The Challenges of Being a Medically Ill Parent
We talk a lot about how we can help medically ill adults cope with disease. There is a lot to address: Dealing with doctors within a complex medical system, getting support and finding people who can...
View ArticleDownton Abbey for Sale
Now that the finale has clinched “Downton Abbey’s” third season, it’s time to reconnoiter. The show’s popularity owes much to soap opera suspense, expert acting, lavish nostalgia, and writing that...
View ArticleDo You Live in a Happy Place?
People who live in the Bible belt stretching across the American South into Texas are less happy than residents of the west or New England.That's according to an analysis of 10 million tweets (called...
View ArticleA Romantic Story
The following is a true story, but the people have been disguised.As a psychiatrist, I spend much of my time talking to people who have been disillusioned and disenchanted by unhappy relationships. I...
View ArticleCelebrity Rehab -- Not Really "Treatment"
In a recent post, I talked about the way shows like MTV’s Teen Mom do damage to cast members, particularly the small children who appear on the show. Today, I’d like to discuss a different kind of...
View ArticlePTSD: A Window into the Bodymind (Part 5)
Once upon a time, conventional science and medicine just ‘knew’ that the mind was different than the body…that the head’s place was to rule the heart…that the nervous system, immune system, and...
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“Nice Guys”, The Friend Zone, And Social Semantics
A little over a year ago, a video entitled, “Why men and women can’t be friends” was uploaded to YouTube. In the video, a man approaches various men and women and presents them with the question, “can...
View ArticleI Don't Know How to Act Around My Teen Daughter
Dear Dr. G.,My 12 year old daughter went from being a happy-go-lucky sweet, compassionate little girl to a withdrawn, manipulative teenager who has practiced cutting and had suicidal thoughts. My...
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Happy Birthday George!
In your honor, teachers everywhere are going to give their students the gift of civics. Civics – the art and practice of good citizenship – is a lost subject often sacrificed to scripted lessons in...
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Branding Conservatives
I doubt that much can me learned from the Khan et al. (2013) study on the association between political conservatism and preference for familiar brand name products (see here). With the unit of...
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One Person Makes a Difference in a Child's Life
The Difference One Person Can Make in a Child’s LifeWriter Pat Conroy’s father was a brute, heaping verbal and physical abuse on his children, treating them as though they were raw recruits in a...
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When Obsessions Combine: Writer "Climbs" Everest
I like a good thrill as much as anyone (though mine are mostly cerebral!). You won't catch me clinging to a rope anywhere near an almost 27,000-foot frozen mountain peak. Yet I vastly enjoyed debut...
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Homelessness in the USA: The Cost of Going to War?
-- Reposted from the online magazine, 'The Trauma & Mental Health Report' For most of us, walking by a homeless person who is curled up on a tattered blanket, asking for spare change seems like a...
View ArticleNarcissism and Leadership
“Levels of narcissism are increasing among college students, says Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer at Stanford’s business school.” Worse, “business school students are more narcissistic than others.” But,...
View ArticleWhat Does it Mean to be American?
“What Do You Want To do With Me?”On February 13, 2013, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and a self-declared undocumented immigrant, Jose Antonio Vargas gave a powerful and emotional testimony in...
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Are You a Plus or a Minus?
As we hurtle ever faster into the great unknown - our future – we look back and realize how rapidly we’ve moved from roughly 1000 years of the Agricultural Age, through about 200 years of the...
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Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
It's hard to tell when I first realized my wife and I were an old, crippled couple. No, it isn't. We have stopped "going out." Not on dates, but to events, luncheons, for anything other than the...
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Why Machines May Be The Best Therapists
Research by Elizabeth Loftus over thirty years established that eye-witnesses’ recall of incidents could be influenced by the language of their interrogation: for example, using words like “smash” in...
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