Square eyes and pressure sores. Emotional exhaustion. Sensory overload. These Olympics are overwhelming. I need a rest. But, expecting symptoms of withdrawal in a few days. Thank goodness we haven’t had much input from doctors. Steve Peters, a psychiatrist who has been involved with international cycling for many years, did appear to tell us about […]
Category: Editors at large
David Payne: MPs and their mental health
In a Guardian newspaper article this week Juliette Jowitt caught up with four MPs—including the former GP Sarah Wollaston, who stood up in the House of Commons last month to talk about their mental illnesses. Wollaston had described her experience of postnatal depression and panic attacks previously, but Conservative MP Charles Walker had only confided […]
David Payne: Review of “The Doctor’s Dilemma”
Medicine’s big guns beat a path to Dr Colenso Ridgeon’s consulting room after news of his knighthood is announced. Downstairs, the wife of a consumptive painter pleads with his housekeeper for an appointment in the hope that Ridgeon will cure him of his tuberculosis. In Shaw’s play, now showing at the National Theatre in London, […]
Domhnall MacAuley: “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.”
“See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.” I didn’t recognise the words but the sentiments were familiar. Words of inspiration from a song that helped shape the paintings, drawings, and sculptures of Claire Halliday, a relatively unknown Irish artist. Stumbling upon her work in a far corner of a group exhibition on the ground […]
Domhnall MacAuley: The final answer to the breast screening dilemma at WONCA Europe.
Communicating risk is about numbers. If you think of any serious disease, the potential to reduce risk by 50% sounds fantastic. If the incidence is 2/10 and you reduce the risk by 50% you save one life in 10. If the incidence is 2/100 you save one life in 100. If the incidence is 2/1000 […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Storm clouds and research
On an island off the west coast of Ireland, I picked up a discarded newspaper while sheltering in a bar. Browsing through, I came across an article about physical activity and depression. Based on a BMJ paper—a randomised controlled trial on promoting activity in depressed patients—it discussed the findings at length. A few days off […]
Birte Twisselmann: Last words
For me, one of the best things about working at the BMJ is the fact that my job has kept evolving over the years. In September 2011 I took over the editing of our short obituaries section, and after an initial mega-panic at having to re-familiarise myself with style, process, weekly throughput, phone calls, emails, […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Research of doubtful relevance
What happened? Remember your first days at medical school —wide eyed optimism and how you were going to change the world, save lives, cure disease, help the sick, make a difference to people lives. Looking at a lifetime dedicated to medical research —how much have you achieved when measured against the ambitions of youth. As […]
Tessa Richards: Schools and health—could do better
To what extent are we sabotaging the future health and wellbeing of our children through ignorance, neglect, and misguided policy? And what can we do to redress this? Discuss. Discuss? The education and public health experts participating in an international cross-sector meeting convened by the Salzburg Global Seminar in Klingenthal, near Strasbourg last week, scarcely […]
Matthew Billingsley: How would you use social media during a public health crisis?
At the height of the 2009 pandemic, there were 10 000 swine flu related tweets an hour. These ranged from the helpful (“Swine-flu symptoms: checklist to see if you may be infected), to the more ephemeral (“This swine flu stuff is kinda creeping me out.”) During a public health crisis, how can we accurately evaluate […]