Monday Mental Health Blogging

July 27, 2009 in Links, Mental Illness | No comments

"A new steel mill takes form" by Andreas Feininger, 1942.

Farmer suicides spotlight lack of mental health care in rural America: “We have seen in Iowa the loss of psychiatrists and psychologists in rural areas. There just aren’t enough.”
“Three professional baseball players have landed on the disabled list this season for a problem they can’t ice, bandage or have surgically repaired: anxiety.”
The Biology of Psychotherapy: “…The results were essentially identical: both interventions decreased the rate of glucose metabolism to levels seen in healthy people without OCD, and the rate of the decrease seemed proportional to the degree of improvement in their OCD symptoms.”
iPods may help Asperger’s kids navigate life: “The staffers at Fraser came up with the idea after they noticed how students with Asperger’s would use iPods as a calming device, to block out noise or other distractions. ” [featuring my cousin PJ!]
Have psychiatric wards changed? “If you found yourself locked up against your will in a psychiatric ward, you would probably do your best to get out. But in 1969 a group of people did just the opposite — they tried to get in.”
“Critics of the diagnosis of PTSD state that it is a twentieth century concept, related primarily to an American compensation culture. However historical examples of PTSD pre-date the World and Vietnam Wars and the twentieth century compensation culture. [...] Here we will consider the historical evidence for the diagnosis in the author, Charles Dickens.”
“When she visited the university health service and talked about feeling depressed, a nurse practitioner saw another problem: a possible case of schizophrenia in the making.”
“There is evidence to suggest that increasing the number of service dogs would reduce the alarming suicide rate among veterans, decrease the number of hospitalizations and lower the cost of medications and human care,” Franken said of his first piece of legislation.
“The missing mental health records of Seung Hui Cho, who was responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, mysteriously resurfaced last week in the home of the former director of the university’s counseling center.”