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That is a terrifying story, @Peter Trewhitt. Poor woman. If what they did was legal, then it really shouldn't have been. I don't understand why suspected criminals have the right to representation, whereas people who've clearly done nothing wrong have no right to an advocate when decisions like...

Although this study is hard to interpret because people prescribed anticholinergic drugs over a long period of time are not a random selection of the population. These drugs are prescribed for a much wider set of complaints than SSRIs. And it could be some of those complaints might make this...

Yes, I took it as a very general piece of "nothing to see here" rhetoric, in which he is minimising real ethical issues surrounding the deprivation of people's rights. Given what I know about the UK government's general powers to incarcerate, treat and restrain people "for their own good", I...

I hope I didn't offend you, @Peter J Gordon. I was genuinely trying to get my head around the issues. In my quest, I also read a good selection of the patient testimonies to the Scottish parliament on that page, and was very interested and concerned about the issues. The testimonies discussing...

I don't think kd is Sharpe. This person is way too interested in Phil Parker's Lightning process to be Sharpe. Also Sharpe doesn't strike me as a cat lover!

Just came across this worrying article by Simon Wessely where he uses his familiar rhetorical style to minimise issues surrounding the UK government's rather wide powers to intervene in the lives of those considered to have diminished responsibility (which includes PwMEs under some...

I just read Peter Gordon's letter to the Scottish Parliament here, and it gives some background to Gordon's concerns. They are largely about the overprescription of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs in psychiatry and general medicine. He seems to be an advocate for more use of talking...

I suspect this is about making sure psychiatrists get a decent slice of the talking treatments pie. I'm guessing he's worried that prescriptions for certain specific types of therapy only (e.g., short-term CBT), will disadvantage some psychiatrists who offer more out-there stuff, like...

We've downloaded our favourite "rain" playlist (a neat feature of Spotify), so we're able to play it without using our internet connection.

I've recently joined Spotify, and now my other half and I play soft rain all night. The main plus is that it absorbs noise, but in a more pleasant way than white noise. So I wake less in the night. My sleep is bad, and I need drugs to get enough, but I can get away with less drugs if I don't...

Flare is good. To me, it evokes lupus and MS and in those diseases, a flare requires serious interventions to prevent organ damage, often massive intravenous doses of corticosteriods. There is nothing mild about the word "flare". I also think @arewenearlythereyet has a good point that too much...

Good sleep is definitely a good thing for anyone with a chronic illness. Who doesn't feel worse when sleep deprived? I have no problem with that. But the idea that thinking the right thoughts will be all it takes to improve your sleep, now that's super questionable.

Yes, the usual stuff. I notice that they did a nice little dance around the issue of CBT and GET, claiming that response rates are only 30% (which is a huge overstatement, even if you only go by self report measures!), and that some people get worse. I'm a little confused. This document is...

I'm a psychologist. Some things that have been said here and at PR about my profession and discipline are overgeneral and simply not true. I haven't left, but I can't say what I would have done if I weren't a patient myself but was just offering my help, like @Lucibee. In Psychology, there are...

I've been working on a textbook, and have had a very positive experience with my editor. She's often able to spot ambiguities and opaque sentences that I never noticed. And she sometimes spots big things like non sequiturs and references to examples long since removed from the text. The only...

I think even despite the obvious cop out at the end, the piece makes some useful arguments. I think the "central sensitization" idea is potentially more dangerous that the traditional psychobabble because it sounds scientific while at the same time being entirely unfalsifiable. You also need to...

I'm sure Prof Crawley really believes you're a villain, @dave30th. You must be - for her, the alternative is just, well, unthinkable. Its fascinating the lengths these people have to go to to preserve their beliefs, eh? They cannot allow for the possibility that critics may have a point...

The article is short and quite good. full text here. The above quote takes quite a while to unpack. But what I think they're saying is that CS is the name for an observable phenomenon (to do with a heightened responsiveness to pain stimuli in areas surrounding an area where a painful stimulus...

fixed, I'm sorry to say.... but maybe I should have left it up for a laugh...

The Goop effect. n. The phenomenon whereby self-confidence obtained from attainment, adulation or accolades in one field overgeneralises to another, entirely unrelated field. deriv. Actress Gwynneth Paltrow's company Goop, specifically the line of "wellness" products it markets.