Things I'm Thinking About This Holiday Weekend

Happy Presidents' Day.  I probably have 50 blog posts floating around in my head, but I thought I'd share with you some of the stuff I've been reading on line lately.  


The New York Times Op Ed editor doesn't seem to like stimulants these days.   A few weeks back there was an article talking about a study showing that long-term stimulants aren't helpful, and today there is a piece by a writer who finds distraction helpful...told with some contempt towards his friend's son whom he calls Ritalin Boy.  Steve over on Thought Broadcast has his own take on ADD meds.   
 What do you think: are stimulants helpful or not?  I'll stand aside for this one. 


Then there was the article about the business/computer whiz who put hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money (and all his time) into a kidney transplant matchmaking service.  If you need an uplifting story, this is an interesting one. 


Over on KevinMD,  Dr. George Lundberg is a bit skeptical of SAMHSA's new defining features for the Recovery Movement.  I more or less agree, it feels like it's more about semantics (what does it mean to say recovery is "person-driven"? as opposed to?) than substance, and a lot of it seems to boil down to the idea that patients should be treated with respect and people with mental illnesses should work towards achieving their full potential.  Those things I agree with, for everyone. 


And finally, for the writers among us, Pete Earley has a Before You Quit Your Day Job post up on his blog.  I'm still pondering the $80,000 advance.  The Shrink Rappers need an agent, oh, but we do love our friends over at Johns Hopkins University Press.  


And finally, for my friend ClinkShrink the Introvert,  who wrote a review of a Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't stop Talking (---huh, stop looking at me), here is an article called The Brainstorming Myth by Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker. 


Okay, lots of links.  This is what I've been thinking about.  Aside from that, I made a quick trip to NYC and had my photo taken with Cookie Monster in Times Square, and I loved Jersey Boys.

Ducking Around

Ooooh, let me tell you: I love vacation.  I really love vacation.  I'm back.  It's cold here, and I spent the day unpacking and doing laundry, and getting ready to start my week.  I returned calls, went in to the office and checked my mail, emailed, postal mailed, and watched the Ducks win the Rose Bowl.  Sad, because even though we Shrink Rappers like ducks, I have my own personal Badger out in Pasadena cheering for Wisconsin, and it's a sad football day for him, I'm sure. 


Roy did a great job of holding down the blog.  Please give him a hand.  Clink was off on another one of her adventures.  For some reason, vacation is not fun for her if there isn't the possibility that she'll fall thousands of feet, get eaten by some form of wildlife, or have her life depend on properly functioning equipment while she gurgles beneath the sea.  She's the only person I know where "I had a fantastic time" is followed by an injury report.


Roy's Happy New Year duck was taken from the Havre de Grace annual New Year's Duck Drop.  From the Aegis:

It was a glorious night for ringing in a new year. Temperatures, unusually inviting for a New Year's Eve in Harford County, hovered around 43. Wind was non-existent. And many people had gathered around the Havre de Grace Middle School grounds for the annual Duck Drop and fireworks to welcome another new year.

In other stories around the web, if you're a distracted duck, you might have notice that it's hard to find Ritalin or Adderall-- perhaps another example of DEA limits allowing Big Pharma to be being overly ducky about reducing supply of the cheaper, generic medications.  From the The New York Times, do check out "A.D.H.D. Drug Shortage Has Patients Scrambling."  


And if you're a duck contemplating filing for Social Security Disability, do read Dr. Steve's post on Thought Broadcast about The Curious Psychology of "Disability."  With 41 comments on that post, I'm going to swim away from the temptation to comment myself. 

And finally, for those ducks who want to know the latest on Electronic Medical Records, check out Shrink Rap News over on CPN for "Notes from SAMHSA's EHR Summit."  If that doesn't make you want to be served up with orange sauce, then nothing will.

So I love vacation, but I did miss all the Shrink Rappin.'  Happy New Year to everyone!  

From Clink: I don't have a duck in this race, so I thought folks might enjoy a seahorse instead. He's black with white stripes and seems to be perched on top of the green moray eel's head. Yes, the eel was that close.

No significant injuries this time.  A slight jellyfish sting and lots of no-see-'ums, that's it.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all our readers. Can you believe it's 2011? I remember being a kid and thinking how long it would be until 2000 and thinking I'd never actually be that old.

I almost saw out the Old Year with Roy. We went out to a local pub for the best of Baltimore's crab cakes, and Clink didn't join us, but she did text in that there was a Duck in her Jacuzzi at what ever wonderful vacation spot she's in. A duck in the Jacuzzi and we didn't even get a picture? This from the woman who texts me photos of every mushroom she runs across? We parted around 10, and for the first time in years, I was awake at midnight, drinking champagne and eating chocolate by the fire with family and friends (non-Shrink Rappers)...who came over to see the year out with us.

Shrink Rap will turn five in April. This is our zillionth post (well, not quite, but we're somewhere over 1,300 posts). Our book will be coming out around the same time, if you'd like a preview, it's up on Amazon, but not yet available. We're scheduled to talk at APA in Honolulu this year, but our talk, The Public Face of Psychiatry, has been scheduled at 7 AM on the last day of the conference. Will anyone come? 7 AM???

Finally, this past week, we were mentioned on The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Blog as one of the Top 50 Psychiatry Blogs (I didn't know there were 50 Psychiatry Blogs!)-- do check it out-- and we had a guest post up on Kevin MD, a revised version of our post on How to Find a Shrink.

Surprise! I'm A Shrink and I'm Here to See ME!

The title of this post is a take off on the title of my last post, Suprise! I'm a Shrink and I'm Here to See You!

Today, I went to work at my office, and mostly, I saw me. All of my patients either didn't show up or canceled their appointments, except, of course, for my last patient. It was a really weird day.

I don't have an internet connection in the office and I don't have a TV. I don't even have a desk. My office mates weren't there. It was me. I made phone calls. I texted my friends. I vacuumed the carpet. I made hot tea. I talked to Clink. I thought about Roy. I listened to NPR on the radio in the waiting room. I went to lunch at a cafe in the neighborhood, chatted with the owners and checked my email on the free WiFi. I rested on the couch. It was all kind of serene. In my younger days, I would have been upset, and if I had my car, I probably would have gone home and fiddled on the Internet and done housework. I saw my last patient who said, "You should go home now, it's Friday." I did. As I locked up the office, I thought, well I didn't have to cook and I didn't have to do laundry and with limited on-line access, it was sort of like being on vacation.