Tag: mental health

Steven Lange (13 Posts)

Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member

Albany Medical College

Steven attends Albany Medical College as a student of the Class of 2017. Raised in Queens, New York, he earned a BA in English with a minor in Biology from Binghamton University in May 2013. Some of his interests include poetry, martial arts, traveling, and continental philosophy. He is currently aspiring to become a radiologist.

LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy: Reopening the Doors of Perception

Published by Steven Lange

After a nearly 40-year moratorium, a controlled study of the therapeutic use of LSD in humans has been published in The Journal of Neural and Mental Disease after the pioneering work of Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser. Sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and approved by the BAG (the Swiss Drug Enforcement Agency), the study has completed treatment of all subjects after having enrolled its first patient in April of 2008. Many hallucinogens, such as psilocybin and MDMA, are being investigated today for their clinical benefits as a result of a gradual effort to reexamine the pharmacologic and psychiatric interests in hallucinogens.

Wounded Healers

Published by Ajay Koti

Kaitlyn Elkins was a medical student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina and a member of the Class of 2015. She excelled academically, named the valedictorian of her high school class and graduating summa cum laude from Campbell University. She wrote poetry in her free time. She had a cat, lovingly named Gatito. On April 11, 2013, just weeks before beginning her clinical rotations, Kaitlyn Elkins took her own life. She left …

Breaking the Barriers to Mental Health Diagnoses

Published by Jennifer Evan

As second year winds down and I approach the ultimate exam of medical school, Step 1 of the USMLE, I have spent a lot of time in reflection, and on one stark dichotomy in particular. The vast majority of medicine that we studied has been physical; we study the art of physical diagnosis in order to best assess our patients’ pains and murmurs and abrasions, leading to verifiable diagnoses. In addition, we have objective blood work showing …

Worry

Published by Toral Patel

A frail man leaned against the wall, Gasping for breath, afraid to fall. The rest of him shivered in panic at the thought A heart attack, perhaps or a stroke, blood clot? “I must be going crazy,” repeated his heartbeat. “I must try to calm down and take a seat.” The doctors marched in with the test results and all, They lined up against the opposite wall. Explained to the patient the source of …

Poor Communication in Multidisciplinary Teams Harms Patient Safety: An Experience on the Wards

Published by Emily Wu

Location: Surgery inpatient floor Time: 6:00 a.m. Surgery morning rounds began: “Ms. A, your MRI shows you have colorectal cancer, so we plan to take you to the OR for surgery tomorrow. Alright, see you later,” said my surgery attending, who rushed out of Ms. A’s room right after he abruptly dropped this shocking news. Inside the room, Ms. A, a fragile, bony 75-year-old lady, was laying on her bed with her eyes full of …

Trust: Half the Battle in Effective Health Care Delivery

Published by Qing Meng Zhang

It was a sunny and cloudless September day, the weather still warm enough for T-shirts and shorts. Sitting by a round table decorated with poster board and flyers, I was providing mental health awareness and education at a health fair. The site was sandwiched between the bustling highways south of downtown Chicago and the Chicago River — the outskirts of Chinatown. All around me crowded small storefronts and narrow roads, a sharp contrast to the …

Dishing Out Those Inner Demons: Finding Strength in the Medical Student Community

Published by Nita Chen, MD

Sometimes, I wonder why I am here. Walking this path of medicine, to be specific. It always fascinated me what drove people in life. For some, the joy of spinning creative fabrics of fictional words satisfied; for some, raising and guiding children through the thorns of life serves as the pinnacle of existence; for others, the simple necessities of life and health are solely sufficient. For medical students, I feel like this can be a …

Keeping The Night At Bay: Medicine and Suicide

Published by Jocelyn Mary-Estelle Wilson

“How do we [become a society that produces people] that are young and beautiful and hate themselves?” – Dr. John Green “Well, I always say, it would be good to go away. But if things don’t work out like we think And there’s nothing here to ease the ache But it there’s nothing there to make things change If it’s the same for you I’ll just hang.” – Matchbox Twenty I finished reading “Night Falls …

How Medical School Taught Me to Put Studying Second

Published by Samuel Scott

You know you have a problem when you can’t fall asleep at night. That’s where I was nearing at the end of anatomy in my first year of medical school. I couldn’t sleep because I was terrified of what the next day held. My sympathetic nervous system was on full alert, ready to handle the next day. The only thing between the next day and me was a night of sleep that seemed harder and …

A Mind Based Approach to Addiction Treatment

Published by Ozan Toy

Addiction is a chronic illness characterized by the use of a psychogenic substance despite negative consequences associated with its use. Biological dependence is marked by cravings, increased dose and/or frequency of use due to tolerance, and withdrawal symptoms upon cessation of substance abuse. Addicts gain pleasure via the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is released from the ventral tegmental area of the brain and into the nucleus accumbens. This reward encourages and solidifies the addictive behavior and …

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover: A Complex Twist in a Patient with Diabetic Ketoacidosis

Published by Manik Aggarwal

Here was a 45-year-old Type 1 diabetic who presented to the emergency department in a near coma with diabetic ketoacidosis. The diagnosis seemed clear as day, with some of the classic presenting signs: polyuria, polydipsia, hyperglycemia, high anion gap, low serum bicarbonate and presence of ketones in the urine. She was admitted and treated appropriately. Once she was stabilized, the human interaction and history-taking began, which proved to be far more convoluted. She thoroughly explained …

Yoga and Medicine: What Med Students Should Know About this Ancient Health Practice

Published by Jennie Barnes

Why should future physicians know about yoga? Yoga is an ancient health science based on the experimental and experiential. The physical postures and meditative practices of yoga developed through thousands of years of intent study of the body’s responses to particular postures and meditations. Many patients have already caught on to yoga as a form of mental and physical self-care and preventive health. If we adequately understand yoga, we can seize an opportunity to encourage the …

Jennie Barnes (1 Posts)

Contributing Writer Emeritus

Mayo Medical School

Jennie is a Class of 2015 Mayo Med student interested (so far) in OBGYN and family medicine. She grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota and attended college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (go Tarheels!) where she studied women's health, medical anthropology and Spanish. When not in class or clinic, Jennie likes to practice yoga, run, bike, and generally just be outside, experiment with new recipes, throw dinner parties, and spend time with her husband-to-be. Fun facts: Jennie was also a competitive figure skater and a birth doula before med school.