Teenagers as Sitting Ducks
A recent article in The New York Times dramatically chronicles the quiet mental health pandemic we are undergoing as a
Category: Medical Culture/Politics
A Woman’s Unexplained Symptoms Lead to A Surprising Personal Discovery
In life feelings can be painful, even excruciatingly so. It’s really all a part of being human. But what happens if we don’t even let ourselves know what we feel? That’s where, sometimes, our bodies take over and try to help. Here’s one woman’s story, and what she discovered.
ADHD Medications: Good For Big Pharma, Not For Kids
We’re revisiting a past article by Dr. Allen Frances, a prominent psychiatric “insider” who now spends his time railing against the overprescribing of psychiatric medications. Here he talks about the New York Times article which connected the proliferation of “ADHD” in kids to the profiteering by the drug companies. This is a wake up call to parents and professionals alike. Frances says, “as it stands now, we are doing an uncontrolled experiment on our kids with no clue about the long term effects of the meds on their brains and behavior.”
What If The “Sick” Person Is The Healthiest Of All?
Here Dave proposes the countercultural idea that problems like depression, ADHD, bipolar and other “disorders” are often healthy responses to the pain of unhealthy relationships.
Advice From A Dominatrix on How To Deal With Men
Check out this article from the New York Times on what a different kind of anti-sexual harassment training for women
Sometimes Un-Craziness Is The Problem
The psychological defense mechanism of projection can distort a parent’s judgement about their kids, or it can create a wedge between a couple, since projection interferes with the ability to see one’s partner as she truly is. The (unconscious) grip from the past gets in the way. Here’s a therapy session that looks at how this projection process played out in one family, and how it was–for the moment-transformed.
Success-Shaming: A Subtle Way To Disempower Women
There’s a lot of attention focused now on sexual transgressions as a part of  the power imbalances between men and
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 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.