Professor Caleb Lack

06/02/2026

I am excited to be guest expert speaker in The Child Therapist Hub this month. Come see some of my shenanigans while we talk about how to help anxious kids who present with aggression and other more challenging behaviors.

www.childtherapisthub.com

05/29/2026

If you’ve followed me much or talked to me about it at all, you know I don’t have much love for EMDR. Part of that is certainly due to the fact that it’s just imaginal exposure with response prevention plus some nonsense. But another is due to the constant shifting stories on its origin by Francine Shapiro.

In this article (taken from a larger exposé), we see yet again how Shapiro lied about another aspect of her development of EMDR:

“We cited evidence that Shapiro’s interest in eye movements did not emerge from her alleged walk in the park. Rather, she had an earlier devotion to a pseudoscientific approach called neurolinguistic programming (NLP), which has a strong emphasis on observing eye-movements for clues about mental states.”

And they have the receipts (as the kids say), in the form of a newly uncovered newspaper article and photograph. Read more here:

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/04/a-photograph-exposes-emdrs-true-origins/

05/28/2026

My colleague Dr Marla Diebler has a great new blog over on Psych Today, with this entry on helping kids who have BFRBs (hair and skin picking) even if they might not want to be helped.

Read it here - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/from-surviving-to-thriving/202605/bfrb-treatment-does-a-child-have-to-want-to-stop

05/25/2026

What's that? You want to learn Exposure with Response Prevention (ERP)? From me? At half off?!?

Well isn't it your lucky day, because my two day ERP seminar is now half off from PESI for Memorial Day!

Dr. Lack will show you how to deliver ERP in a way that’s safe, manageable and compassionate – so you’ll be guiding clients at a pace that helps them without overwhelming them.

05/22/2026

Really well done and interesting new study from labs in Virginia and Sweden on how related (or not) various types of mental disorders are on a genetic level.

"Using family-genetic risk scores, this population-based study applied explanatory and confirmatory oblique factor analysis to split-half samples. The best fit model identified 6 correlated genetic factors: psychotic disorders, externalizing disorders, anxiety disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, mood disorders, and eating disorders."

Read more - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2848975

05/22/2026

Got the hard copies in of my latest publication! Thanks to Dr Storch for asking me to put together this special issue of Psychiatric Clinics, and a huge thanks to all the authors who contributed! You can check it out online at:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/psychiatric-clinics-of-north-america/vol/49/issue/2

05/18/2026

A really solid introduction to what we currently know about PTSD, from Ronald Kessler and his team.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur after exposure to a traumatic event. This Primer summarizes the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.

05/13/2026

Pssst…hey you…yeah, you. You ever heard about exposure? What about response prevention? What about mixing the two, eh?

Maybe you’ve had a little taste before from the water fountain of knowledge, but now wanna drink right from the (definitely not approved for potable water) garden hose like a child in the 1980s?

Well I can 100% hook you up, friends.

It’s and I’m gonna train you so hard you will be begging for mental mercy. It’s ERP! It’s OCD! It’s phobias! It’s PTSD! It’s everything you could want wrapped up in a neat little PESI bow, right here:

https://www.pesi.com/item/2day-exposure-response-prevention-erp-training-171078

Two days of ERP training, from the ground up. Led by me, your fearless presenter (whose credentials include 20+ years of graduate training, being a faculty member of the BTTI and EITOC, training thousands of clinicians across the globe, and having a student evaluation which said “He’s a good teacher. He’s handsome too.”)*

*Warning, handsome level may vary or not be to your taste. Visual appreciation not guaranteed.