In this paper, I discuss several arguments against non-therapeutic mutilation. Interventions into bodily integrity, which do not serve a therapeutic purpose and are not regarded as aesthetically acceptable by the majority, e.g. tongue splitting, branding and flesh stapling, are now practised, but, however, are still seen as a kind of 'aberration' that ought not to be allowed. I reject several arguments for a possible ban on these body modifications. I find the common pathologisation of body modifications, Kant's argument of duties to oneself and the objection from irrationality all wanting. In conclusion, I see no convincing support for prohibition of voluntary mutilations.
The government is promoting cognitive behavioural therapy as a cost-effective, no-nonsense remedy for our psychological ills. It's the triumph of a market-driven view of the human psyche, says Darian Leader
Anorexia nervosa is often chronic, with one of the highest death rates for psychological conditions. Law can compel treatment, but is rarely invoked, at least formally (though the strategic possibilities of orders confers internal authority within the clinical setting). Instead, 'control' (or management) is exercised diffusely, through disciplinary practices embedded in everyday clinic life, such as daily routines of eating and washing, behavioural 'contracts', regular surveillance and measuring, interactions with staff, visits and activities.
Brain scientists have succeeded in fooling people into thinking they are inside the body of another person or a plastic dummy. The out-of-body experience - which is surprisingly easy to induce - will help researchers to understand how the human brain constructs a sense of physical self. The research may also lead to practical applications such as more intuitive remote control of robots, treatments for phantom limb pain in amputee patients and possible treatments for anorexia.
This article critically evaluates the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s announcement, in March 2008, that GlaxoSmithKline would not face prosecution for deliberately withholding trial data, which revealed not only that Seroxat was ineffective at treating childhood depression but also that it increased the risk of suicidal behaviour in this patient group. The decision not to prosecute followed a four and a half year investigation and was taken on the grounds that the law at the relevant time was insufficiently clear. This article assesses the existence of significant gaps in the duty of candour which had been assumed to exist between drugs companies and the regulator, and reflects upon what this episode tells us about the robustness, or otherwise, of the UK’s regulation of medicines.
Welcome to Jacinta Tan's research website. Jacinta works in the area of ‘empirical psychiatric ethics', researching some areas in the ethics of psychiatry using methods that examine the issue through research amongst people who work and live with the dilemmas. Jacinta Tan has a dual background of medicine as well as philosophy and psychology. She is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who is also an empirical medical ethics researcher. Her research interests are treatment decision-making in anorexia nervosa, the ethics and law of capacity, the development of autonomy, treatment decision-making models and the ethics of research. What is Medical Ethics? What is Psychiatric Ethics? What is Empirical Ethics Research?
A therapeutic programme hailed by ministers as a hi-tech, cost-effective solution to Britain's growing problem of depression and anxiety has been widely ignored by the NHS, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without access to treatment. Opposition politicians and charities have accused the government of creating a postcode lottery.
I'm not the only woman who has tried to make herself disappear. Anorexia nervosa, the disorder of pathological self-starvation, is on the rise, with an 80% increase in hospital admissions among teenage girls over the last decade. Pressure groups and parents complain that there is still a chronic shortage of specialist care, with many GPs apparently reluctant to refer patients for treatment in the early stages of the disease. And this approach leaves children and their families to struggle on alone - usually until it is too late for simple intervention.
A pill to erase bad memories. Doesn't it just sound so tempting? Surely everyone in the midst of a painful breakup has fantasised about wiping out all recollection of the relationship, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style? In reality, the drug in the news today is more likely to be used to help those suffering from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder after devastating experiences such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters, or other emotional problems. But the idea of tampering with the inner workings of the mind has raised concerns about the psychological consequences for individuals involved, and even the potential practical effects on society.
Criminals held in secure mental health units are to be tracked with global positioning systems to stop them absconding and reoffending, under a trial by a London hospital trust.
Introduction: In The Netherlands, physicians have to be convinced that the patient suffers unbearably and hopelessly before granting a request for euthanasia. The extent to which general practitioners (GPs), consulted physicians and members of the euthanasia review committees judge this criterion similarly was evaluated.
The subject raises issues as to the extent to which it is proper to treat adults with psychiatric or psychological disorders with radical surgery, particularly where the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of the underlying disorder is uncertain or disputed; the limitations which ought to be placed upon consent as a means of rendering surgery lawful and whether the criminal law ought to have a place in controlling operations provided by qualified surgeons upon competent adults with their consent.
In 2004, Mrs Carol Savage was one of 165 who took their own life while receiving treatment as a psychiatric in-patient.1 With the trial yet to take place, few facts are presently known. The day after voluntarily attending Runwell Hospital, she was detained for treatment under section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (‘the 1983 Act’) with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Having made a number of attempts to leave the open acute psychiatric ward, checks on her whereabouts were prescribed for every 30 minutes. Believed to be at low risk of suicide, Mrs Savage was allegedly left unsupervised on hospital grounds from which she was able to flee, walking 2 miles to Wickford railway station before fatally jumping in front of a train. A coroner's jury concluded that the preventive precautions in place were ‘inadequate’. And her daughter, Ms Anna Savage, claimed that the hospital had breached her mother's right to life by allowing her to escape.
The issue in this case is not uncommon. P is an adult who has an unresolved medical condition, in this case epilepsy. His primary carer, however well motivated, does not accept the diagnosis nor the treatment proposals. P may object to treatment (whether his own view or prompted by his carer). In order to determine what is in P's best interests, since he cannot decide for himself, it is necessary to observe him, and not to rely upon what is relayed about his condition by his carer. To that end, a period in hospital for assessment and treatment is necessary.
PSYCHOLOGY Cutting Desire A rare condition compels its sufferers to want to amputate, or paralyze, their own healthy limbs. Inside the strange world of what sufferers call Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
Whether treatment decision-making capacity can be meaningfully applied to patients with a diagnosis of "personality disorder" is examined. Patients presenting to a psychiatric emergency clinic with threats of self-harm are considered, two having been assessed and reviewed in detail. It was found that capacity can be meaningfully assessed in such patients, although the process is more complex than in patients with diagnoses of a more conventional kind. The process of assessing capacity in such patients is very time-consuming and may become, in itself, a therapeutic intervention.
Thousands of patients are suing AstraZeneca in US courts, claiming the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel caused weight gain and diabetes. The patients allege Seroquel, its second biggest selling drug worth $4.5bn (£2.7bn) a year, was marketed without adequate warning about possible side effects such as massive weight gain and the development of diabetes. However, this is denied by the company.
My working life consists of thinking, reading, writing and talking about philosophy. The idea of the website is to give information about the work I do and to make available unpublished articles, DVDs, etc. It is also to make available any stuff, previously published but now out of print, which might be worth preserving. When it was suggested that I should have a website, I wasn’t sure what it should be like. It has turned out that each section, as well as giving access to things I have written or videos of lectures or discussions I have been involved in, also has many thoughts, poems, etc by other people. The hope is that, if anyone comes to this site to track down something of mine, they may get interested in some of the other things collected under the same topic. I doubt if anyone would want to look through everything on the website. It is meant to be a changing online anthology for dipping into.
THE IDEA THAT our Western conception of mental health and illness might be shaping the expression of illnesses in other cultures is rarely discussed in the professional literature. Many modern mental-health practitioners and researchers believe that the scientific standing of our drugs, our illness categories and our theories of the mind have put the field beyond the influence of endlessly shifting cultural trends and beliefs. After all, we now have machines that can literally watch the mind at work. We can change the chemistry of the brain in a variety of interesting ways and we can examine DNA sequences for abnormalities. The assumption is that these remarkable scientific advances have allowed modern-day practitioners to avoid the blind spots and cultural biases of their predecessors.
Potentially dangerous psychiatric patients are being fitted with GPS tracking devices to prevent them absconding on day leave. The South London and Maudsley NHS Trust has attached the £600 ankle devices on more than 60 medium and high risk patients under the pilot scheme. The trust said it had consulted patients and families. The devices, which can track a person's location to within a few yards, are already used for dementia sufferers. They came into use in south London after rapist Terence O'Keefe, 39, escaped from custody at King's College Hospital before strangling 73-year-old David Kemp.
The 30-year-old, known only as SB, could die without emergency treatment for aplastic anemia, a condition in which her bone marrow does not reproduce enough new blood cells. The Court of Protection has now ruled that doctors can restrain SB and force her to undergo the arduous but potentially life-saving treatment, which is administered through a vein in the heart and lasts for five days. SB has been detained under the Mental Health Act. Family Division judge Mrs Justice Hogg ruled that the patient did not have the capacity to make up her own mind over whether to undergo the treatment.
A high court judge in England has ordered that doctors can force a woman without the capacity to decide for herself to have lifesaving treatment for aplastic anaemia. Mrs Justice Hogg made the ruling in the Court of Protection after an unnamed NHS trust applied to the court with the backing of the Official Solicitor, who looks after the interests of those lacking capacity. The judge said the 30 year old woman, named only as SB, who is detained under the Mental Health Act, has a serious psychiatric disorder and lacks the capacity to decide for herself whether or not to have the potentially lifesaving treatment.
A patient in Broadmoor Hospital who has spent more than two decades alongside some of Britain's most dangerous criminals has won the right to have a review into his detention heard in public, The Independent has learned. The decision, which is thought to be a legal first, has major implications for the way Mental Health Tribunals function and will open the doors to one of the country's most secretive arbitration systems. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has spent 23 years detained under the Mental Health Act, mostly at Broadmoor Hospital, the high-security facility in Berkshire that houses notorious offenders such as the serial killers Peter Sutcliffe and Robert Napper. He was committed in September 1986 after being convicted on two counts of attempted wounding. Doctors had classified the 52-year-old as having a mental illness and psychopathic disorder, but in September 2008 they changed the diagnosis to just a psychopathic disorder.
In the Netherlands, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are considered acceptable medical practices in specific circumstances. The majority of cases of euthanasia and PAS involve patients suffering from cancer. However, in 1994 the Dutch Supreme Court in the so-called Chabot-case ruled that “the seriousness of the suffering of the patient does not depend on the cause of the suffering”, thereby rejecting a distinction between physical (or somatic) and mental suffering. This opened the way for further debate about the acceptability of PAS in cases of serious and refractory mental illness. An important objection against offering PAS to mentally ill patients is that this might reinforce loss of hope, and demoralization. Based on an analysis of a reported case, this argument is evaluated. It is argued that offering PAS to a patient with a mental illness who suffers unbearably, enduringly and without prospect of relief does not necessarily imply taking away hope and can be eth...
No country has a blanket policy of mandatory psychiatric review but the specialty contributes in circumstances of exclusive mental disorder or when there is doubt regarding capacity and sound judgement. The absence of a mandatory role for psychiatrists means that reversible psychopathology may be missed. As a result, the patient's decision to end his/her life may be more informed by treatable mental disorder than by his/her lifelong preferences.
Judge approves forced Caesarean for mentally-ill woman Doctors have been granted permission to perform an urgent Caesarean section on a mentally-ill woman with diabetes. High Court judge Mr Justice Hayden gave specialists at the Royal Free London NHS Trust approval after a five-hour hearing at the Court of Protection. He said the decision was "draconian" but necessary because the mother's life may be in danger. The woman, 32, who is 32 weeks pregnant, was deemed unable to make the decision over how to give birth. The ruling, late on Friday, came after doctors applied for permission to carry out the delivery in order that the patient's "unstable mental state" could be treated. A specialist from the trust told the Court of Protection in London, which specialises in issues relating to the sick and vulnerable, that their priority was "keeping this woman alive".
An initiative by the American Psychiatric Association Foundation encouraging employers to take actions that will support good mental health in the workplace.
Created through collaboration among the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), University of Michigan Depression Center, and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
What is the driving force behind our motivations and ambitions? Is it pure reasoning? Hardly, as famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung would argue. Moreover its the unconscious buried deep below the surface of our daily self that is responsible. Carl Gustav Jung took into account the unconscious for his new school of analytical psychology, which differs from Freud's original school of psychoanalysis. C. G. Jung was one of the creators of modern depth psychology, which seeks to facilitate a conversation with the unconscious energies which move through each of us.
On this day in 1921, the psychotherapist, psychoanalytic, sociologist, philosopher, and author Paul Watzlawick was born. He was best known for his approaches in the field of schizophrenia and his five axiomes in the theory of communication.
The official journal of World Association of Cultural Psychiatry (yet another organization that should be disabused of hiring web designers that do UI with Flash)
The American Psychiatric Foundation is the charitable and educational subsidiary of the American Psychiatric Association. The APF works to eliminate stigmas surrounding mental illness. Its division of APIRE is a leader in psychiatric research.
The aim of the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science is to publish original research articles and reviews in the general field of behavioural and brain function. Articles dealing with the neuroanatomical and neurochemical basis of behavior are especially welcomed. Multidisciplinary contributions from all fields of the neurosciences are encouraged so long as emphasis is placed in investigating the biological substrates of behavior and of mental processes underlying behavior.
Open Journal of Psychiatry (OJPsych) is an international journal dedicated to the latest advancement of psychiatry. The goal of this journal is to provide a platform for scientists and academicians all over the world to promote, share, and discuss various new issues and developments in different areas of psychiatry. All manuscripts must be prepared in English, and are subject to a rigorous and fair peer-review process. Accepted papers will immediately appear online followed by printed hard copy.
The aim of the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science is to publish original research articles and reviews in the general field of behavioural and brain function. Articles dealing with the neuroanatomical and neurochemical basis of behavior are especially welcomed. Multidisciplinary contributions from all fields of the neurosciences are encouraged so long as emphasis is placed in investigating the biological substrates of behavior and of mental processes underlying behavior.
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Acta Psychiatr Scand. 1999 Jun;99(6):453-9.
du Feu M, McKenna PJ.
OBJECTIVE: The aims of the study were to examine claims that profoundly deaf schizophrenic patients report auditory hallucinations, and to evaluate proposed explanations that such patients are really describing other symptoms, or that the phenomenon is restricted to those who had heard and understood language prior to becoming deaf. METHOD: A total of 17 schizophrenic/schizoaffec tive patients with onset of profound deafness prior to the age of 2 years underwent structured psychiatric interview. RESULTS: Ten patients (59%) gave accounts of verbal auditory hallucinations with description of content. These did not appear to be attributable to other psychotic experiences and showed typical characteristics of schizophrenic hallucinations. The symptom was present in six patients who had been deaf from birth or early infancy. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that auditory hallucinations are a common phenomenon in profoundly prelingually deaf schizophrenic patients, which cannot be accounted for by the above
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N. Bass, A. Vos, и S. Woodgate. Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore, 36 (9):
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P. Yanos, и D. Ziedonis. Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.), 57 (2):
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D. Dew, и G. Alan (Ред.) 30, Washington, DC, The George Washington University, Center for Rehabilitation Counseling Research and Education, Rehabilitation Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education, (2005)
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