1 Boring Old Man

I love the Olympics. It’s always the same. It starts with great conflict in the air – the Ukraine, Terrorists, discrimination, not-ready hotel rooms, who was that lady sitting with Putin?, etc. And then things settle down and you worry about the US atheletes for a while, crestfallen when the heros lose. And by the end, you’re watching some crazy sport like Biatholon or Parallel-Ski-Cross and rooting for athletes from places you’ve never even heard of before. And you find out that the lady with Putin at the opening ceremony wasn’t some mistress. She was a Russian athlete who was disabled for life in a Bob-Sled accident 5 years ago. And then there was the segment about the Russian hockey team, Lokomotiv, who all died in a plane crash two years ago, and how their city recovered.

I’ve been to two Olympics – Munich in 1972 and Atlanta in 1996. It was the same scenario – even with the craziness with the Terrorists. By the last night, we were in a hanger on an isolated military base at midnight being strip searched along with a crowd of people who spoke other languages. But we were all great pals and uniformly relieved the Germans were being so careful. The first days in Atlanta were snafu filled, and let’s face it, Atlanta isn’t Barcelona [and we heard about that]. But by the end, it was great in spite of the bombing. The Olympics always puts me in a good mood about people and the world, something hard to feel if you watch the evening news very much.

• Psychiatry Gone Astray by Peter Gøtzsche on David Healy’s blog
• An Obvious Response to "Psychiatry Gone Astray" by George Dawson on Real Psychiatry
• Get Real: Peter Gøtzsche Responds by Peter Gøtzsche on David Healy’s blog
• The Proud Critics of Psychiatry by George Dawson on Real Psychiatry

I respect every one of the people listed here. I read their  blogs, and their books. I think each of them has taught me something valuable along the way. Psycritic is a thoughtful, introspective child psychiatrist. Altostrata taught me about the withdrawal syndromes from psychoactive medications, something I didn’t know about. David Healy taught us all about akathisia and suicidality on antidepressants. He parsed the peculiar history of the FDA and explained why the system is so odd like no other has even tried to do. Peter Gøtzsche and the others at Cochrane taught us how to compare studies, how to detect missing data, how to think critically about the ubiquitous clinical trials, how to see corruption. Dr. Carroll has taught me more than I even knew there was to learn about biological psychiatry. And I appreciate both David Allen and Sandy Steingard having the ability to maintain a balanced perspective on matters psychiatric in today’s way too contentious environment. Usually I find George Dawson’s posts acerbic, but I have respected his standing up to many of the spurious criticisms of psychiatry [though the post above wasn’t his best outing].

So I kept deleting what I wrote and starting over. Finally, I came back after watching a 30 mile cross country ski event and erased my musings for the last time. I guess I’m having an Olympic Spirit moment, and not really in the mood to comment on the ad hominems when all the players are people I respect, even if they take pot-shots at each other. In spite of the the differences, Psycritic was right. There are lots of high-quality comments in both the posts and in the comment section. I pass on the links for those. Otherwise, I’m obviously too conflicted to comment, so I’ll just hold my comments for another day…