FDA and Child Bipolar

Philip over at Furious Seasons is on a rant about the FDA legitimizing the childhood bipolar diagnosis, one which does not yet occur in the DSM. Essentially, it sounds like the rationale is that since they’ve approved studies about medicating the disorder and approved dosages of Abilify and Risperdal with children — then the disorder [...]

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Slowing Down for Summer

I’ll be posting once or twice a week at most for the rest of the summer. Time to take care of some things.

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Oliver Sacks on Autism

First, a quote from today’s New York Times on nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage:
Mr. Savage, above, referred to autism as “a fraud, a racket,” and asserted that what “99 percent” of children with autism most needed was a parent willing to tell them things like, “Don’t act like a moron.”
On a more enlightened note, [...]

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Pharmaceutical Sales 2007: Antipsychotics For Sale

Out of the $663 billion sales of pharmaceuticals in 2007, the sale of psychotropic medications was not that high: 3 percent for antipsychotics, 3 percent for antidepressants. Yet if you look at the top ten best-selling drugs, three of them are antipsychotics. The source is IMS health, who describe themselves:
IMS is the one global source [...]

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Magnetic Therapy for Treatment Resistant Depression

When treatment for depression doesn’t seem to be working, it’s time to suggest alternatives. Dr. Deb has an interesting post on the use of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, known as rTMS.
rTMS, as it is called, is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that increases neural blood flow in the brain. The procedure is not a surgical [...]

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Psychotherapy: A Series of Thoughts

Many books have been written in hope of defining psychotherapy. Here’s a very short attempt (has appeared as part 1, part 2, on the ‘psychotherapy?’ page):

Psychotherapy is a conversation between two people — where one person predominantly talks and the other predominantly listens. The goal of the conversation that develops is to foster insight into [...]

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Body Position Affects Memory of Events

Fascinating piece at Cognitive Daily on headlined topic, from a 2007 study. One idea that occurs immediately, is that this idea lends credence to treatments for PTSD that involve physical movements, even re-dramatizing the event. Here’s an excerpt:
A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: [...]

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Using Restraints in Public Schools

Today’s New York Times runs a shocking story on the use of restraints in public schools on children with special needs — autism, attention deficit disorder, retardation. The article contains a link to an interesting site that advocates for this group: special needs muckraker. Here’s a quote from the article.
In April, a 9-year-old Montreal boy [...]

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Suicide Is Dangerous

Last week’s New York Times Magazine had an interesting article on suicide by Scott Anderson. At the outset, it should be noted that his article is basically about people that jump off bridges or buildings to commit suicide, “jumpers”. (John Grohol writes “Suicide Barriers Are Effective” here.) It’s always an important topic: Roughly 32,000 people [...]

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Depression is Real

John Grohol at PsychCentral points to an article on this topic at Anchor magazine. The Canadian-based magazine is in itself interesting — it’s tagline is “conquering depression” and appears to be a comprehensive site for anyone with questions about depression, or that suffers from depression. Topics included: Depression and — men, women, teens, research, healthy [...]

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