Mental NotesMind, brain, mental illness, mental health...and this & thattag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75945142007-01-09T00:12:44ZBlogger
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trueDoc2007-01-23T19:32:00-06:002007-01-24T01:37:41Z2007-01-24T01:37:41Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116960266166719962A worldwide epidemic...Georgia: "...mental health groups on Tuesday called on the Legislature to begin a complete overhaul of how the state delivers services to the mentally ill. The call...comes after reports of insufficient staffing and neglect that have led to dozens of escapes and deaths at Georgia's mental hospitals.The Army: "Mental health screening isn't consistent for U.S. troops returning from war, and iffalseDoc2007-01-22T21:38:00-06:002007-01-23T02:45:27Z2007-01-23T02:45:27Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116952032762367518Drug rep cheerleadersWhen I first looked up this post, I was hopeful that a bunch of drug reps were moonlighting, given the lay-offs and such in the industry lately.
Alas (according to the post), it's actually the other way around: "pharmaceutical companies are systematically recruiting from cheerleading squads"...falseDoc2007-01-22T19:12:00-06:002007-01-22T18:14:39Z2007-01-22T18:14:39Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116948967971293881Parasites, not terrorists......caused the bird deaths in Austin, they say.falseDoc2007-01-21T21:44:00-06:002007-01-23T02:29:29Z2007-01-22T03:46:59Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116943761902802119How does Ritalin work?A study in the November issue of Biological Psychiatry sheds a little more light on how Ritalin helps people with attention deficit.
(It's surprising how little is still know about its mechanism of action.)
In this study, improvements in attention were noted after Ritalin increased the amount of two natural chemicals in the brain: dopamine and norepinephrine. The increases were noted in thefalseDoc2007-01-20T14:32:00-06:002007-01-21T03:33:35Z2007-01-20T21:27:02Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116932842237057813Are evidence-based practices really just well-financed practices?Zyprexa (olanzapine) is right up there at the top of the evidence-based practice algorithms for treating psychiatric disorders, most notably this one for schizophrenia, and this one for bipolar disorder.
It's also right up there at the top of the front page of the newspaper, in a series of articles from New York Times (including one today) alleging all sorts of conspiracies to increase ZyprexafalseDoc2007-01-19T19:30:00-06:002007-01-20T21:38:59Z2007-01-20T21:38:59Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116932913984574711Careful who you treat...In England, a woman who managed to get her partner's psychiatrist picked up on rape charges, threatened his fiancee, and burglarized his home is going to jail for it all, for nine years.
Must've been something he said about her to his patient, ya reckon?....falseDoc2007-01-17T19:27:00-06:002007-01-18T01:55:38Z2007-01-18T01:55:38Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116908533836339575Divorced moms at greater risk for psychiatric disorders......at least in Canada.
But the new study from Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health also shows that never-married mothers had lower rates of psychiatric and substance use disorders.
Couple this information with data showing that children of depressed moms are at higher risk for severe emotional and behavioral problems, and it argues for effective screening tofalseDoc2007-01-16T21:41:00-06:002007-01-17T16:52:21Z2007-01-17T16:52:21Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116905274107052741Diagnosis of juvenile bipolar disorderEven in the midst of publishing practice parameters for juvenile bipolar disorder, the controversy about its existence continues:
"...The debate and controversy over juvenile bipolar disorder are not whether
there are a significant number of youths who are explosive, dysregulated, and
emotionally labile... The debate is whether these problems in youths are best
characterized as bipolarfalseDoc2007-01-15T19:50:00-06:002007-01-15T22:02:07Z2007-01-15T22:02:07Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116889852766876641Does psychotherapy work?...or is that even the question"The pragmatic question...is not whether psychotherapy works, but how it compares with drug treatment, since we have drugs that are proven effective..." says Dr Arthur Rifkin in examining three psychotherapy research studies in the latest American Journal of Psychiatry.
Of course, he is talking about "effective" for core symptoms of major psychiatric diseases. Medication, by itself, is not asfalseDoc2007-01-14T19:42:00-06:002007-01-15T21:49:15Z2007-01-15T21:49:15Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594514.post-116889775567979911Reading Problems and Behavior ProblemsIn my early days in private practice I was fortunate to be able to screen virtually all of my patients for various learning disorders. I was struck, anecdotally, with the large number of them -- especially boys -- who had significant problems with reading or with speech.
It seemed to me that disruptive behavior, in particular, was a way for children to show their frustration when their verbalfalse