Too Important Depression may be the second or third most prominent cause of medical disability in the world. Yet overall treatment effectiveness is modestly better than placebo. Why? The reasons range from guild restrictions to blinkered thinking. Almost everything considered in depression treatment lies in two categories – drugs or talk therapies. But: 1. Since at […]
The Coming Boom in Mental Health
What Kind of Future? What are the future needs of mental health in this country? Many mental health workers worry daily about their jobs. Will they be replaced by smart cognitive behavioral programs delivered over the net? Will insurance companies pay for what’s coming? Below are a series of factors that will potentially produce a booming […]
Which Form of Magic: Pill or Lifestyle?
The Magic Is the part equal or greater than the whole? People often hope so. Not long ago a patient requested I give her a pill that “makes me feel good, causes weight loss, and doesn’t have any side effects.” No, she wasn’t kidding. Many others hope for the same. And they spend lots of […]
Checklist Medicine Checks You Out
Why Your Doctor Doesn’t Look at You Anymore Should you treat the chart, or the patient? Increasingly over the past decades healthworkers of all stripes – doctors and nurses, therapists and technicians – buff the chart first. Legal, insurance and regulatory requirements have burgeoned to overcome the concerns of health. Checklists work very well in military and […]
It Seemed a Good Idea at the Time…
Researching the Obvious Often we do things because – that’s the way we’ve always done it. Yet when tested impartially, especially in medicine and public health, these “rules of thumb” frequently prove unsupported – or positively harmful. The standard joke about medical school education – “half of what we’re teaching is true, the other half false – […]