First, let’s establish that there is a difference between worry and concern. Concern embodies embracing the proper mindset for caring about important issues, decisions, events or conditions. It also means taking proper steps to create effective resolutions, monitoring their outcomes and making changes or modifications where necessary. […]
The least convincing evidence for psychotropic medication use is for the treatment of the anxiety disorders. Here’s why: Anxiety is as much a cognitive issue as it is an emotional one. Most of us experience anxiety intermittently; it rises to disorder proportions when there’s constancy to it. And when chronic, anxiety is invariably linked to faulty, irrational or illogical belief systems which require reframing to make relief attainable. […]
There’s nothing new to report about anxiety itself. That’s because it’s a normal human response; some of us experience it intermittently, other chronically. Most of the attention in this class of disorders is on PTSD and OCD. PTSD has aroused debate especially surrounding the definition of the traumatic event that anchors the symptoms. It is not controversial that intense traumatic events qualify as criterion, but what about purely psychosocial events without physical injury? DSM IV does not require that someone [...]
The Food and Drug Administration has approved "deep brain stimulation" for treatment resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. This is the first instance that this procedure, which involves the surgical implantation of electrodes deep within the brain to trigger electrical activity, has been approved for use in a psychiatric syndrome. The implants have previously been used to treat movement disorders, mostly notably Parkinson’s disease. Once the electrodes are surgically in place, clinicians control how the electrical impulses are delivered to the [...]
