Tag: treatment
What do urgency and immediacy mean?
If someone is actively slashing their wrists or about to jump from a building, or about to stab someone to death – those are obviously urgent situations. The risk, the evidence and the dire consequences are easy to spot. There is a difference between matters that need immediate attention and those that need urgent attention. All matters that need immediate attention will be considered urgent. However, not all matters that are urgent need immediate attention. The infographic below aims toRead More …
Power of medications and prescribing scenarios
In this post I will spend some time understanding the power of medications, then extract some fundamental principles from the GMC’s guidance on prescribing (April 2021). I then analyse two real-world scenarios in prescribing that I have experienced and reference each against the GMC’s guidance. The power of medications Medicines are powerful ‘chemicals’. How? A few milligrams – thousandths of a gram – can have powerful effects on the body’s organs. 20 mg of citalopram is 7 ten thousandths ofRead More …
Fundamentals of psychiatric diagnosis
Back in the 1990s, diagnostic criteria existed for sure. We had ICD-9 as our main diagnostic manual. My recollections from around that time was that the criteria were hardly ever referenced. How it worked was, the consultant psychiatrist would declare diagnosis or differential diagnoses without actually stating which criteria were met from available evidence. As a junior trainee, I had no say in the matter. In one adolescent psychiatry service around 1993, the consultant psychiatrist and a consultant psychologist stated,Read More …
Strange medical treatments in history
This post was inspired by a non-medical colleague – initials L.R. See Hysteria, physician assisted paroxysms and sexual relations which follows up on this post. The practice of medicine is built on ‘belief’ in treatments. History shows us how misplaced beliefs led to some horrific treatments, mistakes and death. Many of the treatments now considered “weird” or “outdated” were conceived and implemented in an era before the establishment of rigorous scientific methodologies that are now a cornerstone of modern medicine. HereRead More …
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is commonly diagnosed in childhood and often lasts into adulthood. ADHD affects both children and adults, and it can interfere with or reduce the quality of social interactions, school performance, and work performance. Introduction ADHD is the third most common mental health disorder worldwide, following depression and anxiety. The prevalence of ADHD in the worldwide paediatric population has been stable over the past 30 years except in the United States, where casesRead More …