I posted in June 2007 about Dr. Biederman and his role in the explosion in diagnosis of childhood bipolar.Today's New York Times says it's impossible to know whether he's a shill for the drug industry because of previously undisclosed connections to drug manufacturers, including $1.4 million dollars of income from manufacturers, $1 million for Biederman's … Continue reading Expert or Shill?

Another op-ed joins the chorus of pieces hoping that Obama will have the courage to learn from the failures of the war on drugs. The writer makes a great case that avoids the ideological sticking points.

I'm underwhelmed with this breathless commentary.If I'm reading it correctly, the actual study found decreases in drinking days and drinks per day for all groups during the holidays compared to non-holiday periods. Heavy drinking days was the only measure that was worse on holidays for the placebo group.The original study was also pretty underwhelming to … Continue reading I’m getting you Vivitrol for Christmas!

Wired in to recovery has a great post on recovery rates for addicted physicians. We know what works. What's holding us back? Are we too cheap? Stigma? Ideological bias?

Not surprising, but nice to see someone studying children of alcoholics:We investigated longitudinal associations between alcohol-dependent fathers' 12-step treatment involvement and their children's internalizing and externalizing problems (N = 125, Mage = 9.8 ± 3.1), testing the hypotheses that fathers' greater treatmentinvolvement would benefit later child behavior and that this effect would be mediated by … Continue reading Children benefit from recovery

This study was done in England, but it's easy to imagine these findings being replicated in metro Detroit. I suspect the culture of the treatment milieu has a lot to do with these findings.[hat tip: dailydose.net]

This finding provides some guidance regarding when control might be therapeutic and when it's not:Based on 80 patients randomly allocated to two styles of therapy, this had found that neither better overall but that some types of people did better in one than the other. Specifically, clients high in ‘learnt helplessness’ (feeling unable to control … Continue reading Learned helplessness and external control in treatment

A harm reduction approach that never occurred to me.

Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few things I'm grateful for: Recovery - 18 years ago I was 4 weeks abstinent (not in recovery) and 1 week away from being coerced into a psych unit because my therapist was convinced I was going to kill myself in the coming weeks. He was right. The patients (not … Continue reading Gratitude

Insite would save $14 million over 10 years. I don't doubt it. And, as I've said before, Vancouver's HIV rates call for radical action. However, if RAND's previous calculations are correct, 10 years of Insite's budget* spent on treatment would result in $175 million dollars in savings. If they were advocating both/and, the discussion might … Continue reading A little context please