In an age of laboratory medicine, psychiatry’s reliance on interviews, confession, and often funky diagnoses remain the disciplines great bugbear. The move over the last two or three decades to ‘biological psychiatry,’ which got hijacked by the drug industry, has hovered between disappointment and disaster. Neurocritic looks at the dilemma from a neuroscientist’s point of view:…
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Uncategorized
Is PTSD A Product of War, or Of Our Times?
by David Dobbs •
How long has PTSD been around? Is the response to trauma outlined in our current PTSD diagnosis something that has long happened to a subset of people facing trauma? Or did our current concept of PTSD rise from cultural and medical concerns and definitions peculiar to a particular time in history? This question is debated fiercely.…
Uncategorized
Docs Pushing More Hard Drugs on Kids
by David Dobbs •
At Time, Maia Szalavitz tells of some really, really bad medicine: The new study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that in 2005-09 nearly two thirds of all antipsychotic prescriptions for youth were written for ADHD and other disruptive behavior disorders; these conditions accounted for 34% of all antipsychotic prescriptions for teens. Yet…
Uncategorized
What’s It Like To Be Schizophrenic?
by David Dobbs •
From “I Should Be Included in the Census,” by Amy Johnson. This is the catch-22, the double bind. Schizophrenia happens to 1% of the population. We speak our own language. We speak a language you do not understand. We are defenseless and rendered helpless because we, me, and the world can’t understand each other. The…
Uncategorized
“Medicine is Broken”: Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma
by David Dobbs •
From the muckraker troublemaker Dr. Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame: Medicine is broken. We like to imagine that it’s based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in…
Uncategorized
Mikhail Baryshnikov & The Art of Action Amid Quiet
by David Dobbs •
Alec Wilkinson went to see Misha in a play last night: There were two startling moments, both involving Baryshnikov. One came at the end of the play, when his character, who has died on the Metro while reading a newspaper, returns to life. From the putting on of his military overcoat, he derives a dance,…
Uncategorized
On the Lack of Science Books by Women
by David Dobbs •
Writer Jo Marchant, author of Decoding the Heavens, ponders the lack of prominent science books by women. I was wondering on the same when earlier today I refreshed my memory of great science books I’d read. This isn’t for a lack of women writing about science. When I took a course in science communication at Imperial…
Uncategorized
Oracles, Big Answers, & Pop Sci’s Neglect of Mystery
by David Dobbs •
Ta-Nahesi Coates, pondering the downfall of Jonah Lehrer, writes: [W]e now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions. We have no patience for mystery. We want the deciphering of gods. We…
Uncategorized
Happy Birthday, Jerry Garcia
by David Dobbs •
For Steve Silberman and Richard Ober. Garcia would have been 70 today, had he withstood the ravages he himself and the times inflicted on him. I’ve never been a huge Dead fan, but the sweetest of their music, such as this version of Peggy-O, is sweet indeed. As the person who posted it at YouTube said, “This…