The problem with misidentifying an angry person as depressed is that the treatment for clinical depression is not benign. Antidepressants The drugs used to treat depression can interact with other drugs, can lead to symptoms (side effects) of their own, and are not inexpensive. More importantly, antidepressants are not a solution to anger. Aggravating a [...]
Guest post: Alexithymic individuals (males more than females) cannot express their feelings verbally. They either act them out (destructively) or hold them in (intrapunitive and equally destructive). These alexithymic individuals are more prone to develop somatic symptom (formerly somatoform) disorders (excess focus upon bodily complaints). They are also more prone to psychophysiologic – physical - [...]
Comorbidity (co-existing) conditions are not uncommon with PTSD and frequently include depression and other clinical disorders. The oppressive symptoms of PTSD feel inescapable to the patient who may self-medicates with alcohol or other drugs which they secure from doctors or from the street. The co-occurrence of PTSD and substance use is a major public health [...]
Informed Consent and Anxiety Informed consent is often structured around insuring that the patient has been duly informed of the risk-benefit ratio of clinical procedures. Informed consent does not always seek to determine the depth to which the patient understands the necessity of a procedure or the process of treatment. Perhaps more important is that [...]
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder as a diagnosis emerged after the Vietnam War. Prior to then, “shell-shock” was the terminology used in the WWII and Korean wars. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM III) classified the diagnosis as an anxiety disorder, and further refined diagnostic criteria in subsequent editions. The diagnosis as it exists in today’s DSM-5 [...]
Oftentimes, reviewers of medical records note distortions between immediate recall of an injury and successive changes in the description of said event. Some perceive this as malingering, or at best, an attempt to inflate the value of a legitimate injury. Within the context of an accident, the injured party must describe the event repeatedly for [...]