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Bipolar disorder affects between one and two per cent of the adult population
Many of us have a friend or family member we wonder about because they seem to shift unpredictably from one mood to another. We are often worried or in awe of them because they can be on a high one day and despondent the next. While it certainly isn’t always the case, people like this…
Psychotic episodes can occur for a variety of reasons, not all of them having to do with mental illness
Hallucinations and delusions are the first things many people imagine when they hear about mental illness. They think of people who hear voices, see imaginary people or think they are someone they’re not. While hallucinations and delusions are not the hallmark of every mental illness, they can occur as a symptom of several disorders. Schizophrenia…
A patient sometimes perceives a positive result, even from a fake drug
Medical knowledge and treatments have advanced more quickly in the last 50 years than ever before, but the powerful effects of placebo treatments are still reported and are not fully understood. Simply put, a placebo is a medicine or medical treatment that has no active pharmacological ingredient. The term often refers to the inactive treatments…
Sufferers twice as likely to die of accidental causes as people without
Although awareness has increased steadily for the past several years, there is still a lot of misinformation circulating about Attention Deficit and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADD/ADHD). This common disorder, which affects many school-aged children, is not only a childhood condition. While many believe it is a condition children grow out of, experience shows that…
The good news is strategic thinking can be nurtured
I once started working with a leader who suddenly found herself on the executive team. A corporate restructuring resulted in skipping a level and now she is sitting around the table asking, ‘am I strategic enough to do this job?’ Her question is not unique. Twenty years of developing leaders has taught me there are…
Childhood abuse or neglect can permanently alter an individual’s physiology
In my last column, I pointed out that nature and nurture should not be regarded as enemies or polar opposites. Rather, they are two intertwined realities that work together to make up the human experience. Nature was designed for nurture. Many studies in recent years have documented the effects that early childhood experience can have…
It is becoming increasingly clear that our genes influence everything from our personality traits to specific psychiatric disorders
Nature has been pitted against nurture for centuries. People have always pondered the question of whether human behaviour is primarily dictated by genetic hard-wiring or by our experiences and environmental factors. The debate has lasted so long because we know comparatively little about the functioning of the human brain. As a result, disorders of the…
If you think you suffer from a mental illness, resist succumbing to stigma and ask your doctor about getting treatment
Getting treatment for a mental illness is often a lot more difficult than simply calling up your doctor and making an appointment. For many people it involves a painful process of accepting that they have a problem and being willing to expose themselves. Many people who come to be treated for the first time say…
Being offered a promotion or a chance to do something new at work may be your dream come true. But is it?
Being offered a promotion or a chance to do something new at work may be your dream come true. But is every opportunity a good one? Before you jump and say ‘yes’ ask yourself these five questions. Why me? Organizations re-assign people for a variety of reasons. Brent took two back-to-back ‘Acting’ roles and was…
Dr. Paul Latimer helps minimize some of the misconceptions about seeking psychiatric help
It seems that practically every person who comes in for treatment has a different idea of what constitutes psychiatry and what they should expect when seeing a psychiatrist. Many stereotypical impressions of psychiatry arise out of television shows or books. In these stories, patients are portrayed lying prostrate on a couch, delving into the deep…