On the blog for America, I have written about the sad fact that the number of suicides in the United States military exceeded the number of casualties due to warfare last year and the publication of a special issue of the American Psychologist examines this. The current issue of the American Psychologist is devoted to […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.In the fourth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR), there are separate categories for substance abuse and substance dependence. Writing in Counseling Today, the magazine of the American Counseling Association, K. Dale Jones notes that in the upcoming DSM V it is likely that these two categories will be eliminated […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Under the direction of Dr. Stefan de Schill, covering the period January 1, 1949, to December 31, 1959, a research study was conducted regarding some 18,000 patients. This was a follow-up study of individuals not accepted for treatment by the Psychoanalytic Center, Inc., the then-clinical arm of AMHF. The subjects either appeared personally, or applied […]
By: Evander LomkeMost readers here probably acknowledge the existence of ADHD: as something they themselves suffer from or as something they know as “true” from its presence in a family member or close friend. Yet it is interesting that a case needs to be made for the existence of this problem. Dr. Perri Klass does so in […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.For nearly the past 60 years, the psychiatric profession has published a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual describing different mental conditions that are treated by psychiatrists. The first manual was spiral bound and was made up of fewer than 80 pages. DSM IV has become a major reference work, with hundreds of pages and many auxiliary […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Karen Smith, writing in AMERICA, reports on President Obama’s talk at the beginning of the month in Atlanta, Georgia at the convention of the Disabled Veterans of America. After World War II, the country had built an impressive system of health care for Veteran’s. They had excellent clinical psychology training opportunities available for clinical psychology. […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.Although Monk and Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good as It Gets brought smiles as well as sympathy to those who never heard of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and even a certain peacefulness among OCD sufferers that, finally, their peers might see them not as weird but as true persons, a sad reality remains. Obsessive […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY: “All Kinds of Things Affected by the Brain” Simone Collymore, PhD, is a neuropsychologist in Kingston, New York, one of the few practitioners in the Hudson Valley of this specialty involving psychology and brain science. Whereas other specialists that study the brain by necessity use tools that may have less-than-helpful side effects, Collymore’s craft […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.
The profession of psychiatry is now in the fourth edition of the book that classifies mental disorders: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV. The revised version will be published in 2013, and there continues to be debate about what will and will not be included. The New York Times brings this and a spirited discussion in […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.In all disciplines, it is good to study history. This is especially important in the mental-health field. In our efforts to be up to date, we overlook very helpful achievements from the past; and these can be helpful in creating new advances. The term Intelligence Quotient (IQ) has carried extra baggage since it was devised […]
By: William Van Ornum, Ph.D.
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