Recommended For:
Those interested in psychiatry or wanting to see mental illness from a firsthand perspective
Trisha Cull is a well-published writer and poet from British Columbia. Though initially known for her writing and poetic art, Trisha recently released her memoir The Death of Small Creatures, that powerfully depicts a part of her life many did not appreciate before. In this haunting and powerful novel, Cull describes her struggles and battles with bulimia, bipolar disorder, and substance use. While the book is thought by readers to be confusing at times, it details the reality that many individuals with mental illness face day in and day out, struggling with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and ultimately vulnerability. Recommended For: Those interested in psychiatry or wanting to see mental illness from a firsthand perspective
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In an interview in October with Jian Ghomeshi, former NHL goalie Clint Malarchuk opens up about his struggles with depression, OCD, PTSD, and alcoholism, and shares how hockey was his escape from mental illness. In the interview (link to video here), Malarchuk also discusses his new memoir "The Crazy Game" which he hopes will help fight against the stigma of mental illness and encourage more people to talk about mental health ... Recommended For: Hockey fans and those interested in mental health
Dr. Paul Garfinkel is a Canadian physician, who currently is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, as well as a staff psychiatrist at the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where he also held the title of president and CEO for 12 years. During his 40 year career in the field of medicine, and more specifically, psychiatry, Dr. Garfinkel has accrued a wealth of experiences, and become exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable when it comes to psychiatric patients. However, through his many years in psychiatry he has also become intimately familiar with the stigma and systems issues in mental health care, in addition to handling countless highly emotional and controversial cases, and experiencing numerous challenges both professional and personal, all of which are common to a life and a career in the field. In his book A Life In Psychiatry: Looking Out, Looking In, Dr. Garfinkel takes readers with him on a look back at his journey from medical school to the present, giving us a inside look at what it's like being a psychiatrist. From discussing topics like finding a balance between therapy and pharmacology, to handling the pain and anguish associated with losing a patient to suicide, Dr. Garfinkel touches on it all, providing guidance to future psychiatrists, in addition to emphasizing lessons many of us can learn from. You can read excerpts from his book here: "A Patient's Suicide, A Doctor's Devastation" and "When a Psychiatrist Crosses The Sexual Line". "I think psychiatrists have a harder time dealing with the death of a patient than other specialists, like cardiologists or oncologists, when the death is by suicide. Skilled therapists tend to develop intense, close relationships with their patients. They care deeply about their progress and survival. A therapist may take it upon himself or herself to act as the saviour of a particular patient. This can set the therapist up for a devastating personal loss should the patient choose death over life." Recommended For: Anyone with a budding interest in the field of psychiatry, or who is curious to know more about the ins and outs of life in the specialty Many of us grew up with books and movies like Winnie the Pooh, and of course our Disney favourites such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King along with countless others. While cute or comedic stories at the time, researchers have gone back to their childhoods and reviewed many of these films and their animated characters to determine if there are underlying references to mental illness, and if so, how those characters are portrayed and what impact that may have on children and their attitudes towards mental health. Take a few minutes today and check out the two articles below, the first on the psychosocial problems and pathologies in the Hundred Acre Woods, and the second on the prevalence of mental illness references in Disney movies. Develop your own opinion as to whether these films further perpetuate the stigma and stereotypes surrounding mental health conditions. "Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: A neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne" by Sarah E. Shea, Kevin Gordon, Ann Hawkins, Janet Kawchuk, Donna Smith (CMAJ) "Mental Illness in Disney Animated Films" by Andrea Lawson & Gregory Fouts (Canadian Journal of Psychiatry) In this must read three part series (links below), The Boston Globe provides an in-depth look at mental illness as readers meet Michael Bourne, a 33 year old man with a long history of mental health issues, as well as his loving mother Peggy Bourne who throughout the years still tirelessly continues to be his support and caregiver. In this powerful series, one gets a unique and important perspective, as you hear about a family desperately trying to navigate the mental health system and trying to accomplish the challenging task of getting their loved one proper treatment and keeping them safe and in recovery for more than a few weeks or months at a time ... it's a story that is all too common. "Mike was 33 years old. He’d been in and out of institutions for half his life, since he first got sick when he was 17. His diagnosis had changed over the years — it was #schizophrenia, then #bipolar disorder, then #schizoaffective disorder — and his medications were in constant flux. Things stayed good for a while, then went bad again. Now Mike’s medications seemed to be working, and he was saying that he wanted to stay on them — a view he didn’t always take. But there had been so many days like this, so many hopeful new beginnings. Often, when bringing him home from a hospital stay, Peggy saw again the man she knew: funny and charming, intelligent and sweet. And then she watched that man disappear, receding from her as though into the depths of a lake. He was replaced by someone else, whose thoughts she did not understand. Mike suffered at times from #delusions. His mother never feared him, but some of the neighbors did, interpreting his loudness and profanity as threatening. Peggy had lived for years with the constant worry. She had lived with the complaints from neighbors and the calls from the police in the middle of the night; she had coped with Mike giving all his money to strangers or throwing all their food away, believing it was poisoned. She had watched his friends grow up and get jobs and get married, while he remained trapped in place. Yet she still believed that one day, the right treatment would free them. Mike would stay well, and she would have her son back."
Recently, author Laurel Braitman, shared with TED followers 5 ways in which animals and humans suffer from similar mental illnesses in her article "More Similar Than We Know: When Animals Go Mad". Through this and her book Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves (read on to see the synopsis of the novel) Braitman demonstrates how we can better learn about and understand human mental health and illness by exploring the emotional distress of our beloved pets and other animals in the wild. "Making sense of animal emotional states and behavior, especially when they are doing things that seem abnormal, has always involved a certain amount of projection. The diagnoses that many of these animals receive reflect shifting ideas about human mental health, since people use the concepts, language and diagnostic tools they are comfortable with to puzzle out what may be wrong with the animals around them. This isn’t to say that the creatures aren’t suffering, but the labels we give to their suffering reflect not only our beliefs about animals’ capacity for emotional expression, but also our own, most popular, ideas about mental illness and recovery. Where, for example, earlier generations saw madness, homesickness and heartbreak in themselves and other animals, veterinarians and physicians now diagnose anxiety, impulse control and obsessive-compulsive disorders in humans, dogs, gorillas, whales and many animals in between" (ideas.TED.com). Recommended For: Animal lovers, veterinarians, and anyone interested in human mental health! To Hell and Back: Alcoholism, Addiction and Lessons They Taught Me by Jim Coyle is a powerful must read story on addiction, alcoholism and recovery... "It's said around the circles of recovery that when we start drinking alcoholically, we stop growing emotionally. We suffer arrested development at the stage in which the addiction takes hold. This happens, it seems to me now, because we stop doing the things we need to do to grow up. First, we don't make decisions. In my case, I would attach myself to a girlfriend and let her make all decisions - then I had someone to blame if they didn't work out. Second, we don't accept consequences. We usually have two tools for relating to the world and the people in it - blaming and rationalization. There's always somebody or a workplace or an institution thwarting our plans for an ideal relationship, job, life. Nothing was ever our fault. Third, we don't truly feel pain, often life's best tutor. We're usually anesthetized, and always so in reaction to problems or crises, real or perceived ... Social drinkers might occasionally exaggerate their consumption, the better to pose as characters. Problem drinkers almost always minimize, covering their consumption in vague, comforting terms that make their drinking sound modest, unthreatening, almost wholesome, even patriotic. Denial is a powerful thing. The alcoholic-addict needs it to protect the sham sense of self he or she has constructed. A family troubled by addiction needs it to justify the sick contortions into which it has twisted itself to accommodate the bizarre behaviour of a loved one. Friends and co-workers play along with the con because, well, it's usually just easier that way" (http://rosemarykeevil.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/hell_and_backjpg-size-xxlarge-letterbox-version-2.jpg). Although a fictional novel, Addiction on Trial was written by Dr. Steven Kassels who is an emergency medicine physician who has also received certification in addiction medicine. Though the novel is an intriguing and gripping medical murder mystery/legal thriller, Dr. Steven Kassels is able to weave in his clinical experiences with medicine, and more specifically addictions, in a way that not only gives insight into some of the current drug problems our cities face, but also leads readers to contemplate current societal views on addiction, and even challenges us to reformulate our ideas of addictions that are more in line with how chronic diseases are perceived and managed. Recommended For: Those interested in a good summer read, those who enjoy mysteries/thrillers, or those interested in law or addictions. At the 2014 PsychSIGN annual conference held in New York City last weekend, psychiatrist Dr. Francis Lu spoke to interested medical students on cultural issues in psychiatry. Specifically, Dr. Lu spoke to the importance of cultural competence both in medicine in general, but also specifically within the field of psychiatry as a patient's culture, religion, or spiritual beliefs may impact the ways in which we interpret, diagnose and treat their mental health issues. During his talk, Dr. Lu also provided students with a number of resources to which they could refer to learn more about culture competency in psychiatry, and help develop a better understanding of how one's culture, background and beliefs can affect treatment decisions, as well as one's approach to interviews, assessments and therapies. One of the "essential" texts that was recommended was Ethnicity & Family Therapy. Read on to find out to find out more about this text, as well as a few others! |
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Supporting and enhancing students' and health professionals' knowledge and understanding of mental health and psychiatry
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