Perhaps unsurprisingly, something has annoyed me today. Today’s something has to do with diagnostic rigour, and the impact that has on the appropriateness of the treatments offered to patients. We often see people referred following some stress or conflict or other. Sometimes there is psychiatric illness behind it; often there is not. Sometimes...
Something interesting came up today. One of our nurses mentioned a patient who had said that they were looking to soon get some new treatment with a device that could cure schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. I mentioned electrovestibulography – which is a device, being developed/promoted in Melbourne, which purports to be useful (though...
It’s tempting to do: to see some well-known person behaving oddly, or badly, and trying to fit them into some psychiatric diagnosis. There are even published papers – I recall one in the British Journal of Psychiatry years ago discussing jazz musicians. We seem now to look at rugby players. Who all seem to have bipolar...
Anecdotal discussion alert … aOOOOga! aOOOOga! I’ve decided this morning that diagnostic restrictions on prescribing of medications are not helpful. What am I talking about? The more expensive a medication is, the less the funding agencies want you to prescribe it; they would rather we use dirt-cheap haloperidol than expensive quetiapine for example. These...
This is a video I was sent a link to by Laurie Monk (from Truth in Shredding). It’s not a guitar vid, but it is very interesting: It’s a little simplistic (shrinks are bad, mmkay?) and the commenters clearly lack even a basic understanding of the complexities of childhood behaviour and psychiatry’s role, but what...
