7 Challenges of Psychotherapy

Great post by John Grohol at PsychCentral. Each challenge is accompanied by some thoughtful and pertinent commentary. Here are the first two challenges:
1. It can take awhile to find the “right” therapist and you shouldn’t stop at Therapist #1. Finding the right therapist can be a frustrating hit-or-miss proposition. But it’s also imperative…
2. Therapy is [...]

Read Full Post »

Mindfulness and Psychotherapy

Fluffy piece at the New York Times about the use of mindfulness techniques in therapy. This is a very popular area, combining meditation, and meditative practices with psychotherapy. The article rightfully points out both that interest in mindfulness techniques has a faddish quality, but also that it has substantial therapeutic benefits. This has been done [...]

Read Full Post »

Criticism of Newseek Story on Child Bipolar

Furious Seasons (two separate posts) comments:
while it is an article filled with lots of detail and heart, it is also one of the worst pieces of journalism on the alleged disorder that I have ever seen.
Even more discouraging is the magazine’s handling of the most controversial diagnosis in all of psychiatry and psychology. The author, [...]

Read Full Post »

Pharmacies to Sell Patient Records in California?

This is verbatim from a Furious Seasons post. It is extremely important news for consumers in California especially:
Pharmacies in California would be allowed to sell confidential patient prescription information to third-party marketing firms working for drug companies under a bill expected to be voted on Thursday by the state Senate.
“The legislation would allow pharmaceutical firms [...]

Read Full Post »

Fifty Percent Jump of PTSD in Military

This month there’s been a lot of reporting on PTSD. The simple reason is that more and more veterans are returning from their tours of duty with the diagnosis. Below an excerpt from a Washington Post article documenting the 50 percent increase in the diagnosis last year.
Early in May the Rand Corporation suggested that 20 [...]

Read Full Post »

Treatment Resistant Depression and Lithium

Found a link to this story at Brain Blogger.
Dr. Shock MD PhD reports an interesting finding about the genetics possibly linked to treatment resistant depression: “Patients with the s/s genotype who according to the literature seem to be at risk for a less favorable response to antidepressant monotherapy might particularly benefit from augmentation strategies. …. [...]

Read Full Post »

Women and Marketing Antipsychotics

Very interesting post with great visuals over at Writhe Safely. “I Will Be A Good Girl.” The post includes a typically ominous list of health-threatening side effects. Here’s one of the images:

Here’s the pitch:
Abilify is the medicine that brings you to your senses. Purchase Abilify from understanding international online pharmacies and licensed US pharmacies [...]

Read Full Post »

Veteran Writes About PTSD, Kills Himself

This straight from Mindhacks, word for word:
An US Iraq veteran who wrote about his PTSD, sadly, kills himself.
This is a story that’s not going to go away any time soon. Here’s a link to a Washington Post article about a shift within the VA to diagnose adjustment disorder (no benefits) over PTSD ($2700 monthly [...]

Read Full Post »

Difficult Emotional Decision? Just Take the Default

Here’s a fascinating behavioral account (decisions are not logical they are psychological) of how people decide whether to donate their organs or not. It’s written by Dan Ariely who calls himself a “behavioral economist” and touts his ideas in his book Predictably Irrational.
His hypothesis is that when faced with a difficult emotional we tend to [...]

Read Full Post »

Public Television Show on Depression

Here’s a small part of depression introspection’s reaction to the recently aired public television show “Depression: Out of the Shadows”. Overall, I’d say her reaction to the show was that it was a “depression 101″ exercise, and not that focussed. It did plug talk therapy, though.
My jaw nearly dropped to the carpet as Andrew Solomon, [...]

Read Full Post »