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David Bell Blog
Returning psyche to psychiatry
April 17, 2013 by David Bell filed under: medication, psychiatry, psychotherapy, schizophrenia | Comments (1)
As dubious benefits, undesirable effects and high costs dampen the enthusiasm for psychotropic drugs, psychiatrists return to psychotherapy, discovering anew the power of the mind to deal with its own disorders. New ways of thinking can redirect seemingly intractable thought. In the new millennium psychiatrists and psychologists rediscover old methods in new packages. Rather like Read more…
Tags: behavioural activation • cognitive behaviour therapy • genetic susceptibilities • mindfulness training • psychotherapy
Expect and ye shall find
March 30, 2013 by David Bell filed under: how we think, meme, psychiatry | Comments (0)
In 1954 the first antipsychotic drug, chlorpromazine, appeared. It calmed the acutely disturbed psychotic patient remarkably well. In the decade that followed chemists produced variations, which did much the same, but all had side-effects. They induce a dullness of mind and sleepiness that some dislike so much they prefer to remain mentally ill. All dislike Read more…
Tags: akathisia • anticholinergic drugs • dangerousness • expectation • first-generation antipsychotics • meme tyranny • second-generation antipsychotics
Fostering victim mentality
February 28, 2013 by David Bell filed under: psychogenic pain | Comments (0)
The natural concern of doctors for those who suffer has its downside. Emotion governs their reason and shapes diagnosis. Objective criteria rather than manipulable emotion should guide diagnosis. Doctors (and judges for that matter) distinguish exaggerated, imagined and false complaint from the genuine at no better than chance level. We fail equally at recognising deceit Read more…
Tags: compensation claims • diagnosis • malingering • pseudo-illness • resilience • victim mode
Meme Tyranny
February 1, 2013 by David Bell filed under: how we think, meme | Comments (0)
We feel the master of our thoughts. An illusion of self-awareness deceives us. The capacity of the brain, enormous as it is, cannot produce the volume of even the normal daily mental activity. The ideas of our group, drummed into our heads from infancy, not only provide the content (see “The atoms of thought“), but Read more…
Tags: group mind • Jews • meme mastery • meme tyranny • minorities • multicultural society • self-awareness • tolerance
Towards Scientific Psychiatry 2
January 21, 2013 by David Bell filed under: cause and effect, Hume's law | Comments (0)
The failure of Dadds and his group to demonstrate a connection between the callous-unemotional trait of inherited temperament and psychopathy (see “Towards Scientific Psychiatry 1″) poses a disconcerting lesson. To reason a cause and effect connection between the trait of callousness and the amoral behaviour of the psychopath seems inevitable. By dismissing the obvious, Dadds and Read more…
Tags: cause and effect • Hume's law • reason • temperament
Towards scientific psychiatry 1
January 6, 2013 by David Bell filed under: cause and effect, descriptive diagnosis | Comments (0)
To become effective, psychiatry has to give away descriptive diagnosis (see Elephantanopia series). It has to find causes. Far easier said than done. The causes of mental disorder are more elusive than those of physical illness. The March 2012 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry touches on some complexities that make the task so Read more…
Tags: antisocial behaviour • attention • callous-unemotional trait • descriptive diagnosis • eye contact • gender bias • Hume's law • psychopathy • temperament
Refractory Psychiatry
November 25, 2012 by David Bell filed under: medication, psychiatry | Comments (0)
Ten years ago Robert Whitaker lambasted psychiatry in a best seller of the year, “Mad in America”. He reviewed a history of chaining lunatics, lobotomies, sterilisation and the Nazi solution of eugenics. He brought it to its culmination in the current “story fashioned by drug companies” (p.158), which leads psychiatrists to find “the image of their own Read more…
Tags: Big Pharma • polypharmacy • Soteria-type units
The Group Mind 2
November 18, 2012 by David Bell filed under: group mind, how we think | Comments (0)
I put aside for the time being major horrors such as Nazi Germany or English soccer crowds on the rampage to begin with a minor example of errant group mind. In my home town in November 2012 the local newspaper brought to attention that one of its university colleges subjects its new members to humiliating initiation Read more…
Tags: group mind • initiation rites • tradition
The Group Mind 1
November 16, 2012 by David Bell filed under: group mind, how we think | Comments (0)
All animal life achieves centrally organised awareness. Each species specialises in some way to perceive the environment better. Birds excel at vision and dogs at smell. The vulture manages both. Humans turned inwards to achieve self-awareness. Zoltan Torey (link here) explains its linkage to language, that other unique human ability. They require critical timing of child Read more…
Tags: group mind • language • saeculum • self-awareness • values cycle
Elephantanopia 4
November 6, 2012 by David Bell filed under: cause and effect, descriptive diagnosis, psychiatry, schizophrenia | Comments (0)
As we blog on and psychiatry advances, the British Journal of Psychiatry redeems itself. Its second issue for 2012 provides in editorial and original research papers a peek into a future that puts aside descriptive diagnosis for solutions that connect mental states to causes. The first general population study of the most readily evident cause Read more…
Tags: antisocial disorder • cause and effect • childhood maltreatment • descriptive diagnosis • externalising disorder • gender • genetics • internalising disorder • monoamine oxidase A • neurosis • schizophrenia
© David Bell 2012
