June 25th 2024
How does climate change affect mental health in individuals and communities?
Popping Pills: No Solution for Bad Schools
October 25th 2012A recent article in the New York Times reports that doctors are prescribing stimulant drugs to compensate for the bad schools their child patients have to attend. Rates of ADHD have tripled in the last 15 years-precisely because many kids are being diagnosed with fake ADHD to make them eligible for medications and/or extra school services.
The Military Can Do More To Prevent Suicides
October 8th 2012James Dao reports in the New York Times that the military is considering 2 steps to reduce its startling rate of active duty suicides-which is approaching an unacceptable one suicide every day. Both measures are completely sensible, but neither goes nearly far enough.
The Epidemic of Military Suicide
September 20th 2012With understandable urgency, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has made suicide one of his top priorities, instructing commanders at all levels to feel acutely accountable for it. The numbers are startling. On average 1 active duty soldier is killing himself each day--twice the number of combat deaths and twice the civilian rate.
Embryonic Personhood?-What Is Going On in the USA?
September 4th 2012Abortion is not a pretty subject. An embryo or fetus, while not a fully developed person, has the potential to become one. No one is “pro-abortion.” At the same time, there are circumstances under which a girl or woman feels strongly that her pregnancy is untenable-that she is too young, too poor, too burdened, too ill to properly mother a child. Women have abortions because they take motherhood seriously.
Fighting the Wrong War on Drugs
August 30th 2012Seventy percent of antidepressants are prescribed by primary care doctors with little training in their proper use, under intense pressure from Big Pharma, drug salespeople, and misled patients, after rushed 7-minute appointments and subject to no systematic auditing. The cash-strapped FDA is beholden to industry for funding. And it gets worse.
Psychiatric Considerations in Colorado Shooting
August 6th 2012The shooting in Colorado is obviously a tragedy for the victims and their families which will never be forgotten by those close to anyone touched by this event. It will cause painful grieving among the families and friends of those who lost their lives.
Personalized Biological Testing in Psychiatry: Inevitable Reality or Impossible Dream?
July 19th 2012Our current diagnostic system is based more on subjective clinical judgments and less biological psychiatry. There is not one way to develop symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or autistim or OCD.
Is There Really an “Epidemic” of Psychiatric Illness in the US?
May 2nd 2012If claims in the non-professional media can be believed, there is a “raging epidemic of mental illness” in the US, if not world-wide-and, in one version of this narrative, psychiatric treatment itself is identified as the culprit.
Grief, Mourning-and the Denial of Death
January 13th 2012In today’s world, we are witnessing a de-emphasis and depersonalization of how the bereaved experience the death of a loved one. In fact, the occasion of death is frequently referred to as a “celebration,” despite the pain and suffering that can occur. Death is not an occasion for a celebration. Death is a time for mourning by family and friends. Death is a loss-not only to the deceased, who lost everything, but to all those who care about the deceased.
Should Temper Tantrums Be Made Into A DSM-5 Diagnosis?
October 13th 2011A recent front page story by Shari Roan in the Los Angeles Times explores the heated controversy over the DSM-5 proposal to include a Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD) in DSM-5. I very much oppose the inclusion of this new "disorder."