Clinical
Clinical

Schizophrenia and genetics

There was an interesting news item yesterday on the BBC news site about schizophrenia and genetics1.  The story reports on an article published in Nature, which is the write- up of a large research project into the genetic dimension of schizophrenia. According to the story, scientists have found more than …

Can you let go of the past?

The past is always in the news.  At the time of writing (May 2014) old wounds have been reopened regarding The Troubles in Northern Ireland in the wake the arrest and subsequent release of Gerry Adams in relation to the abduction and murder of Jean McConville.  Connected to this is …

Why psychosis?

There is a long and somewhat unfortunate tradition within psychoanalysis that appears to ‘downgrade’ psychosis.  In other words, psychosis is seen as something of an aberration in relation to the ‘norm’ of neurosis.   This is not to say that psychoanalysts don’t work with psychotics – far from it- but one …

Burnout in the City

The term ‘burnout’ is often linked closely with the term ‘stress’, but they are not in fact synonymous.  Burnout may well be the outcome of prolonged stress, but not necessarily. So what do we mean by ‘burnout’?   There are many approaches to this subject but the one that interests me, …

Bipolar and psychosis

Darian Leader has recently written a book on bipolar1, which is the new name for an old form of psychosis, namely manic-depressive insanity (to use the term adopted by Emil Kraepelin). Leader’s central argument is that manic depression (bipolar) is an attempt to avoid contradiction, because the individual is unable …

On pre-natal depression

Today the Daily Mail ran an article about pre-natal depression.1   According to the article’s author, Rachel Ragg, pre-natal (antenal) depression affects between 10% and 15% of mothers-to-be, but in spite of this, little is known about it and it is rarely discussed.  In fact, Ragg goes on to write about …

On middle-aged men in crisis

In my previous post I wrote about the problem of suicide amongst middle aged men.1 It seems that this group has the highest suicide rate in this country, and one suggestion is that this is to do with the current economic situation.  In my post I argued that there could …