I am currently on my psychiatry rotation. Psychiatry is one of those peculiar specialties that tends to polarise medical students. Some dismiss it as merely asking, “And how does that make you feel?”, while others are like my housemate, whose eyes light up at the mention of psychosis and neurosis. Myself, I am approaching the […]
Tag: psychiatry
Harriet Vickers: Psychiatry to save the world: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia
Lars von Trier has made no secret of the fact he’s suffered from depression. At the beginning of 1997 he was hospitalised with the condition, saying it left him incapacitated for six months. Whilst the film he wrote during this period, Antichrist, was an explicit nightmare borne from the experience (genital self-mutilation, graphic torture, talking […]
Research highlights – 22 July 2011
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research papers and accompanying articles. […]
Jonny Martell: The Wrong Answer
It had been an awkward pause. Professor Nick Craddock was addressing a lecture hall of students at the recent National Conference of Student Psychiatry Societies in Sheffield. Faced with numerous scenarios relating to mental health, we were to vote on whether a medical, psychological, or social approach best suited the predicament. For the scenario in […]
Stephen Ginn on self help: friend or foe?
There was a page advert in the Metro this week for a three days seminar with TV hypnotist Paul McKenna and pals which promised to “Change your life in three days.” […]
William Lee and the “I’m lucky to be alive” patient
In early November 2008 a woman in her 30s who lives alone in London decided that she wanted to die. She was depressed. She felt that she only suffered and caused suffering to others, and that she did not deserve to live. Yet from the outside her life seemed fulfilling and successful. A graduate building […]
Birte Twisselmann: It’s good to talk
Cracking up, to be broadcast this coming Sunday on BBC2, will be the second television programme to be broadcast in the context of the BBC’s Headroom campaign for mental health and wellbeing (bbc.co.uk/headroom). I had a preview at a screening organised by the Royal Society of Medicine. The documentary provided a moving insight into journalist […]
Bruno Rushforth: The jailer
Who’d be a psychiatrist? The emotional burden of caring for patients presenting in real distress; trying to negotiate a way forward when dealing with someone with a skewed sense of reality; potentially life and death risk assessments on a daily basis; general lampooning from medical colleagues… No wonder psychiatry’s not such a popular choice among […]