Sexual harassment has been making the news lately. Dozens of powerful men in Hollywood (especially) and business and government are being accused of misconduct by vulnerable young women (and men in some cases).
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can result from any trauma. Car accidents, animal attacks, a bad fall — not just sexual assault or war.
A high-school student doing a report for school recently wrote to me asking about PTSD. I thought my answers might be of interest to others, so I’m sharing them with you. Read more on Student Questions About PTSD…
Filed under abuse, Alternative Medicine, depression, Diagnosis, Disease, Dissociative Disorder, Doctors, Mental Illness, News, Psychiatrists, PTSD, Research by on Nov 3rd, 2017. Comment. 
The more I look the more I find. In reliable sources. More ways that my beloved veterans are getting screwed over that nobody knows about. I know what I am doing and I collect facts–of science and of history — and I find myself too often in crying mode. Not that the controversies are necessarily new ones. Sigmund Freud said a long time ago that a lot of psychiatry seemed to be the neurology you did not yet know. I have been treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for a long time. I was incredulous, shocked to my limits, when I first tried to take care of these wonderful, brave, and once fearless men, who would have crying meltdowns and end up in my arms. The best thing I did was to learn Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and to decide I was professional enough to do it “my way,” not according to verbatim directions, but adapting it to folks’ needs. Using EFT has put me on the spot plenty of times; with the VA, even prisons, where I have been told more than once that it robs people of “free will,” which is of course, complete and total rubbish. Patients are awake, alert, and voluntarily tap on their own acupuncture meridians. I have heard at least one hypnotherapist tell me it is “kind of like a light trance,” but patients could not, in my estimation, be more awake and alert. Read more on Another way veterans are getting screwed — crying time again….
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.
At some time in our lives, we all need to be told we’re good or shown the way. A simple story about giving kids from Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods a chance to rise above the violence in their communities strangely touched me and compelled me to write. As I do this, I am not that far from Oakland. I have heard enough to tell you that the culture of violence described is not exaggerated. Patients who see me for marijuana permission are happy and delighted they do not have to drive there.
So there are children who grow up in a culture of violence. I see adults. Not too long ago, I was seeing adults for social security evaluations in Los Angeles. Many of them had been caught in crossfire, perhaps shot on their way to the supermarket or even in front of their own homes. They told me they did not know why or by whom, and sometimes they still had bullets in them somewhere. Other times it was just a memory that so overwhelmed them that the quality of their post-traumatic stress disorder was like the sort of thing that you see in Vietnam veterans. Read more on It Takes So Little…
Filed under Family, Government, News, PTSD, Violence by on Jan 25th, 2013. Comment.
Army veteran Galmiche, who served his country for 20 years, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2002. He says he worked with a counselor and took medication for years, but did not find relief from his symptoms until he was matched with a PTSD service dog.
The first time I met a patient with a service dog was when I was doing social security examinations, as a psychiatrist. The woman was about 60 years old, motherly and white-haired, and she told me that she was nervous about the interview and was being treated for an anxiety disorder. She did not think she could “make it” unless I saw her with her “service dog.” Many years before, when my allergy to dog-hair was in flower, I would have declined. I had since treated it effectively with alternative methods, so I told her we could try it. It was a tiny dog, the kind my husband would call a “barfy” dog. The dog had the cutest little blue coat with very official looking embroidery — including the wheelchair picture that is usually used to mark places that are reserved for such vehicles. The little dog wouldn’t stop staring at me. I did a customary and very basic psychiatric interview. I started with questions that involved little or no stress, like name and diagnosis. Eventually, I ramped up to questions about the topics that generated anxiety, such as past traumas. The pooch stood on its hind legs while she rubbed it vigorously, staring at me. I stared back. Read more on Service Dogs for PTSD Veterans…
Filed under Mental Illness, military, News, PTSD, Service animals by on Nov 15th, 2012. Comment.
I accidentally watched Dr. Drew Pinsky’s “Life Changers” and it put me in a state of utter stupefaction.
That was fortunate, as I found myself unable to destroy the television. Doubly fortunate, in that this was a hotel-room TV and the bill would have been padded for replacing the set.
Okay, so I was in a hotel flipping channels during the day. I do this once in a while to see what is being communicated to the TV-watching public, especially about health.
Dr. Oz has a show. His guest was Rachel Ray showing how to fix things you might screw up in the kitchen. Common sense fixes with repartee. I did not see this as a health problem and I did not make it to the end of the show. Read more on Dr. Drew Pinsky’s “Life Changers”…
Filed under Psychiatrists, PTSD by on May 23rd, 2012. Comment.
The old guys were right.
I mean the really old guys, the ones who wrote over one hundred years ago. The guys like Freud and Janet who said that mostly everything that shapes people’s lives seems to be trauma — whether or not modern authors agree.
I have seen an anorectic whose trauma was a passer-by in a crowd who told her that she was too fat for anyone to have sex with, and then keep walking. I have seen a sufferer of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) who was told she was filthy when she was a kid. She later became so excited about cleanliness she missed nights of sleep to tidy the living room.
But although very real causes of pathology, these seem too trivial to be real traumas for most people.
Others are too horrible to be denied. Read more on PTSD From Sexual Trauma — Learning That Life Is Not Always Fair…
Filed under PTSD by on Jun 3rd, 2011. Comment.
When we talk about sending troops out to fight with numbers that have lots of zeros on them, chance are that nobody is thinking about how the lives of the survivors will never be the same.
Recently, ABC News made an attempt, a praiseworthy attempt, to help people see at least a little of what the human devastation means. “PTSD” stands for “post-traumatic stress disorder,” which leaves lives devastated. People come out with devastated personal relationships, often unable to maintain marriages, unable to maintain jobs, with sometimes a high potential for violence. The devastation all too frequently progresses to suicide.
Adding to this the fact that the bureaucratic institutions do not generally encourage or even permit the most efficient means of treatment, we have a domestic mess and a domestic mortality of veterans, the very people who put their lives on the line, that is nothing short of horror.
Read more on PTSD — Often Denied, Resistant To Mainstream Treatment…
Filed under PTSD by on Dec 24th, 2009. Comment.