MetaFilter posts tagged with psychology and medicine

Aaron Beck & Cognitive Therapy

Non Prosequitur — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:05:20 -0800

“The psychoanalytic mystique was overwhelming. It was a little bit like the evangelical movement.” How Aaron Beck and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped increase empiricism in psychotherapy.

Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss

badego — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:59:17 -0800

“It would be completely unethical to give the drug to someone else,” he said, “but if you’re in a marriage and want to maintain that relationship, you might take a little booster shot yourself every now and then. Even now it’s not such a far-out possibility that you could use drugs in conjunction with marital therapy.”

"Our whole approach is based on the idea that science matters at the FDA"

kliuless — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:50:34 -0800

The Economist on Drugs -- Scientists in North America, Europe and Israel are studying the use of MDMA, LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana and other banned psychoactive substances in treating conditions such as anxiety, cluster headaches, addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder. They are supported by private funds from a handful of organisations: the Beckley Foundation in Britain; the Heffter Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in America. [related]

Mental Illness Might Be Caused By Microbes

amyms — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:05:11 -0800

Are you batshitinsane? Viruses and/or bacteria may be the cause.

Coming of Age on Antidepressants

homunculus — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:15:00 -0800

Who Are We? Coming of Age on Antidepressants. [Via Mind Hacks.] The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise.

The Art of Psychiatry

Gyan — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 11:48:48 -0800

Dictionary of Disorder - shaping the DSM

Trust Cancels Fear

sultan — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 17:33:51 -0800

Trust-Building Hormone Short-Circuits Fear In Humans Oxytocin, a brain chemical recently found to boost trust, also suppresses the activity in the amygdala where fear is generated. This could be a breakthrough for those who suffer from any type of social avoidance disorder.

more mind control

all-seeing eye dog — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:14:20 -0800

"An autopoietic system is one organised to respond to the world. Prod it and it will react homeostatically, striving to reach a new accommodation that preserves its integrity. There is a global cohesion - a memory of what the system wants to be - that reaches down to organise the parts even while those parts may be adding up to produce the functioning whole."

Pain bites.

taz — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 06:13:29 -0800

No pain, no gain, they say, and when it comes to real pain, the inverse is true as well. "We now have research indicating there's a memory of chronic pain," said Dr. Doris K. Cope, director of chronic and cancer pain for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It changes the genic code sometimes, it changes the biochemistry, and it causes new proteins to be formed." Or in other words, the more pain you have, the more pain you have. (More on this.) It's no wonder, then, that more money is spent on pain relief than any other medical problem, and that there has been so much pain research and so many clinical trials revealing such painful facts as redheads feel more pain, men feel less pain, and that there's a genetic difference between tough guys and wimps. (Much more pain inside.)

No Nature

elwoodwiles — Mon, 16 Jun 2003 17:07:51 -0800

What's eating Tony Soprano? The emerging field of ecopsychology thinks it may have an answer.

semmi — Mon, 06 May 2002 22:56:49 -0800

The mind-body divide in medicine, whether having medicine embrace the understanding of the psychological aspects of symptoms of pain, for example, is simply a matter of working toward medicalizing psychology. How much is the brain and psychology taken into account in the medical profession?

Danf — Wed, 20 Feb 2002 11:08:03 -0800

Utah Leads Nation in Rate of Anti-Depressant Use. It is interesting (to me) in that the people doing the study credit a "Mother of Zion" syndrome of married Mormon women putting on the happy face regardless of how happy they truly are. My state is up at the top also. Could be all the rain I guess. . .*sigh*

pracowity — Fri, 25 May 2001 00:38:43 -0800

What if the 'placebo effect' is as unreal as a sugar pill? Danish researchers who have looked at 114 clinical trials involving placebos found "little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects. Although placebos had no significant effects on objective or binary outcomes, they had possible small benefits in studies with continuous subjective outcomes and for the treatment of pain. Outside the setting of clinical trials, there is no justification for the use of placebos." News links here and here.