Many illnesses have support groups and even official organizations that help sufferers and families understand and cope with that illness. You know, like The Arthritis Foundation and the Diabetic Association. Read more on “Accomodating” or “Taking Advantage Of?”…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Diagnosis, Disease, Dissociative Disorder, Doctors, Education, Family, medicine, Mental Illness, News, Research by on Sep 18th, 2017. Comment. 
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Brain, depression, Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, medicine, Mental Illness, News, Nutrition, Research by on May 7th, 2017. Comment.
“I don’t like other women. They gossip. I hate gossip. I think they should all go pound sand.” No, it is not a patient who said this. It was my (Great-) aunt Etta, who wore her hair like “Bride of Frankenstein.” She had been militant about her disdain for “gossip,” and certainly wore a bitter expression on her face most of the time. But she would not tell the little girl I was then any more of her story.
Filed under Alternative Medicine, depression, Mental Illness, News by on Apr 1st, 2017. Comment.
My husband will drive me a bit to go see a patient, closer to his home. I may nod off briefly, although I have had enough sleep. Only to wake up again briskly when he slams on the brakes, which he will a few times, at least. I continue to be shocked by the total lack of empathy drivers have for each other.
Filed under Family, Mental Illness, News by on Mar 29th, 2017. Comment.
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Brain, Diagnosis, Disease, Family, Mental Illness, News by on Nov 16th, 2016. Comment.
It is hard for me to digest the events of July 14 in Nice, France, as I feel especially close to them.
I was present at seven such annual patriotic ceremonies during my tenure as a student of medicine in a French government facility. I loved the street-fair atmosphere, where I sang at the top of my lungs and danced with a whole heart.
As a medical student in government service, a terrorist attack would have mobilized me into service of France, a nation I can only love, which gave me a medical education essentially free of charge, asking only for me to prove on an exam that I had what it takes.
I wear a tiny Eiffel Tower around my neck — I stroke it as I write. Read more on Terrorism In Nice…
Filed under Diagnosis, Family, Government, Mental Illness, News by on Jul 17th, 2016. Comment.
Every honest and complete psychiatric evaluation includes screening for delusions. A delusion is a strongly held belief that is totally without basis in the factual reality that we all use to live our daily lives. I have taken care of several people, institutionalized and not, who have had such beliefs. Medications known as “antipsychotics” can be very effective on the hallucinations — the hearing voices and seeing things and such — that are the hallmark of a lack of mental “normalcy” as is generally expected and accepted in the community. The same medications may be less effective on these delusions, these beliefs. Sometimes, in a particular kind of delusion, a kind that hits folks somewhere between 18 and 90 (average age 40) where there are no hallucinations, just beliefs. They are less frequent. They are also hard to treat, with antipsychotic medicines working maybe about half the time — in those who can actually be convinced to take them. Read more on Screening For Delusions…
Filed under Diagnosis, Mental Illness, News by on Apr 7th, 2016. Comment.
Maybe if it’s “all in your head,” it’s in your brain chemistry
We women have spent so long and worked so hard for equality in rights, in education, and at work, that it may actually be hard to talk about how we are different.
The World Health Organization has been working on this, and knows a lot about what is going on. Illnesses of the mind, problems with thinking and feeling and living, are only identified by doctors less than half the time. Three out of five people who have this kind of problem wait less than a year before seeing a doctor. This is true of both sexes. Read more on Mental Health In Women…
Filed under Brain, Mental Illness, News by on Nov 7th, 2014. Comment.
The person who walks into a psychiatrist’s office looking for help is not necessarily the patient.
Often, they are simply the family of the patient.
Sometimes, they themselves have something – possibly a disorder, but maybe just an emotional or attitude problem — that would seem somehow lesser in magnitude than the psychiatric diagnosis the person who is or should be the patient has actually got. Read more on Families Often Indicate Psychiatric Problems…
Filed under Family, Mental Illness, Psychiatrists by on Sep 19th, 2014. 1 Comment.
I remember a supervisor from the past whom I never thought had the right personality to be a psychiatrist. I mean, he was a little angry and domineering for my taste. But heck — I gave him a “bye” since he worked in a prison context.
I was never attacked by a prison patient through my tours-of-duty through four (all-male) California state penal institutions. I had a couple who ended up on their knees, crying, stroking my hands, or even asking permission to kiss me (denied, of course).
They said I was “nice” to them. I guess I treated them like human beings — something pitifully lacking in the prison system where everything seems oppressive and depersonalizing. Read more on Assaults On Psychiatrists…
Filed under abuse, Mental Illness, Personality Disorders, Psychiatrists, PTSD, Public Health System by on Jun 19th, 2014. Comment.