Category: Psychiatry Psychology
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Identity beyond memory: Rethinking early onset Alzheimer’s disease
Firas Ghanem Beirut, LebanonNancy ChedidCambridge, Massachusetts, United States “On my good days, I can almost pass for a normal person, and on my bad days, I feel like I can’t find myself. I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of…
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Mental illness, conscience, and time in the fiction of Peter Swanson
Stephen McWilliams Dublin, Ireland In Peter Swanson’s fifth novel, Before She Knew Him, Hen and Lloyd move in next door to Mira and Matthew in West Dartford, Massachusetts. Hen soon suspects her new neighbor of murder, but has trouble convincing people because her own history of mental illness makes her an unreliable witness in the eyes…
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Psychiatry and homosexuality in E.M. Forster’s Maurice
Jennifer ParkerBristol, England Introduction “The man in my book is, roughly speaking, good, but Society nearly destroys him,” E.M. Forster wrote in 1915 when describing the eponymous character in his novel Maurice.1,2 Anti-homosexual sentiment saturated British society in the twentieth century, overseen by intertwined medical and legal institutions that both constructed and constricted homosexuality on…
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Eric Ambler’s psychopath
Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland Years before Ian Fleming, John le Carré, and Alistair MacLean were popular, there was another spy novelist they all admired. His name was Eric Ambler and, in the late 1930s, just as Europe’s core temperature was heating up for war, Hodder and Stoughton published half a dozen of his earliest thrillers. His…
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Book review: Frames of Minds: A History of Neuropsychiatry on Screen
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England In this fascinating book, author Eelco Wijdicks traces the history of psychiatry and neuropsychiatry in cinema. From the beginnings of commercial film in Paris in 1895, directors and screenwriters have told medical stories, both as entertainment and as a medium for understanding various aspects of the human condition. Frames of Minds…
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Boredom in hospitalized patients
Aditi MahajanSana RahmanWashington D.C., United States On my medical school psychiatry rotation, we were asked to see a patient who had many medical problems. After rounding on him for a week, we realized that he was suffering from sheer boredom. He was in a foreign country where nobody spoke his native language, had limited familial…
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Epidemic autism?
JMS PearceHull, England All the features that characterize Asperger’s syndrome can be found in varying degrees in the normal population.—JK Wing, Asperger’s syndrome: a clinical account” Impairment in social interaction, communication, and repetitive and stereotyped behavior characterize autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The prevalence of Kanner’s autism and Asperger’s syndrome—now grouped as ASD—has apparently increased alarmingly…
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The tenuous gut-brain axis and its role in schizophrenia
When the son of the American surgeon Bayard Holmes developed schizophrenia, Holmes devoted his life to researching the disease. In 1916, impressed by the new germ theory that stated many diseases were caused by an overgrowth of bacteria, he tried to cure his son by opening his abdomen and going through the appendix to wash…
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St. John’s wort: Repelling witches and treating depression
Even the most devout Christian might be excused for not taking off time from his work or pleasures to celebrate on June 25 the birthday (not the gruesome beheading) of St. John the Baptist. This is also the day of the summer solstice (the longest day of the year) when the beautiful yellow St John’s…
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Promoting early 20th century American eugenics under the guise of science
Joseph LockhartSaty Satya-MurtiCalifornia, United States Few adherents of pseudoscientific beliefs have wreaked as much societal and human damage as did the eugenicists during the first half of the 20th century. In America, these beliefs led to large-scale sterilization, immigration controls with flimsy rationales,1 and support of racist education and funding.2 Worldwide, they set the stage…