Excellent animation of deep brain stimulation thanks to the Cleveland ClinicRelated posts: When are you eligible for a trial with deep brain stimulation The Bleeding Edge of Deep Brain Stimulation Deep Brain Stimulation for Depression ..read more »

The mural tells the story of a horrible day back in the spring. Fred was being transferred to a new hospital and Regina needed records of Fred's many tests and treatments from the old hospital. "I had gone down to medical records," Holliday says, "and they said, 'That'll be 73 cents a page and a 21-day wait.' I said, 'My husband is upstairs with Stage IV kidney cancer in your hospital and you're telling me I have to wait 21 days? Everything's on the computer. All you got to do is print it out and you're going to make me wait .....read more »

Art and psychiatry is always an interesting combination to me. It has so many perspectives. Does being an artist combine with psychiatric illness, how do they influence each other? To name just a few perspectives. On this blog I regularly post about artists and psychiatry and painters and psychiatry in a broad sense. Can depression as one important psychiatric illness enhance creativity despite depressed mood, loss of interest not to mention a lack of concentration and all other symptoms? Art can be comforting or even a form of medication. Klaas Koopmans (1920-2006) a Dutch artist who during his admissions as an .....read more »

The MedLib’s Round, the monthly blog carnival that highlights some of the best writing on medical librarianship, encompassing all stages in the publication and dissemination of medical information: writing, publishing, searching, citing, managing and social networking is up at Highlight Health. I especially liked: MedlinePlus vs. healthfinder: Must We Choose? why there are two major consumer health information sites supported by the government — MedlinePlus and healthfinder.gov. So how can you make sense of the millions of websites and find online health information that is reliable? Can You Trust That Health Website? Do you subscribe to RSS feeds? Are you using social media? Have you .....read more »

Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky says "depression is like the worst disease you can get." Here is an excerpt from that lecture. A video of the complete lecture is available here. During a recent workshop presented by Stanford's Faculty and Staff Help Center, biologist Robert Sapolsky talked about the biological and psychological causes of depression, how to recognize its symptoms and how to handle the disease. In short depression is an illness not a weakness.Related posts: Understanding Depression in Kidney Disease Parkinson’s Disease and Depression Depression and Coronary Heart Disease in Women ..read more »

The best information in health care is from patients who have been there. Those who underwent treatment, suffer from a certain illness. It's the kind of hands on experience physicians can't deliver. On this blog I have collected some examples of these "hands on experiences". Some recent posts were written about ECT by them with hands on experience. Aqua on Vicarious Therapy wrote a post on ECT and media portrayals of depression treatment options. She is irritated by the negative portrayal of ECT in the media. It irritates me, (and does not help me explain potential treatments to concerned family .....read more »

Two of my favorite blog colleagues wrote posts about twitter lists. Not the new feature of twitter to make your own lists and exchange them but a collection of medical and other scientific journals on twitter and a list of scientists on twitter. These lists are an excellent starting point if your interested in following some of them scientists or journals in your field on twitter. The alphabetical twitter lists of scientists on twitter was included with biographical data and photos by Justin Reid and analyzed by 2020science to show how all those science types were interconnected. This resulted in a .....read more »

Depends? If the object is moving you'll need less pixels or resolution. A man runs. He falls down. He struggles back onto his feet and he runs some more. It's a simple narrative. Even without much detail, you can understand what's going on. Pause the video, though, and the scene isn't nearly as clear. Movement makes up for the lack of other visual information. Your brain can read and understand a video at much lower resolution than it would need to make equal sense of a still frame. Meet Jim Campbell, a former Silicon Valley engineer turned visual artist. Want to know about .....read more »

The new Palliative Care Grand Rounds is up. It's the monthly review of the best of palliative care related blogs. This month I am handing out awards because I am so glad to see so many bloggers talking about palliative care issues and I think some of them need to be recognized. If you need to pick up your award, feel free to come visit me in Kansas City. Hope I will be in the neighborhood of Kansas City in the near future to collect my award.Related posts: Differences between Palliative Sedation and Euthanasia Grand Rounds at See First Grand Rounds 5:45 .....read more »

Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall opened. When Anthony Suau's agent sent him to cover the opening of the border between East and West Berlin, he knew it would be the story of a lifetime Related posts: The Words (and Deeds) that Brought Down the Berlin Wall Wall Street Stop More Photo Fun ..read more »