psychiatry
omnibrain | November 30, 2010This guy has a very good point:
J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8.
A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.
Bentall RP.
Department of Clinical Psychology, Liverpool University.
Abstract
It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and…
omnibrain | November 28, 2010I don't usually post anything about "that kind" of psychology but I loved these:
(via Dangerous Minds & their creator - Matthew Wilkinson)
neurophilosophy | November 6, 2010NEW York City in the 1920s and '30s was a hotbed of criminal activity. Prohibition laws banning the production, sale and distribution of alcohol had been introduced, but instead of reducing crime, they had the opposite effect. Gangsters organized themselves and seized control of the alcohol distribution racket, smuggling first cheap rum from the Caribbean, then French champagne and English gin, into the country. Speakeasies sprang up in every neighbourhood, and numbered more than 100,000 by 1925. When prohibition was abolished in 1933, the gangsters took to other activities, such as drug…
neurophilosophy | August 30, 2010This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired by a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders, by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer. This article will be freely available, with registration, until September 23. See the Table of Contents for more information on this Blog Focus, and read the other blog posts:
Serotonin, Psychedelics and Depression (by Neuroskeptic)
Ketamine for Depression: Yay or Neigh? (by The Neurocritic)
Visions of a…
neurophilosophy | July 22, 2010DEPRESSION has long been associated with vision - and to colour perception in particular - and the link between them is evident in everyday language. Depression is, of course, often referred to as "feeling blue", and those who suffer from it are sometimes told to "lighten up". The link can be found in art, too - Picasso's so-called "Blue Period", for example, which was brought on by the suicide of his close friend Carlos Casagemas, is characterised by a series of striking paintings in shades of cold blue, which express the deep melancholy he felt at the time.
Although the association between…
neurophilosophy | June 7, 2010TRICHOTILLOMANIA (or hair pulling) is a condition characterised by excessive grooming and strong, repeated urges pull out one's own hair. It is classified as an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and is relatively common, affecting about 2 in 100 people. Sufferers normally feel an increasing sense of tension before pulling out their scalp hair, facial hair, and even pubic hair, eyelashes or eyebrows. This provides gratification, but only briefly.
Hair pulling is usually thought of as being psychological in origin, but an intruiging new study now suggests that it occurs as a result of…
ddobbs | May 28, 2010Danny Carlat reports a stimulating time at the recent American Psychiatric Association meeting in New Orleans:
She took a look at my name tag, and said, "Oh, I've heard about you."Since her expression was somewhere between stern and outright hostile, I queried, "In a good way or a bad way?""In a bad way, to tell you the truth." And then she was off on a high volume rant that went something (if memory serves) like this:"How DARE you write an article in the New York Times saying that your therapy training at Mass General was terrible, and then later having this GREAT AWAKENING that"--she…
ddobbs | May 27, 2010
At Biophemera, Jessica Palmer takes a look at Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny. Actually a couple look to me a bit like cans. 
Like most junk science that just won't die, the polygraph stays with us. Even Aldrich Ames could see the polygraph was junk. NB, those who don't shy from no-lie fMRI. From the wonderful Letters of Note.
Ben Carey Notes that Enemies Can Be Good for a Childâs Growth. This should not surprise.
And in one of those science stories that's so fun I almost don't care whether it's true, the Times examines A Pattern of Sibling Risk-Taking in the Major Leagues. I should…
ddobbs | May 20, 2010
Â
Phineas Gage enjoys an unfortunate fame in neuroscience circles: After a 5-foot iron tamping rod blew through his head one September afternoon in 1848, the once amiable and capable railroad foreman became a uncouth ne-er-do-well â and Exhibit A in how particular brain areas tended to specialize in particular tasks. (In his case, the prefrontal cortical areas that went skyward with the tamping rod proved, in retrospect, to be vital to his powers of foresight and self-control.)
I've always taken an extra level of interest in Gage because his horrific accident happened in my adopted home…
j7uy5 | May 11, 2010
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/repetitive_transcranial_magnet.php">Repetitive
transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a treatment for
major depression. It was approved (
href="http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf8/K083538.pdf">PDF)
by the FDA in 2008. However, it has remained somewhat of a niche
treatment. Some providers remain
href="http://www.shockmd.com/2008/10/17/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation-gains-approval-of-the-fda-for-depression/">unimpressed
by studies of efficacy. One problem is that most of the studies
have been sponsored by the…
j7uy5 | April 24, 2010The article describes a technique
that it said to show a priori which patients are at risk for
developing
suicidal thoughts after starting an antidepressant. Of course the
usual
interpretive caveats apply: it is a small study, needs to be
replicated, etc.
href="http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25171/?a=f">Brain
Waves Predict Suicide Risk
A new technique might help doctors foresee suicidal thoughts
before a patient even has them.
Over the past five years, an increasing number of studies have pointed
to the rare but serious risk of suicidal thoughts that can accompany
new…
ddobbs | April 1, 2010
After I wrote in my Atlantic article about getting my serotonin transporter gene assayed (which revealed that I carry that gene's apparently more plastic short-short form), I started getting a lot of email â several a week â from readers asking how to have their SERT gene tested. This led to an interesting hunt.
It was a hard question to answer. I couldn't just tell people to do what I did, for a psychiatric researcher/MD I'd known for years, who specializes in depression and serotonin, had done mine as a sort of favor to science and journalism. That researcher also stood by, had I needed…
ddobbs | March 17, 2010I'll try doing this now and then, maybe regularly, to gather the more notable tweets I get in my twitter feed.
Darwin2009: Population-level traits that affect, and do not affect, invasion success http://ow.ly/1mMUp
jayrosen_nyu: "The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company." <--- Bill Keller http://jr.ly/2pfz
dhayton: âH-Madnessâ is a new blog on the history of psychiatry, madness, etc. For and by scholars: http://historypsychiatry.wordpress.com/
stevesilberman: The brains of psychopaths may be hypersensitive to dopamine rewards - http://bit.ly/daP9Go…
omnibrain | March 16, 2010In an amazing turn of events the most famous video of all time not on youtube is now on youtube... omg! omg! haha...
Follow the instructions if you actually haven't seen this before (which I would be surprised if you have not).
oh and look... Dan and Chris have a blog!
j7uy5 | March 15, 2010At first, I was going to title this post WSJ: Incompetent Ranting. Then
I decided that was too strong. Then I read the article again, and
went back to the original title. Mind you, this is not intended
to be an ad hominem attack. The author,
href="http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/faculty/facultyprofiles/shorter.html">Edward
Shorter,
has been the Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine since 1991,
and in 1996 was cross-appointed as Professor of Psychiatry (at the
University of Toronto). He has written some good books, including
A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the…
ddobbs | March 9, 2010
Jonah Lehrer's story on "Depression's Upside" has created quite a kerfuffle. The idea he explores â that depression creates an analytic, ruminative focus that generates useful insight â sits badly with quite a few people. It's not a brand-new idea, by any means; as Jonah notes, it goes back at least to Aristotle. But Jonah (who â disclosure department â is a friend; plus I write for the Times Magazine, where the piece was published) has stirred the pot with an update drawing from (among other things) a very long review paper published last year by psychiatric researchers Paul Andrews and…
j7uy5 | March 2, 2010The January 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry has two
articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and
mental health. One article presents the results of a study; the
other is an editorial.
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajp;167/3/305">Association
of Western and Traditional Diets With Depression and Anxiety in Women
Jacka et al.
Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:305-311 (published online January 4, 2010;
doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09060881) © 2010 American Psychiatric
Association
Objective: Key biological factors that influence the…
j7uy5 | February 10, 2010The American Psychiatric Association has
href="http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx">gone public with the
details
of their proposed revisions to their Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual. As expected, most of this is bland and not worthy of
attention from the general public.
Unfortunately, as
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/health/10psych.html?hp">Benedict
Carey points out, the book often is used for purposes other than
those for which it is intended, which can lead to unintended
consequences. It remains to be seen what these will be.
I'm just going to make some quick,…
ddobbs | February 1, 2010PTSD, pharma, adjuvants, bad movies -- these are a few of my favorite things, and readers' too.
What's Neil doing here? He wasn't on Neuron Culture; I posted his clip on my catch-all, David Dobbs's Somatic Marker, because I love him. So he comes first. From 1986. Looks as if he's having a particularly good time here.
Neuron Culture's Top Five from Jan 2010
NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
"This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more…
j7uy5 | February 1, 2010
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">Objective diagnosis is in some
ways the holy grail of medicine. It has been maddeningly elusive
in psychiatry. Now comes a paper in which the authors suggest
that they may have found this treasure.
The paper details a method of using magnetoencephalography to assess
human brain function. They claim that, in a select population, it
can correctly identify patients with PTSD with 90% accuracy.
href="http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1741-…