a reluctance on their part to treat patients with antidepressants, said Dr. Julia Pillsbury, a pediatrician with the Center for Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, P.A. in Dover, who has been practicing for 30 years.

"A lot of the [antidepressants] are new, and that whole arena of medicine has changed a lot in the last 30 years," she said. "If your child has a complex psychiatric problem and is not responding well to medications, we have to get them in with a child psychiatrist."

A study published in September 2006 in the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists' medical journal determined the shortage of child psychiatrists nationwide at the time showed no signs of ending.

“Nous” (part 2 of 4) « Dover Beach

The Church Fathers took this term nous from Greek philosophy and gave it a different meaning, adapting it to refer to the noetic energy that functions in the heart of a person that is spiritually healthy. The meaning among the Fathers can at times be a little ambiguous as well though, since some of them will continue to use the same word nous when what they are referring to is reason.

According to Michael Pomazansky it was the teaching of the overwhelming majority of the Church Fathers that the phrase ‘Image of God’ refers to man’s soul, more explicitly that highest faculty of the soul, -the nous. Nicetas Stithalos wrote that “only in ignorance would one claim that man is created in the image of God in respect to the organic structure of His body. He is in the image by virtue of the spiritual nature of his nous.”Believing this to be the basic essence of man the Fathers saw this, which possesses freedom and was subject to the fall, to be in need of rescue (or salvation). Jesus Christ then, in order to heal fallen men, possessed that essential part of human nature, not only the lower side but also the nous. One common comparison made among patristic writers regarding the relationship between body and intellect (meaning in this instance, I think, nous) is that the body is similar to an animal and that the intellect is similar to a passenger-rider who holds on the reins as would a coachman, thereby turning the animal-body in the direction it would have it go.

In his work, Orthodox Psychotherapy: the Science of the Fathers, Archimandrite Hierotheos Vlachos (later Metropolitan Hierotheos) speaks of the Church as a hospital which exists to heal those who are sick with sin. The aim of the Christian is to strive toward the state of deification. By deification, meaning the likeness of God. In order for man to reach this likeness of God, to attain the vision of God’s essence, in order for this vision to be experienced as a life giving light rather than a consuming fire, he must first have passed through a stage in which purification has taken place. The church’s healing work takes place among those in this stage of purification. Purification, illumination, then deification are three stages of healing. These three stages are the purpose of the Mystical life of the Church.

This therapeutic process of the Church is a therapy for the soul. It is about a freeing of the nous. In the understanding of the Church, human nature became sick as a result of man’s fall away from God. This sickness is witnessed primarily in the fall and captivity of the nous. Man withdrew from God and this ancestral sin brought about loss of divine grace, and led to the blindness and death of the nous. Because of this loss of God’s grace that deadened the nous, man’s whole nature became sick. This sickness was handed on to later descendants as the inheritance of sin. The Orthodox Church then does not understand Paul in Romans 5:19 to be speaking in legal terms. Instead when Paul says that “as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,” it is understood in a medical sense. As a result of one man’s sin, human nature became sick.

Dover Beach

Theology on Dover beach

Roger Scruton, the philosopher on Dover Beach

Writing Essays about Literature

Religion and public doctrine in modern England