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An Anecdote About “Supportive” Psychotherapy
I just read Dr. George Dawson’s excellent blog post on supportive psychotherapy (“Supportive Psychotherapy—The Clinical Language of Psychiatry.” If you’re looking for an erudite and humanistic explanation of supportive psychotherapy, I think you’re unlikely to find anything superior to Dr. Dawson’s essay. Now, about my take on “supportive” psychotherapy—there’s a reason why the word supportive…
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Writing is Dope
I learned a new slang word from Houston White, the guy who makes that specialty coffee in Minneapolis I blogged about yesterday: Brown Sugar Banana (I’m not a fan, but I admire him just the same). The word is “dope.” That used to be an insult or an illicit drug when I was growing up.…
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Earth Day Trees and Other Thoughts
Today is designated Earth Day although there is such a thing as Earth Month. Among the several trees Sena planted in our back yard trees are a few that we hope exemplify the Earth Day theme, which is Our Power, Our Planet. One of them is a dogwood, which we’re hoping will bloom soon. Dogwoods…
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How About That Goldwater Rule?
I’ve been looking over some of the web articles on the Goldwater Rule, which is the APA Ethics Committee guideline enjoining any psychiatrist from making public psychiatric armchair diagnoses of public or political figures without a formal evaluation or permission to conduct one. It was originally made in 1973, years after Fact Magazine in 1964…
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Members of the Human Club
I just read Dr. Moffic’s column, “Join This Club for Mental Health” in which he described the Clubhouse movement which got started in the 1940s to help those with mental health challenges to cope with their illness and, more importantly, to recover, grow, and achieve success in life. It made wonder if there are any…
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SAINT Therapy for Treatment Resistant Depression at The University of Iowa
First of all, if you looked up Saint therapy for depression, you might have accidentally found information on Saint Dymphna, the Catholic patron saint of those living with mental illness. Actually, SAINT stands for Stanford accelerated intelligent neuromodulation therapy. It’s a personalized protocol for using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to treat severe depression. The University…
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The Goldwater Rule and The Golden Rule
I read Dr. Moffic’s column today about the challenge in finding a rational solution to the objections many psychiatrists have to diagnosing President Donald Trump with a psychiatric disorder, despite the Goldwater Rule against doing that in any public forum. Dr. Moffic points out that the high emotions aroused on both sides of the political…
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What is Foreign Language Syndrome?
I found a very interesting news outlet report about a condition called Foreign Language Syndrome (FLS) which you have to distinguish from Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). I wrote a post about that a few years ago. The latter is common by comparison with FLS. FAS is a tendency to speak with a foreign inflection, not…
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Politics on the Brain
I just discovered the news item about 5 Minnesota Senate Republicans who introduced a bill this month seeking to classify “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) as a mental illness. This is not a new idea, I think, and it targets Democrats as having the syndrome. There’s a big Wikipedia article about the history of the origin…
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Rounding@Iowa Podcast: “Advances in the Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer”
This episode of Rounding@Iowa is about important medical advances in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. As you listen to Dr. Clancy interview Dr. Joseph Cullen about what’s new, you’ll hear a lot about high-dose intravenous Vitamin C. This can enhance treatment and improve response to chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Dr. Cullen’s most recent study about…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 