TDD: Mood Disorder or Personality Trait?

There is an interesting article at Psychiatric Times on the temper dysregulation disorder (TDD) controversy. Particularly, it is noted that TDD is classified as a mood disorder rather than a state of disordered personality development: In English, that asks whether we should put temper outbursts in with depression and other mood disorders (ie, in the [...]

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“Stop Whining!”: The Operant Approach to Pain Behavior

When reading my health psychology textbook, I came across something called the operant approach to treating pain. Well, more correctly, the operant approach treats pain behaviors. It utilizes a system of rewards and extinction (ignoring unwanted behavior) to lessen a patient’s pain behaviors, such as complaining of pain, refusing to perform physical activity, etc. In [...]

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Depersonalization Disorder in DSM-V

According to the current proposal for DSM-V, derealization – the feeling tht one’s surroundings are unreal -, will be classified as a specific dissociative disorder. That is, depersonalization disorder will be expanded to include derealization only as a possibility, and will be renamed depersonalization/drealization disorder. In DSM-IV, if someone has derealization only, they must be [...]

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Weekly Linklove for 02/18/2011

A day early, because I will be leaving for a week-end at my boyfriend’s at 5:00 PM, here is this week’s Linklove. s.e. smith at this ain’t livin’: Cuteifying Disability: Cuteification of disability was once championed and pretty widely used, to get people to be more accepting of people with disabilities and to enlarge ideas [...]

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My Truth on Dissociation and Childhood Trauma

In my previous post, I discussed whether I’m exaggerating the effects of my traumatic experiences. This is a common theme for survivors of trauma. Often, we’re either told or think ourselves that we exaggerate or make stuff up. When dissociative identity disorder complicates the matter, this is even worse. Some people deny that DID even [...]

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Psychological Report

Last week, I received a psychological report by someone from the Center for Consultation and Expertise, which gets involved when long-term care agencies can’t handle complex care needs, like apparently mine is. The consultant psychologist had spoken to me and my team, and had administered a few psychological questionnaires. She had also analyzed the information [...]

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It’s Okay to Be Questioning

Questioning is in a sense a sexual orientation, although it may also not be one, since someone who is questioning is, for whatever reason, unsure of what gender(s) they are attracted to, if any. It can also mean being unsure of whether one is asexual or sexual. Being questioning is developmentally typical in early adolescence, [...]

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Blogging as Advocacy

I recently participated in a research project on blogging and autistic self-adovcates. That got me thinking whether blogging is a form of advocacy. I write about autism, mental health, and disability, but does that constitute a way of advocating, either for myself or for others? There are some obvious examples of advocacy on my blog. [...]

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: DSM-IV and DSM-V

I have very recently been labeled with PTSD. I am not sure that I agree with this sort-of diagnosis – I’m not sure whether it’s an official diagnosis or not. I checked the DSM-IV criteria and unfortunately do seem to meet them. I was particularly reluctant to believe I avoid stimuli associated with the trauma, [...]

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Weekly Linklove for 02/12/2011

Nicholoas Hakalar at The New York Times: On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray from Lesson Plan: Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. [...]

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