j7uy5 | November 18, 2009
style="display: inline;">
A meme making the
rounds in some circles is this: Prayer for Obama, Psalm
109:8. This is what is known as an imprecatory prayer,
that is, a prayer that expresses ill will toward another.
This particular bit of verse is one of the less appealing and less
inspirational found in the Christian Bible:
Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are
opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought
against me without a cause.
For…
j7uy5 | November 17, 2009The title of this article is a little bit misleading, although not
deliberately so. The study examined the question of whether
telephonic CBT - added to pharmacotherapy - was beneficial, in a
primary care population. Note that the primary care population is
NOT the population that psychiatrists typically see.
Consequently, it is not possible to extrapolate these results to most
typical psychiatrist's practices. It also is not applicable to
the population of persons seen in many outpatient offices of other
mental health specialists.
Telephone
Psychotherapy Effective, Efficient in…
j7uy5 | November 14, 2009
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">Actually, this is only good news
for coffee drinkers who also have
late-stage hepatitis C. A recent study in Hepatology showed a
possible benefit to coffee consumption in patients with hepatitis C,
First I will show the treatment of the study as shown in the popular
press, then the actual journal article.
href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/Gastroenterology/GeneralHepatology/16539">Coffee
Could Stall Liver Disease Progression
By…
j7uy5 | November 9, 2009
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">The article I am discussing in
this post is the 2008 Heinz Lehmann Award paper, published in the
open-access Canadian journal, Journal of Psychiatry &
Neuroscience. It really covers two topics:
href="http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/clinicalresearch/overview-translational.asp">translational
research, and antipsychotic polypharmacy in which one of the
antipsychotic medications is clozapine.
href="http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/…
j7uy5 | November 5, 2009The standard wisdom in management of Major Depression, is that
medication plus psychotherapy is better that either treatment
alone. Many studies have shown this. But this one does not.
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/66/11/1178?home">Cognitive
Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy and Brief
Supportive Psychotherapy for Augmentation of Antidepressant Nonresponse
in Chronic Depression
The REVAMP Trial
James H. Kocsis, MD; Alan J. Gelenberg, MD; Barbara O.
Rothbaum,
PhD; Daniel N. Klein, PhD; Madhukar H. Trivedi, MD; Rachel Manber, PhD;
Martin B. Keller, MD;…
j7uy5 | November 2, 2009A reader sent me a link about a scam that targets MD offices. It
is a retread of
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/01/me-and-tom-delay-in-my-last-article-i.html">a
scam that I wrote about in 2004, wherein I mention that I was
targeted for this scam. The new version of the scam was noted
first in Slate: The GOP's
Fake Doctor Council. Then Political Animal picked it up:
href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019905.php">Old
DeLay Scam Makes A Comeback. Later, Free Range Talk wrote
about it, summarizing the two earlier posts as well. So if…
j7uy5 | October 31, 2009The world's largest shopping mall boasts some impressive statistics:
7.1 million square feet (659,612 square meters) of leasable
space and 890,000 square meters of total floor space; attractions,
including a roller coaster and a Venice-like canal; and over 1,500
shops, with an occupancy rate of 0.8%. That's right.
Although it opened in 2005, 99.2% of the shops are empty.
class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;">
Attraction: A bored
attendant makes a phone call next to the ghost train ride at the mall
(Photo:
href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/…
j7uy5 | October 30, 2009It's not photoshopped, and it really was for the Windows 7 launch.
style="display: inline;">
The picture was taken in Sietes, Spain, which had been decorated for an
advertisement for the event. In point of fact, the
href="http://www.spanishnews.es/20091012-tiny-spanish-village-has-the-attention-of-microsoft/id=1255/#more-1255">people
of Sietes are not a particularly good customer base:
The tiny village of Sietes Spain will be the new location
for an advertisement from Microsoft about Windows 7, which is slightly
ironic given the software giant has chosen a place that only has one…
j7uy5 | October 29, 2009In general, I try to be respectful of cultural groups, even ones that
are rather aberrant. Somehow, though, I find it exceedingly
difficult to muster any sympathy or respect for Scientology.
By now, you probably have heard that Scientologists were fined $600,00
Euros in France:
href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iB4zZrgJt9_M4ltYiwOwQxcAnMmQ">
href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iB4zZrgJt9_M4ltYiwOwQxcAnMmQ">Scientologists
convicted of fraud in France
...The Paris case followed a complaint by two women, one of whom says
she was manipulated…
j7uy5 | October 26, 2009In 2007, the American Psychological Association commissioned their Task
Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation.
The background is this: early in the history of mental health treatment
efforts, homosexuality was considered to be an illness.
Therefore, it was thought to be appropriate for therapists to try to
change the sexual orientation of persons who are homosexual.
This attitude never was universal; it is said that even Sigmund Freud
was skeptical of it. Even so, it was not until 1962 that efforts
began to remove homosexuality from the
title="Diagnostic and…
j7uy5 | October 25, 2009We used to see a lot of cartoons that portray a psychiatrist's
couch. That is not so common anymore. When we do see them,
they tend to be annoying. This is no different, because it is so
unrealistic.
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No psychiatrist would put the couch under the window like that.
It would defeat the purpose of the couch.
(HT:
href="http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/sunday-morning-comics-balloon-bank-edition">Economic
Populist)
j7uy5 | October 22, 2009The Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photography competition winners have
been announced. (The spelling, Environnement, is
correct; it's a French company.) The competition is operated by
the Natural History
Museum (London) and BBC Wildlife Magazine, sponsored by Veolia
Environmental Services.
The overall winner is this one (click to enlarge)
My favorite is one of the Highly Commended photos in the
10-years-and-under age category:
The photo of the leaping wolf was
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8318226.stm">written up
on the BBC news website:
Jose Luis Rodriguez…
j7uy5 | October 21, 2009I spend a lot of time working with gang kids.
One of the amusing things, is to see some of these kids strutting
around,
feeling like a million bucks, because they are so smart. In
actuality, they have IQs in the 90-100 range. But the rest of
their crew is down in the 70-80 range. Such is the life of a
genius.
style="display: inline;">
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/10/21/the_warning.jpg">
Tonight I watched the PBS Frontline special,
href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/">The
Warning. It's about the warning that
href="http://en.…
j7uy5 | October 19, 2009Sometimes I think I have difficult patients. Then I saw this:
style="display: inline;">
Yes, it is a gorilla in a CT scanner. The poor animal had
href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001034.htm">mastoiditis;
the scan was used prior to surgery. The surgery was
successful. See The Big Picture at the Boston Globe
for the
href="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/world_animal_day_2009.html">original,
from a series on World
Animal Day 2009.
(HT:
href="http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9vbdl/gorilla_in_a_cat_scan_no_really_pic/">Reddit
user Micah)
j7uy5 | October 16, 2009Just goes to show how lobbying reform hasn't gone anywhere near far
enough:
href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/guest-post-bank-lobbyists-not-only-trying-to-kill-new-regulations-they-are-trying-to-weaken-existing-regulations.html">Bank
Lobbyists Are Not Only Trying to Kill NEW Legislation, They Are Trying
to Weaken EXISTING Regulations
By George Washington of
href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/">Washington's Blog.
Everyone knows that the lobbyists for the financial giants are trying
to kill any tough new regulations.
But they are also trying to weaken existing…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2009National Geographic reports on a new consequence of global climate
change: giant, mucus-like sea blobs. They've been around for a
while, actually, but now there are more of them.
style="display: inline;">
This is from the on-line article,
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html">Giant,
Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger. The danger
comes from the fact that these blobs harbor bacteria:
The study team discovered that the blobs are hot spots for
viruses and bacteria, including the deadly E. coli. Coastal communities…
j7uy5 | October 12, 2009This is about chronic fatigue syndrome and the association with
XMRV. I apologize in advance for the provocative title, and the
subsequent gratuitous references to the Nobel Prize, but there is a
point to this.
Take a look at this summary of the "old-fashioned disease":
During the nineteenth century general paresis of the insane
emerged as a new psychiatric disorder which was extremely common and
completely devastating. While retrospective studies have found earlier
instances of what may have been the same disorder, the first clearly
identified examples of paresis among the insane were…
j7uy5 | October 11, 2009The topic of neural enhancement has created controversy. This
came to wide attention in late 2007, upon the publication of various
articles in Nature, as noted by
href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/12/cognitive_enhancers_in_academi.php">Shelley
Batts,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/12/the_ethics_of_performance_enha.php">Janet
Stemwedel,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2008/04/steroids_for_the_brain_nature.php">David
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2008/12/survey_the_slippery_slope_of_c.php">Dobbs,
href="http://…
j7uy5 | October 9, 2009This is from an open-access article in the Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry: an article featuring a debate about the relevance of
randomized, controlled trials to clinical practice. It is mostly
about research on psychotherapy, but with some treatment of
psychopharmacology.
href="http://publications.cpa-apc.org/browse/documents/468&xwm=true">Are
Randomized Controlled Trials Relevant to Clinical Practice?
Can J Psychiatry. 2009;54(9):637-643.
Steven D Hollon, Bruce E Wampold
There is no abstract. Click on the title to go to the journal
page, then click on the title there to download…
j7uy5 | October 5, 2009This is an odd one. A study of 5191 adults showed an
association between air pollution and attacks of acute appendicitis.
href="http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/cmaj.082068v1">Effect
of ambient air pollution on the incidence of appendicitis
CMAJ 10.1503/cmaj.082068
Published online ahead of print October 5, 2009
Abstract
Background: The pathogenesis of appendicitis is
unclear. We evaluated whether exposure to air pollution was associated
with an increased incidence of appendicitis.
Methods: We identified 5191 adults who had been
admitted to hospital with…