It’s not easy to respond to the British Psychological Society’s [BPS], Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, primarily because of the extensive use of negation throughout the report. In their discussion, the phenomena formerly called a symptom [like hearing voices] is not abnormal, but rather something seen in normal mental life. A negative symptom like anhedonia is […]
Georgia Morning A few years back, I made an attribution error [Adolf Meyer [1866-1950]…]. I credited Adolf Meyer, the influential early American Psychiatrist with the bio·psycho·social model. It was an easy error to make. Meyer’s model was psycho·biology and Meyer’s wife was a major founding figure in American Social Work. But looking back, it highlights […]
I saw Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Saturday night, one day before the Oscars, and by Sunday night, I was rooting for it to win, even though it was in the running with some other amazing films. In Atlanta, we had [still have] a film series at Emory called Movie Mania, attended by […]
the background… Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia The British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology [full text on-line here] This report of the British Psychological Society mirrors a widespread reaction against a purely biomedical explanation for psychosis, for Schizophrenia. They propose the alternative possibility that it can be an adaptation to childhood trauma and abuse. They […]
This morning’s thermometer says that we’re finally starting to thaw out down here a bit. Time for a real blog with graphs and numbers. Within the few years after the introduction of the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor [SSRI] class of antidepressants, their association with suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, or suicides became the question of the […]
Society holds our interactions with our customers – healthcare providers and payers – to a higher standard. And it should. Society expects our business to be conducted openly and transparently and in a way that does not create even a perception of inappropriate influence. Deirdre Connelly speech January 2010 The quote is from a speech […]
Living in the South for a lifetime, one’s tolerance for this kind of cold is an undeveloped skill. People race to the grocery to stock up on things they usually don’t buy as if the Siege of Leningrad is beginning. Schools, clinics, and stores close in the morning [and regret it in the afternoon]. The […]
“If one is given a puzzle to solve one will usually, if it proves to be difficult, ask the owner whether it can be done. Such a question should have a quite definite answer, yes or no, at any rate provided the rules describing what you are allowed to do are perfectly clear. Of course […]
So in a cul de sac I… and a cul de sac II… I looked at this new? iSPOT paper [The International Study to Predict Optimized Treatment in Depression [iSPOT-D]: Outcomes from the acute phase of antidepressant treatment], but I kept having a nagging feeling, like a déjà vu – like I’d heard it before […]
Speaking of cul de sacs, we interrupt this narrative for this utterly brilliant and pertinent commentary from John Oliver…