Dr. John Grohol's weekly update of news and articles on psychology. Since 1999.
Help Prevent Suicide
by Laura Giesman, NP31 Jul 2010 at 7:32 am
“If I was going to kill myself, I wouldn’t tell you or anyone else.”
As a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner who specializes in crisis intervention and Emergency Room Psychiatry, I hear that a lot. Over 30,000 Americans will take their own lives this year. More people die by suicide each year than homicide, yet suicides rarely make the nightly news. Sometimes it’s hard to know
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Recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
by Therese J. Borchard30 Jul 2010 at 12:32 pm
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Jody Smith, creator of the website www.ncubator.ca, who spent 15 years losing the battle against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Three years ago, she found treatment that worked for her and is making a comeback. In the process, she’s helping a lot of people. (You can check out her blog, “ncubator” by clicking here.)
You tried many treatments an
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Best of Our Blogs: July 30, 2010
by Brandi-Ann Uyemura30 Jul 2010 at 6:29 am
Boy where did July go? It’s hard to believe there’s just one more month left in summer. Being that we’re more than half way through 2010, it’s a great time to reflect. Have you thought about your New Year’s resolutions and life goals lately? I have. In fact, it’s all I have been thinking about recently. I’ve been wrestling with the battle between accepting
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Bad Science: MyType iPad Research
by John M Grohol PsyD29 Jul 2010 at 10:22 am
I hate to give press to a “research firm” that doesn’t know the first thing about reporting statistics or basic methodology in their own “research” report. I guess that’s what happens when you get a bunch of people together who are mostly technologists, not statisticians or social scientists.
This past week, MyType, a Facebook personality application that takes
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Shirley Sherrod and the Decline of Decency
by Ronald Pies, M.D.28 Jul 2010 at 1:12 pm
The airwaves, newspapers and blogosphere were abuzz this week with the fiasco involving Shirley Sherrod, the USDA worker forced to resign over a fabricated racial controversy. The original slur was initiated by a blogger who posted a misleading video clip of a speech by Ms. Sherrod. Ultimately, Sherrod was cleared of any racist leanings, and we must now hope for some genuine soul-searching among a
Withdrawing from Psychiatric Medications
by John M Grohol PsyD28 Jul 2010 at 6:30 am
You’ve been diagnosed with a mental disorder and have been in treatment now for years. You’ve done both psychotherapy and psychiatric medications, and now it’s time to try to live life drug-free. You’ve successfully ended your psychotherapy treatment, but now you’re looking for advice and information about how to end your psychiatric medications.
My first suggesti
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The End of Privacy, The End of Forgetting?
by John M Grohol PsyD27 Jul 2010 at 3:35 pm
I keep hearing and reading how the Internet has changed everything. First we learned how it was the end of privacy and no less a man than the head of Facebook (who might have some self-interest involved) noted that the age of privacy was over earlier this year. Of course that’s in Facebook’s best interests to make you believe privacy is “over.” Zuckerberg claimed, without
Best of Our Blogs: July 27, 2010
by Brandi-Ann Uyemura27 Jul 2010 at 7:36 am
This weekend I got in touch with a different side of my personality: the nature loving one. It’s the part of me that often gets buried underneath daily worries, fears and your garden variety neuroticism. While tending to issues are important, so is taking a break from them. Based on the outpouring of responses I got concerning outdoor activities on Facebook, it seems like I might not be the
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20 Years of the Americans with Disabilities Act
by John M Grohol PsyD26 Jul 2010 at 9:35 pm
Twenty years ago, George H.W. Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a broad civil rights law that forbids discrimination based on any kind of disability — physical or mental. It gives similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some see it as a broad government boondoggle, but it’s the law that mak
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Lying on the Couch
by Daniel Tomasulo, Ph.D.26 Jul 2010 at 12:35 pm
What happens when a psychologist writes a memoir?
To tell the truth I have to lie.
To write a memoir these days you had better be telling the truth. When I met with the publisher about Confessions of a Former Child: A Therapist’s Memoir, she specifically asked me if what I wrote was true. I hesitated, and a worried look crossed her face. Finally, I insisted it was all true, except for the par
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Insanity: Albert Einstein was Wrong
by Will Meek, PhD26 Jul 2010 at 12:11 pm
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
I have heard that quote in my clinical practice so many times in the past year that I decided I have to write about it. Somehow this definition has become part of the collective understanding of abnormal psychology and has been terribly misapplied. I don’t know much more about the context of the quote but I
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Overdiagnosis, Mental Disorders and the DSM-5
by John M Grohol PsyD26 Jul 2010 at 6:02 am
Is the DSM-5 — the book professionals and researchers use to diagnose mental disorders — leading us to a society that embraces “over-diagnosis”? Or was this trend of creating “fad” diagnoses started long before the DSM-5 revision process — perhaps even starting with the DSM-IV before it?
Allen Frances, who oversaw the DSM-IV revision process and has be
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Did Abraham Lincoln Use Faith to Overcome Depression?
by Therese J. Borchard25 Jul 2010 at 6:32 am
Abraham Lincoln is a powerful mental health hero for me. Whenever I doubt that I can do anything meaningful in this life with a defective brain (and entire nervous system, actually, as well as the hormonal one), I simply pull out Joshua Wolf Shenk’s classic, “Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness.” Or I read the CliffsNotes
Daniel Carlat Interview on NPR’s Fresh Air
by John M Grohol PsyD24 Jul 2010 at 1:11 pm
Perhaps you missed it, but psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat released his first mainstream book in May criticizing the profession of psychiatry entitled, Unhinged. I’ve read it, enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a good understanding of how mainstream psychiatry is practiced throughout the U.S. today. Psychiatrists spend most of their time listening briefly to their p
Genetic Testing for Mental Disorders: Avoid 23andme, Navigenics, Others for Now
by John M Grohol PsyD24 Jul 2010 at 9:35 am
Genetic testing allows individuals to submit a genetic sample to a company, which then analyzes the genes for known anomalies or other problems. The idea is that by having that information, you may be able to be more aware of potential health problems down the road. Or even stave them off before they become a problem by changing your behaviors, diet, and exercise regimen. Companies like 23andme an