Tag: schizophrenia
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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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“What’s a soul?”: Richard Selzer finds the spirit in the flesh
Mahala StriplingFort Worth, Texas, United States When he was a child, Dickie Selzer asked his father, “What’s a soul?” Julius replied, “No such thing.” When his inquisitive son pressed him further, he gave this answer: “Oh, a little bag of air, I suppose, like a breeze or a draft or a bit of a gale,…
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Movie review: Kings Row—Assassins in white coats
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Above all, I must not play God.”—Revised Hippocratic Oath2 Kings Row (1942) is a film set in a small American town in the early nineteen-hundreds. It features two doctors who are best avoided as well as a bright young man called Parris sent by his wealthy grandmother to study medicine in Vienna.…
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The mystique of psychiatry: a closer look
Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States As a retired psychiatrist, I have been thinking about the mystique that surrounds our profession. Psychiatrists seem to trigger three provocative associations that set them apart from other physicians. The first, sometimes interpreted as a wish, is that psychiatrists read minds and therefore know what is concealed or hidden inside…
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Psychiatric care at the historical Athens Mental Health Facility
Cherron PayneFarmington, Connecticut, United States When I was an undergraduate student at Ohio University in Athens, my friends and I would often hike to an intriguing place called the Ridges, overlooking the picturesque Hocking River and the Appalachian gem of Ohio University in Southeastern Ohio. The Ridges was not solely a picturesque hillside, but a…
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A note on handedness
JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom Handedness (chirality) refers to the preferential use of one hand over the other. It is a matter of degree; it is seldom absolute. Population left and right preference existed in the Neanderthals (lived from 400,000 to about 40,000 years ago) onwards. Only homo sapiens amongst the great apes shows strong…
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Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Creation in psychosis
Rebecca Grossman-KahnMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States In a sprawling, cavernous art museum in Buenos Aires, I turned a corner and my eye caught on what appeared to be, from across the room, cardboard. As I walked closer to the display, I saw a large brown rectangle plastered with smaller blue rectangles in two rows. Each blue…