Unreal. Someone's got an awful lot of faith in their diagnostic skills. Diagnosing ADHD with addicts in a detox unit? Really? And, now that it's published, it's "evidence". Rates of undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in London drug and alcohol detoxification units Background ADHD is a common childhood onset mental health disorder that persists into … Continue reading Diagnosing ADHD in detox?
Category: Mental Health
Intellectual conflicts of interest
Allen Frances, Chair of the DSM-IV Task Force lets loose on the DSM-5. He acknowledges the noxious effects of professional interests on research and practice in a way that is rarely seen from leaders of his stature. [emphasis mine] This is the saddest moment in my 45 year career of studying, practicing, and teaching psychiatry. The Board of … Continue reading Intellectual conflicts of interest
The DSM-5 is coming
Change is coming, but is it good? At its December meeting today, APA’s Board of Trustees approved the final diagnostic categories and criteria for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The trustees’ action marks the end of the manual’s comprehensive revision process, which has spanned over a decade and included … Continue reading The DSM-5 is coming
hope is a function of struggle
From On Being, some insight on hope and how people can foster it or inhibit its development: Ms. Brown: You know, one of the most interesting things I've found in doing this work is, you know, something the wholehearted share in common is this real profound sense of hopefulness. And as I got into the literature … Continue reading hope is a function of struggle
50% of the equation
Forbes (?!?!) covers Pat Deegan's efforts to empower mental health patients by guiding them into playing a larger role in their care decisions and participating in their health care records. ...I realized that we are at an important point in the history of medicine. Paper medical records are being replaced by digitized information organized into Electronic Health Records (EHRs). … Continue reading 50% of the equation
A brain disease AND (fill in the blank)
Not addiction related, but a very interesting look at new directions for treating and understanding schizophrenia. The article opens by reflecting on where we stand with our attempts to understand the causes: ...the outcome of two decades of serious psychiatric science is that schizophrenia now appears to be a complex outcome … Continue reading A brain disease AND (fill in the blank)
We’re not alone
Pat Deegan linked to a report on the state of treatment for schizophrenia for medicaid recipients. Although there was some state-to-state variation in the findings, the study found that, while more than 90 percent of beneficiaries with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder received an evidence-based medication during the year, only 61 percent of those beneficiaries continuously … Continue reading We’re not alone
The medical model and recovery
Yesterday's post about the disease model and recovery got me thinking about complaints that treatment is not medical enough. It's worth noting that mental health treatment has a medical model and these patients believe it's been harmful to them. What they want is something more like the holistic lifestyle approach, peer support and talk therapy that one … Continue reading The medical model and recovery
“Disease” and recovery
“Once I became my diagnosis, there was no one left to recover.” Yesterday's Pat Deegan post led me to Dr. Daniel Fisher's work on mental illness recovery. He promotes an "empowerment" model of recovery that he contrasts with a "rehabilitation" model of recovery. According to this vision, one is capable of recovering from the mental … Continue reading “Disease” and recovery
Hope and Recovery
Pat Deegan reflects on her own experience an shares about the need for hope in recovery: He said, I should retire from life and avoid stress. I have come to call my psychiatrist's pronouncement a "prognosis of doom". He was condemning me to a life of handicaptivity wherein I was expected to take high dose … Continue reading Hope and Recovery
Recovery Review 