Has psychiatry turned normal sadness into depression?

This article is a lengthy review of a book published earlier this year arguing that psychiatry has turned "normal sadness" into depression. The review is balanced and well argued, and gives an interesting if somewhat jaundiced overview of the process whereby DSM diagnostic criteria are created.

A qualitative study about stigma worth reading

This study about stigma a few years ago from the British Journal of Psychiatry is worth reading. It goods a give overview of many of the issues involved. It also gives you some sense of how qualitative research is carried out.

The Environment, Climate Change, and Mental Health

A few months ago this article in the magazine WIRED attracted some attention. It deals with the topic of "solastalgia", a word coined by the Australian environmental philosopher to describe the distress experienced by those whose environment is changing around them.

Albrecht had worked for many years as an environmental activist and advocate in the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Open cut coal mining and the construction of new power stations had transformed this formerly agricultural landscape. Local residents who were concerned about specific environmental issues contacted Albrecht to discuss these. In the course of these interactions he began to notice that a wider distress at the extent of local environmental change was evident. Influenced by various environmental thinkers, who argued man-made environmental stress lead to “land-sickness” (which, unlike other "natural" environmental stresses, did not lead to an environmental recovery) and caused psychic stress among the population of the particular environment, he developed the concept of solastalgia.

Albrecht described how "nostalgia" was traditionally defined as sadness at absence from a particular place, and wrote in his original paper on solastaliga “People who are still in their home environs can also experience place-based distress in the face of the lived experience of profound environmental change. The people of concern are still ‘at home’, but experience a ‘homesickness’ similar to that caused by nostalgia. What these people lack is solace or comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’, and so, a new form of psychoterratic illness needs to be defined. The word ‘solace’ relates to both psychological and physical contexts.”

Clive Thompson, who wrote the WIRED article, described "solastalgia" as "a fascinating new concept in mental health." Do you think that "solastalgia" can be described as a "mental illness?"

The Economics of Mental Health

Health economics is a topic of increasing interest to practising doctors, as the realisation grows that our practice is affected both positively and negatively by economic conditions. As recent economic changes will no doubt affect this even more, we are increasingly obliged to have at least some knowledge of the economic effects of the conditions we treat, and the relationship between economic change and these conditions. The website of the (London) Institute of Psychiatry's Centre For The Economics of Mental Health is a good place to look around and get some idea of how interventions and treatments are evaluated from an economic point of view.

An interesting way of fighting stigma

This is an interesting way of fighting stigma.

Is faith delusion?

Hello everyone,

Welcome back and I hope your summers went well. I am hoping that this blog will be more active both from the posting and commenting end. I'd like to reiterate that anyone who is interested in posting on it should simply email me at seamus.macsuibhne@ucd.ie . If you have a gmail account, signing up takes seconds (if you don't, it only takes a few more seconds)

As the exam approaches, I will be posting more on this myself to get you all thinking. One event that is coming up which may be of interest (if you weren't cramming yourselves full of paediatric, obstetric and gynaecological knowledge I guess) is a talk by Professor Andrew Sims to the Psychiatry Section of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland on September 25th at 7 pm. Prof Sims is the retired Professor of Psychiatry at Leeds University and is the author of "Symptoms in the Mind" which is the key text in phenomenology (and comes very highly recommended). The talk will take place in the Royal College of Physicians on Kildare Street. A paper he has previously presented on the topic can be readhere

Obviously the topic "Is Faith Delusion?" is influenced by the title at least of Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion." As you all know, by definition a delusion can't be a cultural or subcultural belief, so by the basic definition of dleusion a religious belief can't be a delusion. However this rather circular argument begs the question, why shouldn't we class religious beliefs as delusional? They are after all held in the absence of evidence, can be unshakeable, and as there is a diversity of religious beliefs some at least must be false. Andrew Sims' paper perhaps is a good argument why we don't.