December 24th, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion
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When we talk about psychotherapy, one aspect of what we look at is the process of what occurs in the therapeutic relationship. This is an important part of psychodynamic-based psychotherapy, meaning psychotherapy that is derived from the theories put forth by Freud. Psychoanalysis (the purest form of psychodynamic psychotherapy) includes an emphasis on events that occurred during childhood, and a focus on understanding what goes on in the relationship between the therapist and the patient, including the transference and counter-transference.
In some of our posts, our friend Jesse has commented about how it’s important to understand what transpires in the mind of the patient when certain things are said and done. Let me tell you that Jesse is a wonderful psychiatrist, he is warm and caring and attentive and gentle, and he’s had extensive training in the analytic method, he’s on my list of who I go to when I need help, so while I want to discuss this concept, I don’t want anyone, especially Jesse, to think I don’t respect him. With that disclaimer…..
On my tongue-in-cheek post on What to Get Your Psychiatrist for the Holidays, Jesse wrote: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
December 21st, 2011 by DeborahSchwarzRPA in News, Opinion
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This year’s Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Day was the largest and most successful yet, says event organizer Christine Rein. One hundred fifty participants attended the event, which was held Saturday, November 12, 2011 at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia.
The program provided information about the pancreas and its function, genetics, risk stratification and screening, cancer-therapy breakthroughs, surgical options, cysts, pre-cancerous tumors and more.
Lecture topics included: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Columbia University Department of Surgery Blog*
December 18th, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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For a while now we’ve been talking about issues related to psychiatry and electronic medical records. Roy is very interested in the evolution of EHR’s.
I don’t like them. I think they have too many problems still, both in terms of issues of efficiency and time, and how they divert the physician’s attention away from the patient, and they focus medical appointments on the collection of data– data that is used in a checkbox form: patient is not suicidal and I asked, whether it was clinically relevant or not– and will therefore serve as protection in a lawsuit, or demographic information used by insurers, the government, who knows.
From a privacy standpoint, I think they are appalling. If you are a patient in the hospital where I work, you get Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
November 13th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Research
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Researchers in Iowa have discovered what makes a lion or tiger roar so effectively. Apparently, there is a layer of fat within large feline vocal cords that makes the vocal cords especially prone to vibrate easily with minimal exhalation effort.
What import does this have to humans?
Well, there are patients who have a very weak voice due to vocal cord atrophy as well as vocal cord paralysis. Standard interventions include voice therapy as well as surgical procedures using an implant or injectable material in order to “bulk” up the vocal cord.
In fact Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
November 13th, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion
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We’ve been having a great discussion over on the post Tell Me…. An Ethical Dilemma. The post talks about a young man who wants to know if he can check “no” to a question about whether he has a psychiatric disorder if his illness is not relevant to the situation. The comments have been fascinating — do read them– and very thought-provoking.
One reader asked, ” If a patient asked if they were boring you, and they were, would you say yes?”
This is a great question, and of course the right thing to do is to explore with the patient what meaning the concern has to him. But is that all? I’m not very good at doing the old psychoanalyst thing of deflecting all questions, and mostly I do answer questions when they are asked of me. This can present a really sticky situation because one can not think of any clinical scenario in which it would be therapeutic to have a therapist tell a patient, ‘Yes, you’re boring, OMG are you boring,’ or ‘No, in fact, I don’t like you.’ And not answering could be viewed as negative response by the patient –if you liked me, you’d tell me, so clearly you don’t like me. So if the exploration of the question doesn’t take care of the issue, and the patient continues to ask, what’s a shrink to do? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
When we talk about psychotherapy, one aspect of what we look at is the process of what occurs in the therapeutic relationship. This is an important part of psychodynamic-based psychotherapy, meaning psychotherapy that is derived from the theories put forth by Freud. Psychoanalysis (the purest form of psychodynamic psychotherapy) includes an emphasis on events that occurred during childhood, and a focus on understanding what goes on in the relationship between the therapist and the patient, including the transference and counter-transference.
