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
Tag: Medicine
Deconstructing “it works”
Healthcare, etc. has a great post deconstructing what it means to say a treatment works: What exactly does it mean when we say that a treatment works? Do we mean the same thing for all treatments? Are there different ways of assessing whether and how well a treatment works? I am sure you've guessed that … Continue reading Deconstructing “it works”
Integrated care?
Pat Deegan bites her nails at the prospect of integrated care for mental health care (The same thing is happening with addiction treatment): Is recovery going the way of the dinosaur? Is recovery-transformation an old idea that should give way to more enlightened policies of integrated, co-located behavioral and physical healthcare services? These days, I … Continue reading Integrated care?
An exciting time for pharma
Ugh! This Join Together article reads like a ad for pharma: Many people struggling with alcohol dependence who could benefit from medication are not receiving it, according to an expert who spoke at the recent American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting. “Antidepressant prescribing is 100 to 200 times as great as prescriptions for medications approved to … Continue reading An exciting time for pharma
What we spend on health
This infographic is from a report on obesity and it's set off a debate its accuracy. But it gets at a point I've made before. And, the more I learn, the clearer it becomes that this general principle applies to medical problems, mental health problems and addiction. To me, this doesn't make a case for … Continue reading What we spend on health
Emotional pain without context
Siddhartha Mukherjee provides a brief history of the serotonin hypothesis of depression, its demise and why dismissing serotonin may be an "overcorrection." Part of this story is an emerging theory of depression: A remarkable and novel theory for depression emerges from these studies. Perhaps some forms of depression occur when a stimulus — genetics, environment … Continue reading Emotional pain without context
Why we can’t agree
The Obama administration just released their annual drug control strategy report and all the headlines say it emphasizes treatment over incarceration. Sounds great, but the stories are short on details. Others, from the Drug Policy Alliance are dismissing it as more of the same. More of the same? Really? I think Obama's safely within the … Continue reading Why we can’t agree
Buprenorphine Maintenance and Health Care Professionals
Mayo Clinic Proceedings published a new article entitled, Buprenorphine Maintenance Therapy in Opioid-Addicted Health Care Professionals Returning to Clinical Practice: A Hidden Controversy. From the article: When considering all of the aforementioned issues with buprenorphine diversion, it does not seem reasonable to prescribe this medication to an HCP (Health Care Professional) with a history of opioid … Continue reading Buprenorphine Maintenance and Health Care Professionals
Recovery Review 