How would you diagnose chronic pain? This blog was posted earlier in a slightly different form in Psychology Today. Trying to make a diagnosis in the patient with chronic pain confuses clinicians and interferes with care. In this post, I’ll review the diagnostic problem and suggest some ways around it. In an earlier post, Chronic Read more about Chronic Pain Is A Symptom[…]
Non-professionals can improve others’ mental health care—by inquiring. I similar version of this post was published earlier today in my Psychology Today post. Because there was interest in my post describing how non-professionals can facilitate help for the suicidal patient, I thought it could be useful to extend this effort to a variety of other Read more about Improving the Mental Health Care of Those Close to You[…]
Medical faculty could teach mental health care—if they were first trained. A similar version was published earlier in Psychology Today. You heard in my last post the encouraging news that some medical educators embrace the psychological and social aspects of medicine, reflecting a belief that they must integrate these features with medicine’s already strong disease Read more about We Don’t Train the Physicians Who Provide Mental Health Care[…]
Medical educators lead the charge, but more work remains. A similar version of this post was published earlier today in Psychology Today. In my previous posts on medicine’s loss of mind, Descartes, and modern science, I described the medical profession’s profound dereliction of duty for its most common patient population. Medicine completely fails to train Read more about Hope for Improved Mental Health Care[…]
How you, as in individual, can save valuable lives. This post was published earlier today in a slightly different form in Psychology Today. With 45,000 suicide deaths in the U.S. in 2016,1 someone has to do something. I’m proposing that someone is you. Sound outlandish? Maybe so, but would you respond similarly if I recommended Read more about You Can Prevent Suicide in Someone Close to You[…]
“Looking where the light is.” This post was previously posted earlier today in Psychology Today. In a previous post, you heard how Rene Descartes and other Enlightenment philosophers split the mind and its mental operations from the body, leaving medicine with an almost exclusive focus on the physical body and its diseases. Beneficial as this Read more about Medicine’s Way of Thinking Prevents Progress in Psychiatry[…]
Your response to the coronavirus stems from evolution. This blog was also posted earlier in Psychology Today. Evolutionary psychiatry can help people accept their own or another’s mental illness. It provides one way to understand why the illness occurred. Key to an evolutionary understanding is the way natural selection maximizes passage of one’s genes to Read more about Why Do People Develop a Mental Disorder?[…]
Addressing psychosocial and mental issues improves physical disease care. A slightly different version of this was posted earlier today in Psychology Today. In an earlier post, I expressed my concern about poor mental health care in the U.S., and that it stems from the medical physicians who provide 85% of it. It’s not their fault, Read more about Medicine Can Improve Physical Diseases Care[…]
Psychiatry is as reductionistic as the rest of medicine. A similar blog was posted earlier today in Psychology Today. In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gardner and Kleinman make a point that parallels what I’ve been saying since my initial post. Modern medicine is so anchored in the reductionistic disease Read more about The Crisis in Psychiatry[…]
Stigma is a major deterrent to mental health care. A similar post was made earlier today in Psychology Today. While many are aware of the national problem of poor mental health care, how might we as individuals and as a society be contributing to it? We do so in spades by stigmatizing those who suffer Read more about How We Interfere with Our Own Mental Health Care[…]
