Health and Psychology

According to the Academy of Medical Psychology (AMP), there are two educational paths to becoming a medical psychologist. One is to complete medical school and earn a license to practice medicine in the United States. The other is to complete an American Psychological Association-accredited Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Psychology or Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) program, followed by a post-doctoral master's degree or certificate program in clinical psychopharmacology (www.amphome.org).

Some of you know I used to work with and train cats.  This infomation is put out by the International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management http:https://ivapm.org/for-the-public/animals-and-pain-articles/how-we-assess-your-felines-pain-level/" target="_blank">//ivapm.org/for-the-public/animals-and-pain-articles/how-we-assess-your-felines-pain-level/

I remember being in Kindergarten when I figured out that the other children in my class were different from me.  By age five I had already had two surgeries for unusual medical problems and I was being routinely followed by six treating physicians.  So when I walked up to Nadine and asked her how many doctors she had, she looked at me like I was crazy.  She explained she didn't have any doctors.  She only got shots for immunizations.

That was when I reali...

Laboratory medicine: blood tests, urine analysis, imaging, scanning, x-rays, biopsy are all relatively new in the field of medicine. Clinical medicine goes back to when laboratory medicine didn't exist. Clinical medicine involves looking at people and really noticing them and understanding how medical illness presents clinically. That understanding allows a physician to order the correct lab tests, images, scans, or biopsy a tissue or growth. Without clinical medicine, it's difficult for a...

The research studies go back to the 1930's and were quite prolific through the 1970's.  Most involved individuals admitted to psychiatric hospitals as the result of severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, mania, psychosis, or neurotic symptoms.  The rates of undiagnosed medical illness CAUSING the symptoms ranged from 10% to 50% and of that population, 77% had a complete remission of symptoms when the underlying medical condition was treated.

Back in the late 1970'...

There is  new study out in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism http://press.endocrine.org/doi/pdf/10.1210/jc.2015-2696 which found a correlation between people in Denmark using a large number of narrow specturm antibiotics matched with controls that used few to no antibiotic, and subsequent risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.  I've added the link so you can read the origi...

There are many medical conditions that mimic symptoms of anxiety,  All psychiatric diagnoses start with a request that medical conditions be ruled out before a psychiatric diagnosis is considered.  In addition there should be a history of symptoms of anxiety that gradually escalate over time.  Anxiety is not generally sudden in onset.  Most anxiety disorders start in childhood or by early adulthood.  Symptoms of anxiety occuring later in life are unusual.  Any sy...

I'm going to post a link to another web site that has lists of foods that naturally contain salicylates.  Salicylates are best known to people as the main chemical in aspirin.  All salicylates are reducers of inflammation.  The problem is they are common in foods and many people are either sensitive or allergic to them.  Symptoms include everything from hives, to ADHD symptoms, to OCD symptoms.  They also treat pain, headaches, inflammatory conditions, irritable bowel...

Most people think that depression is caused by either situational events or some sort of chemical imbalance.  In fact more than 70% of depression is caused by either an undiagnosed or an inadequately treated medical condition.  Here are some of the main medical causes of depression:

1. Anemia--Anemia has multiple types, but the common feature is that oxygen rich blood is not able to be adequately carried to the brain.   This may be because there aren't enough ...

I’m teaching psychological assessment and it’s finals week. That means I’m explaining a lot about psychological test scores and how to evaluate them. Most psychological tests are based on the normal curve (pictured below). The normal curve is a statistically way of looking at a phenomena in a population that is believed to be normally distributed, like IQ scores. The midpoint in the distribution is referred to as the mean. This is a fixed number.

Th...