Her mind works like Google for pictures. Nice introduction to autism in it's different forms, the autism spectrum disorder, does DSM V already have this one? Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ..read more »

A lot of medication gets misused, as is the right expression, meaning not used for the intention or indication it was developed for in the first place. This reminded me of one of my first publications on the abuse of anticholinergics. From case reports it appears that quetiapine is sought after for recreational use and inappropriate use such as intranasal and intravenous administration. Quetiapine is also for sale on the street, symptom malingering to obtain the drug and higher dosage requests. It's always important to recognize such misuse of medication because in the case of quetiapine it can induce weight gain, .....read more »

This post was inspired by two recent visits to jazz clubs in Paris. It's the first in a series of three. The others are: Medical Dangers of Jazz and The neuroscience of Jazz. What do we know about the relationship between mental illness and creativity, more specific about the relationship between mental illness and jazz. Other art forms and mental illness are discussed elsewhere on this blog. It will be particularly valued by that group of psychiatrists who prefer to frequent jazz clubs rather than conference gala dinners (those who prefer gala dinners are advised to obtain a copy of the .....read more »

In short, a recent article proposed to do deep brain stimulation for schizophenia. Schizophrenia has positive-, negative- and cognitive symptoms (see the figure above). The authors propose the DBS for positive symptoms. Their approach is based on current models of the neurocircuitry of psychosis . They hypothesize: that chronic, high frequency electrical stimulation (HFS) of the hippocampus or the nucleus accumbens (NAc), through stabilization of dopamine (DA) release in the striatum, may improve positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. I checked Clinicaltrials.gov but no one is doing a trial with DBS and schizophrenia yet. Their hypothesis is based on the assumption .....read more »

Three fast track articles were recently published on CyberPsychology and Behavior about the treatment of PTSD with virtual reality exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is the most evidence based treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). More than 18 studies have been published on the use of virtual reality exposure treatment for PTSD. One of the articles is a case series of treatment with virtual reality exposure treatment within the combat theater. Until now this treatment was done at home. In this article a portable set of virtual reality machines was take to Iraq for treatment of PTSD within the .....read more »

This is a movie used for the presentation of symptoms of Schizophrenia in some medical schools. I also use a lot of fragments from Hollywood movies to teach psychiatric symptoms and diseases to medical students. Since recent there's Symptom Media. It's a non-profit organization created in the spring of 2009 for the creation and distribution of specialized video content. The videos are all about psychiatric and psychological phenomena. The clips were made by a film producer Matt Rubin and Dr. Donald Fidler, a psychiatrist and professor of West Virginia University. They already produced about 25 small segment films found streaming .....read more »

Depressed patients often do not respond to there first antidepressant or have to quit the antidepressant due to side effects. Switching to another antidepressant is often a solution. Nevertheless switching from one to the other depressant can be difficult. How do you switch, which taper scheme and which built up scheme do you use. How is this influenced by the cytochrome P450 system? Since recent there's a table on a website with most, if not all possible switches from one to the other antidepressant: www.switchingantidepressants.eu. It's a Wiki made by Drs. Walter Broekema, a pharmacist in a large psychiatric hospital in .....read more »

The organizers of REshape 2009, the second Health 2.0 conference and the first international E-Mental Health summit have set up an interesting contest, called the Dutch Open Health 2.0 Challenge, that will run during that week, from Oct. 12 to 15, with winners announced Oct. 16. Lee Aase, living in Austin, Minnesota who works for Mayo Clinic as manager for Syndications and Social Media will be presenting on both conferences and participating in this challenge with a Mayo team. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ..read more »

Based on two psychiatric assessment procedures, a computer program investigating the presence of a psychotic disorder and a personality questionnaire, Salvador Dali was found to have a personality disorder for DSM Cluster A and B. He was also found to meet the diagnostic criteria for psychotic illnesses. You can't diagnose psychiatric illness without doing a face to face psychiatric examination. Usually personality diagnosis takes even more than one diagnostic interview. Distributing psychiatric diagnoses solely based on "circumstantial evidence", hear say or news stories is obsolete. Nevertheless these authors from `oxford digested a lot of information on which they based the above .....read more »

True or false: “ Pregnant women never commit suicide, they just don’t do it because it’s against human nature” This is what experts declared to a murder trial jury in 1993 after the death of an 38 weeks pregnant woman. Because of this declaration, Eddy Gifoyle, who found his wife hanging in the garage is serving a life sentence for the murder of his pregnant wife. This guest post was written by Veerle Bergink, psychiatrist, besides patient care especially perinatal psychiatry she is also busy on her PhD research project Amazing that this actually happened in the UK, the cradle off perinatal psychiatry... Only .....read more »