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.

Lectures for Autumn Term

It's a while away, but for what it's worth these are the Autumn Lectures

September 18th

2 pm - a lecture by Professor Kevin Malone and Seamus McGuinness on Suicide.

3 pm - a presentation by Dr Marie Naughton on confidentiality (please note this topic may be examined in the final examination) followed by a lecture by Dr Seamus Mac Suibhne on stigma

October 10th

2 pm a lecture by Dr Liam Delaney, UCD Geary Institute, on Mental Health, Economic Wellbeing, and the Celtic Tiger

3 pm a lecture by Joe Little, Social and Religious Affairs Correspondent, RTE, on Psychiatry and the Media

The role of work in psychological health and well being

There's an interesting post on the blog of the UCD Geary Institute on the role of work in psychological health and well being. The post links to various other articles.

Sigmund Freud once wrote somewhere or other that the role of therapy was to enable the patient to, once again, "love and work." (he wrote elsewhere that psychoanalysis replaces the presenting symptom with more ordinary neurosis)

Dr Caragh Behan's lecture

Hello,

I hope those who attended enjoyed Dr Caragh Behan's lecture on health economics. I've just put the actual lecture up on Blackboard. I know this covered ground you've already done in epidemiology. However it is very much within the remit of the course to cover the interaction between psychiatry and economics. There will be a follow up lecture in September by Dr Liam Delaney of the UCD Geary Institute (you can read about the Geary Institute in the blogroll to the right) which will focus more directly on economic change and mental health.

When I was a medical student at the turn of the century (how old that makes me sound...) I remember finding all these lectures on what, for want of a better term, public health type stuff very very boring. Most medical students don't go into medicine to learn about p values and cost effectiveness studies and the rest of it, but to learn how to diagnose and treat illnesses. And most of us switch off whenever we hear some combination of words like "service delivery", "stakeholder" and the like. However as your clinical career progresses (again I'm sounding an ancient fuddy duddy) you realise how important it all is. Even if it always remains less than fascinating, how the health system is structured and funded is directly relevant to your daily lives and what you can do for your patients.

Sermon over.

Lecture May 15th

2 pm, C005 - Dr Caragh Behan - "Pricing the priceless - whose business is
Health anyway?"