Psychiatric anosognosia

This post was inspired by an article in the May 30th issue of The New Yorker, “God Knows Where I Am” by Rachel Aviv. Full-text online is only available by subscription, but a free abstract is available here. In the process of telling a riveting and ultimately very sad story, the author discusses psychiatric insight.

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Embracing psychiatric uncertainty

I always get troubled looks from psychiatry residents when I point out that our field is the domain of the uncertain and the not-well-understood — and that it will always remain so. As soon as the cause of a disease is known, it automatically leaves psychiatry for another specialty. General paresis (advanced syphilis), once identified […]

Diagnostic alphabet soup

Earlier this year a reader asked me:

“I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on patients becoming too focused on diagnoses. […] While I was in an RTC as a teenager, and recently in the hospital as an adult, I have found that people almost treat their diagnoses as a competition. I was […]

Schizophrenia among us

I met a young man recently in a setting having nothing to do with psychiatry or mental health. He politely introduced himself and tried to learn the names of the others around him. He seemed socially awkward but inoffensive, and after I left I didn’t give the encounter much thought. However, I learned that soon […]