“You Could Have Asked First…”

First person account: "freedom" means knowing you have a choice.

The following essay is my contribution to the First Person Accounts section of the Schizophrenia Bulletin. After a description of the development of my schizophrenic illness, I briefly address the issues of treatment noncompliance, institutionalization, and how they have affected my life. The main focus of my article is on personal control over the illness and on recognizing when medication is ...

Physicians, patients, and Facebook: Could you? Would you? Should you?

This article investigates the opinions of physicians and patients regarding the use of Facebook to communicate with one another about health-related issues. We analyzed 290 comments posted on online discussion boards and found that most (51.7%) were opposed to physicians being Facebook "friends" with patients and many (42%) were opposed to physicians having any kind of Facebook presence. Some b...

Positive involuntary autobiographical memories: You first have to live them

Involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are typically discussed in the context of negative memories such as trauma 'flashbacks'. However, IAMs occur frequently in everyday life and are predominantly positive. In spite of this, surprisingly little is known about how such positive IAMs arise. The trauma film paradigm is often used to generate negative IAMs. Recently an equivalent positive fi...

First you have to row a little boat.

Gastric Varices: First You Have to See Them

59 decompression with small diameter PTFE interposi-tion grafts. The confirmation of Sarfeh's experience of durable patency with the use of small diameter ringed PTFE interposition prosthetic grafts appears to have allayed residual reservations about this procedure. Further experience over more extended periods will be required to establish whether it will truly match the excellent long term pa...