October 28, 2010

Bob– I had an interesting case today. A friendly, 24 year old, very slender and slightly distracted Vietnamese woman who has a 18 month-old daughter. She has a tumultuous life, lots of boyfriend problems (not the father of her toddler), …
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October 25, 2010

In 1994, Italy’s Giovanna Fava, editor-in-chief of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, wrote for the first time of his concern that “long-term use of antidepressant drugs may increase, in some cases, the biochemical vulnerability to depression, and worsen its long-term …
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October 25, 2010

Bob– A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the mother of one of my teenage patients, a 14 year old Chinese-american boy who initially saw me at the start of the summer for a sports physical. At …
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October 21, 2010

Bob– I’m going to try to be quick today (unlikely), but I want to share two cases: 1) I saw a pleasant 32 year old woman who has suffered from intermittent depression and who had been on Lexapro several years …
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October 17, 2010

Bob– A couple of very positive patient encounters yesterday: • First, I saw a fit, vibrant 45 year old woman who presented for the first time complaining of knee pain. She probably has a meniscal tear of the knee. In …
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October 14, 2010

Bob– Had two very interesting cases this morning: First, I saw new patient, a very thoughtful, intelligent retired pastor who is on Citalopram. We were visiting about a number of other health issues, and he asked if I could refill …
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October 10, 2010

In my last post on my Psychology Today blog, which I also publish here, I told of my experience speaking at the Alternatives conference in Anaheim, and my frustration — despair really — over whether our society could ever have …
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October 10, 2010

Bob– Today was full of psych stuff from the first patient to the last. Yes, these clinic days are representative of my typical practice. Just counted, and 9 of my 15 patients today had a significant psych component to their …
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October 10, 2010

Soon after awakening to my crisis of ‘self’, I was sent to my first therapist. My social circles had changed, and I’d begun to spend time with a more marginalized and less straight and narrow group of girls. I was …
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Categorized in: Blogs | Tagged as: biopsychiatry, bipolar, Bipolar Disorder, coming off psychiatric drugs, DSM, Human Rights, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric labels, psychiatric medication, psychiatric medication withdrawal

October 8, 2010

In the last chapter of my book Anatomy of an Epidemic, I noted that if our society is going to stem the epidemic of disabling mental illness that has erupted during the past twenty years, then it needs to have …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Community, Non-Drug Approaches, Recovery/Empowerment

October 6, 2010

In 2008, Philip Cowen published an essay in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. His essay leads off with the provocative question, “Serotonin and Depression: Pathological mechanism or Marketing Myth?”  To be honest we are not exactly sure on what side of …
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October 6, 2010

Bob– Yet another challenging day. I had two more patients today whose trajectories would relate perfectly to Anatomy of an Epidemic. The first was an 61 year old man on three antidepressants (Wellbutrin, Remeron and Zoloft), as well as daily …
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October 1, 2010

This blog is an attempt to make sense of what brought me into the world of psychiatry as a child and of where it would take me for the next fourteen years. It is an effort to document where I …
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Categorized in: Blogs | Tagged as: biopsychiatry, bipolar, Bipolar Disorder, coming off psychiatric drugs, DSM, Human Rights, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric labels, psychiatric medication, psychiatric medication withdrawal