Most Human

The Opposite of A “Good Death”: A Young Woman’s Grief

Surgeon Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, has a lot to say about the unintended consequences of doctors’ failure to acknowledge the dying process. Here’s a case of a young woman whose complicated grief over her mother’s death reflects this failure.

A Little Girl With Bipolar “Deserves” A Trial of Lithium

This is a Two-Part Post: Dave:  This illustration gives a picture of how the use of a psychiatric diagnosis and

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The Bipolar Girl Grows Up And Becomes A Role Model For Her Mother

Dave:  Just one month after Trish left for college, her mother, Carol Marie, called me. I was surprised because she

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A New Understanding of Emotional Distress

Our current cultural model for conditions like anxiety and depression uses language like “chemical imbalance”, implying that suffering is related to our brain chemistry. In this post, Dave Keith offers another perspective that looks at our moods as dynamic states related to the context of our living patterns.

When A Patient Requests Xanax: A Doctor’s Unexpected Response

Many doctors feel under pressure to prescribe medications to patients with even moderate anxiety or depression. But it doesn’t have to be that way: Here’s a case of a physician with courage and imagination who takes an unexpected path to help her patient.