Can we end chronic homelessness?
Just a few years ago, that question would have seemed absurd. Chronic homelessness was, well, chronic. Today, a re-think of an old problem is yielding incredible results. And here’s the best part: Canadian researchers and the Mental Health Commission of Canada are playing crucial roles.
This is all I have left.
My patient, faced with significant financial issues, reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. “Everything else is gone,” he said.
The year was 2010. My patient had spent decades managing a GM dealership but, with widespread company problems, he lost his job and the dealership closed. He described to me walking out one evening with an appointment book filled with future meetings only to realize the next day that he had nothing to do. “I’m an adrenalin junkie.” The long 12-hour work days were replaced by the uncomfortable monotony of unemployment. My patient was lost — and depressed and suicidal. Continue reading
Forget the cutting-edge diagnostic imaging and genetics, is this the future of psychiatry?
Toronto Lunatic Asylum, 1868
A new paper argues that it should be. And it’s created a fire-storm of controversy. Continue reading
On the Reading of the Week
As we did last month with the benzodiazepine papers, the selection of this week’s Reading was made with the editorial board of the International Psychiatry Twitter Journal Club, allowing us to consider this paper here, and to continue the conversation on Twitter. And that conversation is going on today.
Bonus: the paper’s first author is participating in the Twitter discussion. And Dr. Maldonado will be presenting unpublished data, too. #Cool. Continue reading
First he noticed it was becoming hard to sing, a nightmare because that was how he made his living and singing was who he was. Then he could barely sing at all but could still speak his lines. And then over a couple of years he began to lose his speaking voice, until it became wispy thin and trailed off, so that he could generate only short, barely audible bursts of whispered air.
“It was agonizing to watch him lose his beautiful singing voice, heartbreaking. I fell in love with that voice,” said Patsy Husmann, his wife of 50 years.
Years ago, I was invited to a dinner party. I found myself seated at a table with a noted poet, a New York Times bestselling author, a Toronto psychoanalyst, the former editor of a smart literary review, and an award-winning essayist. All these people were named Dr. Norman Doidge. Continue reading
There’s no handbook on how to survive your young wife’s psychiatric crisis. The person you love is no longer there, replaced by a stranger who’s shocking and exotic. Every day I tasted the bittersweet saliva that signals you’re about to puke. To keep myself sane I hurled myself at being an excellent psychotic-person’s spouse. I kept notes on what made things better and what made things worse. I made Giulia take her medicine as prescribed. Sometime this meant watching her swallow, then checking her mouth to confirm that she hadn’t hidden the pills under her tongue. This dynamic led us to become less than equals, which was unsettling.
I’ve been a physician now for nearly a decade and a half. Much of everything has become routine. It wasn’t always like this. I remember the first night on call as a medical student doing my Internal Medicine rotation – the angst and confusion, as I received page after page. As a resident, I remember my first few “observed” psychiatric interviews, with the entire team present, so many people watching me. I remember the first few months of being an attending, trying to pace myself and navigate everything from dictations to the parking lot. But those days are behind me. Practicing day after day, week after week, year after year, routine sets in.
For patients and their families, though, health care is so often not routine – and that’s especially true with mental illness. It’s a world of first appointments, unexpected side effects and complications, recovery and relapse. Continue reading
You can’t change what you can’t measure.
So suggests Dr. David Goldbloom, Chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, on the release of the Commission’s new report.
Reports from government and government agencies aren’t exactly uncommon in health care. Too often, they are heavy in rhetoric and light in impact. Last Thursday, the Commission released: Informing the Future: Mental Health Indicators for Canada. This report is different; it’s worth careful consideration. The Commission’s work offers the first national-level set of indicators to identify and report on Canadians’ mental health. This report considers 13 indicators; in April, a fuller report will contain 63 indicators.
On the Reading of the Week
Just a quick reminder: this week’s Reading is the second in a two-part, two-paper series. The selection was made with the editorial board of the International Psychiatry Twitter Journal Club, allowing us to consider these papers here, and to continue the conversation on Twitter.
And that conversation is going on today. Continue reading
Kids are different today, I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day
– Mother’s Little Helper, The Rolling Stones
On the Reading of the Week
This Reading will be part of a two-paper, two-part series. The selection was made with the editorial board of the International Psychiatry Twitter Journal Club, allowing us to consider these papers now, and to continue the conversation on Twitter and include experts from Canada and around the world. Continue reading
As one year draws to a close and the next begins, it’s an annual Reading of the Week tradition to weigh in on the best of the past 12 months.
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