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Could Ray Bradbury Have Been Lyrical About Isolation & Ebola?
I got this fascinating comment on one of my posts, (Do We See Each Other”), I wrote last year about one of Ray Bradbury’s short stories, entitled “I See You Never.” Judy’s remark was right on target, “Sometimes fiction mirrors life too painfully.” I don’t know whether Bradbury’s short story she called “The Lighthouse” is…
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Personal Ancient History
The essay below is a blog post I wrote way back in 2010. I was a mid-career consultation-liaison psychiatrist in a university hospital. And I’d always been a writer by inclination. It was one of my first posts and after that, blogging was something I never really pulled away from. I tried to give it…
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Talk About Talk Therapy
I saw this great blog post about psychotherapy by Dr. George Dawson a couple of days ago and it reminded me of an academic research rounds presentation made about 15 years ago by University of Iowa Health Care Dept of Psychiatry faculty member, Dr. Bruce Pfohl, MD Professor Emeritus. The title of his talk was…
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Shout Out to Dr. Fawad Taj for Psychiatric Times Article on Cannabis and Psychosis Risk
I rarely see an article that impresses me as much as the Psychiatric Times piece on psychosis risk and cannabis by Dr. Fawad Taj, MD. It makes sense that he is also a consultation-liaison psychiatrist. He’s on staff in the Dept. of psychiatry at University Hospitals of Cleveland. There is a highly esteemed scholar special…
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Shout Out to Dr. George Dawson for Medical Reasoning Post!
I just wanted to make a shout-out to Dr. George Dawson for his post from yesterday, “Medical Reasoning vs. A Diagnostic Manual.” It reminded me of the diagnostic challenge of catatonia, which I saw several times during my career as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist. There’s an excellent recent review of the evaluation and management of catatonia.…
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Clinical Problems in Consultation Psychiatry and The Break-Dancing Koala Bear
I ran across an old Clinical Problems in Consultation Psychiatry (CPCP) presentation by a couple of sharp medical students in 2014. They presented it at one of my morning consult rounds and it’s about Charles Bonnet Syndrome. They did a very nice job and it compares fairly well with the University of Iowa Ophthalmology Dept…
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Do We Really Need Artificial Intelligence to Help People Who Are Demoralized?
I was just going through the many files on one of my old thumb drives that I still keep after I retired from consultation-liaison psychiatry over 5 years ago. I found a file that I must have typed from a source on how to help medically ill persons who are demoralized. Demoralization is not the…
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What Questions Should We Ask on MLK Day?
I ran across this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in my notes: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. This week we’ll be getting the two biographies of…
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Connections Between Psychiatry, Artificiality and Blues Music?
I heard a song on the KCCK Big Mo Blues Show that I first heard in June of 2025. The song is “Artificial” by Walter Trout. At first blush, I agree with what I think is the point of the song, which is basically a protest against artificiality which could manifest in a range of…
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Exercise to Relieve Depression?
I’m sure you’ve seen the recently published articles on the web encouraging people to try exercising to treat depression. The articles rely on a new systematic review by the Cochrane Database, which you need to carefully interpret—not necessarily the whole paper; you could just skip to the bottom line in the Authors’ Conclusions: “Authors’ conclusions: Exercise…
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