More articles and such from around the net:
- PTSD Nation — Truthout — Can a nation have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)? Can a diagnosis created to understand the dysregulated behavior of individuals be applied to an entire nation? I argue yes on both counts. If a diagnosis can help us understand and treat aberrant behavior, then it doesn’t matter if the aberrantly behaving thing is an individual or a nation of 350 million people. The nation’s functioning manifests the collective activity of its individual members, just as the human organism is a collective of the trillions of cells that make it up. The notion that a nation can have PTSD proposes we analyze current events from a psychological perspective, rather than a historical or political orientation. A nation can have PTSD if it meets criteria for the diagnosis. The DSM-IV, the bible of psychotherapy and psychiatry, lists six symptoms for PTSD. America has them all.
- Normalcy, Neurosis and Psychosis (Part 2) : What is Psychosis and is it Predictable? — Psychology Today — Evil Deeds — One of the primary problems with the newly proposed DSM-V disorder of “Psychosis Risk Syndrome” is, for me, not the diagnostic criteria itself, but rather the still extremely poor understanding in psychiatry and psychology of the fundamental nature and meaning of psychosis. What is psychosis? What causes it? And who is really at risk for developing it? — It is important to note that psychosis is a very broad category of severe mental disorder with a relatively vague definition. But most mental health professionals today would agree that, phenomenologically speaking, psychosis consists of the presence of hallucinations and/or delusions, marked impairment that grossly interferes with social, occupational, academic or basic day-to-day functioning, and extremely poor “reality testing” or a so-called “break with reality.” Interestingly, psychosis has also long been associated with “a loss of ego boundaries,” which, for some misguided New Age spiritual seekers, is their perceived transcendent goal: the dissolution of the ego.(See my prior post.) Indeed, there are certain transpersonally-oriented psychotherapists who insist that many examples of what would traditionally be diagnosed as psychosis are, in fact, not psychosis, but episodes of so-called “spiritual emergence.”
- Econundrum: 12 Most Pesticide-Laden Fruits and Veggies — Mother Jones
- If Calling Mom Makes You Hear Voices, Then AstraZeneca Has a Pill for You — BNET — The ad shows a chart with two variables, “Calling mom?” and “Dosing.” The line between them indicates that more you call her, the more Seroquel you’ll need to deal with the mental fallout. Alternatively — and I’m guessing this was AZ’s intent — the chart shows that the more Seroquel you take, the more you’ll be psychologically stable enough to call her.
Everything Matters 