that other kind of psychology
sb admin | December 28, 2007Brain Candy, a film by Toronto's sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall, is a satirical take on drug development. A scientist creates an antidepressant (Gleemonex) that evokes the happiest memory of the consumer, recreating that joy in the present. Gleemonex becomes a big success, until it all goes horribly wrong... a very funny film.
Here's a holiday-related clip in which the first test subject takes the drug. We see the capsule enter her system after she swallows it, then the drug reaches her brain and takes effect. Her happiest memory is a Christmas visit from her son and his family. "…
sb admin | December 20, 2007Fortune has announced the year's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, including Prozac for dogs.
"Thank God. We've been so worried since Lucky dyed his hair jet black and started listening to the Smiths."
"Eli Lilly wins FDA approval to put Prozac into chewable, beef-flavored pills to treat separation anxiety in dogs."
It's not just dogs - cats are treated with SSRI antidepressants, along with psychotherapy. If treatment fails to calm behaviour, the next step is neutering. Imagine that veterinary approach integrating with current practices for humans. Patients who have trouble with adhering to…
sb admin | December 10, 2007 This will probably never be made into an anti-drug ad campaign, but I can't imagine a stronger deterrent.
Angel's Trumpet is a flower that contains scopolamine and other alkaloids. It's known as a "biogenic drug" and presumed by naive recreational drug users to be harmless because it's a plant. However, it can cause psychosis, delirium, visual hallucinations, agitation, incoherence, aggressive behaviour, memory problems and "convulsive sobbing" as well as somatic symptoms and well, things like this incident.
A case study describes an 18-year-old male with no history of mental disorders who…
sb admin | November 16, 2007
Anti-drug ad parody that's also an anti-drug ad itself. This is Your Brain on Heroin: Any Questions?.
sb admin | November 12, 2007There's a revolutionary mental health claim in a hot new article - Therapeutic Efficacy of Cash in the Treatment of Anxiety and Depressive Disorders: Two Case Studies (e-pub ahead of print).
The first case report involves a man who was laid off and lost his pension; after treatment with various SSRIs and sedatives with numerous side effects, the patient came into the office free of depressive symptoms. He claimed to have won the lottery, which fMRI brain scans [shown here] confirmed with evidence of a complete remission. In the second case, a single mother of four found her anxiety and…
sb admin | November 8, 2007
A depiction of delusional parasitosis in Dave Kellett's webcomic Sheldon. DP, a fixed delusion in which one believes s/he is infested with bugs despite no evidence, was famously described in Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. Superblogger and psychologist Vaughan Bell wrote a nice article on the subject, check it out.
Thanks again, Dave, for permission to share your comic (with slightly modified layout to make it blog-friendly).