Fear of being involved in a malpractice lawsuit has spawned various defensive attitudes and behaviors in physicians. Despite the relative low rate of malpractice suits against psychiatrists, they too engage in defensive medicine. Simon's and Shuman's paper reviews the hidden danger to clinical care that defensive psychiatric practices can pose to both patients and doctors. This commentary furth...

Long before vertebrates first appeared, protists, plants and animals had evolved diverse, effective systems of innate immunity. Ancestors of the vertebrates utilized components of the complement system, protease-inhibitors, metal-binding proteins, carbohydrate-binding proteins and other plasma-born molecules as humoral agents of defense. In these same animals, immunocytes endowed with a reperto...

Tuliposides, the glucose esters of 4-hydroxy-2-methylenebutanoate and 3,4-dihydroxy-2-methylenebutanoate, are major secondary metabolites in tulip (Tulipa gesneriana). Their lactonized aglycons, tulipalins, function as defensive chemicals due to their biological activities. We recently found that tuliposide-converting enzyme (TCE) purified from tulip bulbs catalyzed the conversion of tuliposide...

We consider how to make probability forecasts of binary labels. Our main mathematical result is that for any continuous gambling strategy used for detecting disagreement between the forecasts and the actual labels, there exists a forecasting strategy whose forecasts are ideal as far as this gambling strategy is concerned. A forecasting strategy obtained in this way from a gambling strategy demo...

Depending on threat proximity, different defensive behaviours are mediated by a descending neural network involving forebrain (distal threat) vs midbrain areas (proximal threat). Compared to healthy subjects, it can be assumed that phobics are characterized by shortened defensive distances on a behavioural and neural level. This study aimed at characterizing defensive reactivity in two subtypes...

Defensive practice has received attention through the Munro review of child protection, which has identified that current organisational cultures increase the likelihood of defensive practice. Whilst the wider socio-political climate that gives rise to defensive practice has been explored within the literature, little attention has been paid to the everyday realities of defensive practice. This...

Claiming or creating obstacles before performing important tasks (i.e., self-handicapping) is a costly strategy to protect the self from implications of poor outcomes. We predicted that forming an if–then plan (implementation intention) helps individuals overcome their performance-related worries and thus prevents self-handicapping behavior. In two experiments, all participants formed the goal ...

This paper suggests that our intuitive use and understanding of the concepts defence and safety can be opened up to more systematic study and theory. This may provide a powerful framework for biopsychosocial approaches in clinical psychology. Defence and safety can be seen as two fundamental, evolutionary adaptive, information-organizing systems. The operation of these two systems has major eff...

I have just made a complaint to an electricity company. We recently moved house, changed our supplier, and needed to pay off a small final sum to the company. Because of a glitch in their online payment system, it proved impossible to do this. After receiving a threat to send bailiffs round, I finally managed to speak to someone in the debts department, and paid the bill. I also suggested they ...

Therapeutic risk management of clinical-legal dilemmas achieves an optimal alignment between clinical competence and an understanding of legal concerns applicable to psychiatric practice. Understanding how psychiatry and law interact in frequently occurring clinical situations is essential for effective patient care. Successful management of clinical-legal dilemmas also avoids unnecessary, coun...