Health and Psychology

The general public doesn't understand the distinctions between some of the titles people in mental health use.  So I'm often asked about the differencce between a psychiatrist and a psychologist.  A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who first became a physician and then spent their internship and residency in learning about mental health.  They can prescribe medication.  A psychologist began studying mental health for all four to five years of graduate school then completed...

I received a great quote in an email. 

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."  Martin Luther King, Jr.

That's true.  It's also true about work stress.  There is often a lot of ambiguity and lack of communication at work.  There's a simple formula for fixing work stress.  First take a job you understand and can do well.  Have due diligence when you approach a job.  Make sure that you know who ...

I have a sign up at my office at the Westwood Counseling Center.  There's a flying pig over the sign that suggests both the aspirational nature of the saying and the impossibility of living up to it.  It says that "My mission is to inspire people to be their best self and to inspire others to bring out the best in the people they come in contact with and to inspire them as well.  Nothing can stand in my way.  There is always a way.  There is always time."

All over the television are ads designed to get patients to ask their physicians about whether specific medications may be "right" for them.  This type of direct marketing is influencing patient care, and is starting to creep into hard news stories where the the info-tizing (advertizing presented as information) may be confusing to some patients.

A recent news story on women's health was promoting the use of a specific lab test to evaluate heart disease.  The infor...

I was doing supervision with a student and reviewing old chart notes his former supervisor didn't sign off on before leaving the department.  I came across a diagnosis of "hypocondriasis" and a case note indicating that "with so many medical complaints the only diagnosis of any certainty is hypocondriasis."  I sighed as I read through the information provided to the student. 

So we reviewed:  "Hypochondriac (hī-pō-kon’drē-ak): ...

My students learned something important about how difficult medical diagnosis is.  They had a neuropsychological case to write up and put into electronic health records.  I then gave them each a simple complete blood count (CBC) to add to the chart.  Since each sheet had values for normal the task for the students was to review the history and neuropsychological findings and review potential diagnoses for their client.  There were three sets of labs.  One showed anemi...

"When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras", which was coined in a slightly modified form in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, a former professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Since horses are the most commonly encountered hoofed animal and zebras are very rare, logically you could confidently guess that the animal making the hoofbeats is probably a horse.

However zebras exist.  Every episode of "House" has one.  So ho...

A client of mine is running all over the universe telling people I saved her life.  Not exactly.  All I did was tell her to go to an emergency room.  She was having symptoms of heart problems.  So let me review those. 

Women have different symptoms of heart problems then men do.  Most people think of crushing chest pain and collapsing to the floor.  But that's not what happens with most women. 

• Hot or burning sensation in ...

The new box came in the mail.  It's a treatment program for dyslexia based on neuroplasticity theories.  The day I got it, a client called telling me they wanted an assessment because they are "hopelessly dyslexic." It was the second person to use that term this month.  I don't think of anyone as "hopelessly" anything.

I didn't get the program for a specific client, although I think many of my clients would benefit from it. I got it for me, because one of the ...

A lot of students are entering into summer with the prospect of hoping that tutoring may help them perform better in school.  There is an idea that additional study will improve reading, spelling, math, attention, memory, or organization skills.  Unfortunately for the 15 to 20% of students with learning disorders, or the 10 to 15% of students with acquired neurological disorders, additional time spent studying may not result in any additional improvement in learning.

The term ...