Tag: health

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Mental illness creates disability around the globe

Mental illness is the largest contributor to worldwide disability, according to a report card on the health across the globe. The seven papers comprising storyimages_braininheadbwlthe report and two commentaries will be published in a collection entitled “The Global Burden of Disease” (GBD) in The Lancet. As reported in Bioscience Technology:

“GBD 2010 is a collaborative project led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington (UW) in the US and involves 302 institutions across 50 countries. This is the first report since the inaugural study was published in the early 1990s. Continue reading “Mental illness creates disability around the globe”

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Autism is not linked to violence

“Among the details to emerge in the aftermath of the Connecticut elementary school massacre was the possibility that the gunman had some form of autism,” reports todays Los Angeles Times

“Adam Lanza, 20, had a personality disorder or autism, his brother reportedly told police. Former classmates described him as socially awkward, friendless and painfully shy.

“While those are all traits of autism, a propensity for premeditated violence is not. Several experts said that at most, autism would have played a tangential role in the mass shooting — if Lanza had it at all. ’Many significant psychiatric disorders involve social isolation,’ said Catherine Lord, director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Autism, she said, has become a catch-all term to describe anybody who is awkward. Some type of schizophrenia, delusional disorder or psychotic break would more clearly fit the crime, experts said. Continue reading “Autism is not linked to violence”

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Far from the tree

For anyone who hasn’t heard about Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree, this book is much more than a tome (900+ pages) about parents and special-needs kids. Solomon has written a tour-de-force discussion on difference and identity worthy of anyone’s attentions, especially those of us who do not conform to the tyranny of normativity. Julie Myerson wrote a wonderful piece on the book in a recent New York Times Book Review. While the later chapters in Far From the Tree each could be their own separate books about specific conditions of being, the first 200 pages are pure gold. As Myerson begins her review,

“How does it feel to be the mother of a teenage dwarf who’s desperate to start dating? What if you love the daughter you conceived when you were raped but can’t bear to be touched by her? And, as the father of a happy, yet profoundly deaf son who’s forgotten how it feels to hear, how do you deal with your memories of the times you played music together? Continue reading “Far from the tree”

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Sense of taste fades with age

“As we get older, there may come a time when we find ourselves drawn not to food with good taste or food that tastes good but simply to food that has any flavor at all.” This depressing statement came from today’s New york Times.”

“Blame your aging taste buds, if you want. You’ll probably be wrong, but there are a lot more of them (about 9,000) to point the finger at than the likely real culprit, your nose. “When people talk about their taste, they’re really talking about the smell rather than the taste,” said Dr. Scott P. Stringer, chairman of the otolaryngology department at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“As it happens, taste buds do diminish as people get older, usually starting at 40 to 50 in women and 50 to 60 in men (why later for them is unknown). And those that remain do not, so to speak, step up to the plate to make Continue reading “Sense of taste fades with age”

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Diagnostic quandaries and PTSD

In what follows, Elspeth Cameron Ritchie discusses PTSD with a degree of nuance not always seen in mainstream journalism. Ritchie notes her ambivalence over the frequency with which the diagnosis is assigned to milirary personnel, inasmuch as other disorders can go untreated as a consequence. As she writes, “This is the last in my series of posts on the ethics of treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (the first simply outlined ethical issues for military mental-health personnel; then I wrote about the right time to send a service member back into combat; Continue reading “Diagnostic quandaries and PTSD”

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Virtual worlds improve health, fight prejudice

Virtual worlds increasingly are recognized to have a direct effect on what people think and do when they turn off the computer. Journeying into virtual environments, players try on different identities, experience alternate realities, and find themselves in novel social contexts. These experiences allow people to exceed their “real life” settings, seeing both themselves and others in a new light. A new study refutes common-sense assumptions that a firewall separates virtual life and experience in the material world.

“Internet-based interactive games and social media outlets have become intertwined with the physical realities of millions of people around the world.” As reported in an article in LaboratoryEquipment.com, “When an individual strongly identifies with the cyber representation of themselves, known as an avatar, the electronic doppelganger can influence that person’s health and appearance, according to a Univ. of Missouri Continue reading “Virtual worlds improve health, fight prejudice”

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Iran sanctions deny medicine to 6-million

Economic sanctions like those now in place for Iran are intended to put pressure on a national government by making things tough for businesses. The sanctions now in place by the U.S. and European Union restrict sales to Iran of just about everything, except medical items and food, which are permitted though a case-by-case basis permitting process. Unfortunately, the permitting process is so slow that as many as 6-million Iranians now are not receiving needed medicines. Many of those affected are cancer patients. As reported in Al Jazeera, The New York Times, and elsewhere, efforts are now underway to correct what has recently been recognized as a public health crisis in Iran, largely resulting from U.S. actions. The news of Iranian suffering is further escalating anti-American sentiment.

In “Iran Sanctions Take Unexpected Toll on Medical Imports,” Thomas Erdbrink writes, “Sitting on one of the Continue reading “Iran sanctions deny medicine to 6-million”