Category: Journalism & media
Mind, brain, and body (including those gene things) While reading Wolpert's review of Greenberg's book, I found that the Guardian has a particularly rich trove of writings and resources on depression , some of it drawing on resources at BMJ (the journal formerly known as the British Medical Journal). ... The backchannel is the twitter stream that audience members now rather routinely produce while a conference speaker or panel holds forth at the front of the room; it carries hideous dangers for the unwary, unprepared, or just plain unlikeable speaker.
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Posted by David Dobbs at 10:42 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Books
As alert reader Alex Witze pointed out , these photos were taken by stormchaser Mike Hollingshead in Nebraska and Kansas in 2002 and 2004, and have passed around the net in other guises ever since. ... He has some doozies. You may be shocked but not surprised to hear that Insurance Company Dropped Customers With HIV .
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Posted by David Dobbs at 8:05 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: PTSD
This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials.
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Posted by David Dobbs at 6:02 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
This is a good example of how reflexive diagnoses, as PTSD has become for any combat veteran (and sometimes even prospective combat veterans -- i.e., troops preparing to deploy), can do harm. They can lead you to ignore other possible causes of the symptoms on display.
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Posted by David Dobbs at 11:36 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Ricks -- who earlier wrote Fiasco , a devastating indictment of the run-up to the war, makes three things quite clear: The surge was not about more soldiers, but soldiers doing different things -- protecting the populace rather than hunting the enemy. ... First-rate history of science here, and a fascinating look at Harry Harlow, a monkey researcher whose powerful but sometimes disturbing experiments in the middle decades of last century helped replace a cold behavioralist view of infancy and childhood with the theories of attachment and bonding that still rule today.
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Posted by David Dobbs at 7:00 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Medicine
We can throw all the money we want at PTSD and continue to hire lots of therapists at the VA. But we won't get anywhere until we start asking why the PTSD problem takes such a unique course here in the U.S.
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Posted by David Dobbs at 8:24 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: PTSD
Our current approach to post-combat distress is failing just as completely as the Rumsfled approach did. But in the halls that count, there's no sign a change in thinking.
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Posted by David Dobbs at 10:35 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Matters military
"There's a reason that counterinsurgency mantras include Get Off The FOB and Don't Commute To The Fight. The greater the distance -- not just physically, but also culturally -- from a populace, the fewer opportunities U.S. troops have to demonstrate to that populace that U.S. actions are in their interest."
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Posted by David Dobbs at 10:49 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Much much much ado on the web this week, on the too-many fronts I try to visit. From my list of notables:
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Posted by David Dobbs at 4:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
At a time when we are much concerned with reducing PTSD in combat troops, it's valuable to learn that we could apparentlly cut the PTSD rate by more than 50% simply by keeping the least healthy 15% -- as measured by fairly simple health questionnaires we already have in any and -- out of combat zones. So why is this study going almost completely ignored?
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Posted by David Dobbs at 4:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I write 
