Should Impusle Control Disorders and Conduct Disorders Be Classified Under the Same Category?

The DSM-V workgroup proposes to include impulse control disorders and conduct or disruptive behavior disorders in the same category. This implies, in my opinion, that there is something intrinsically similar among these conditions. Now I am personally strongly opposed to this connotation, as I was originally diagnosed with impulse control disorder NOS in 2008, and [...]

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Study Blames Childhood Behavior Problems for Victimization to Abuse

Back in 2005 and 2006, before I was diagnosed with autism, I always used to wonder how my emotional and behavior problems related to the things I’d gone through as a child. I always assumed there was a reciprocal connection, but generally assumed, apparently correctly given my diagnosis, that my behavior problems were there first. [...]

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What Shall We Do With Irritable Adults?

When searching PubMedCentral for articles relevant to the proposed diagnosis of temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria, I came across an interesting paper discussing controveries in the current DSM diagnosis of irritability. Temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria, or its alternative name, severe mood dysregulation, was not mentioned, but a number of interesting issues were discussed, especially [...]

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Reasons Patients Act Up (Other Than Just Being Ill)

A few days ago, Cellar Door of “Not Another Nursing Student Blog…” wrote about some personal frustrations, thereby reminding me that mental nurses feel bad, too. Of course, staff have to keep a professional distance, and therefore are unlikely to discuss their own personal problems with their patients. Doing so could leave a burden on [...]

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The Illogical Assumption about the Relation of Behavior to Mental State

I’ve probably written about this a million times, but I’ve been particularly frustrated by this over the last few days, so I’m going to rant again: good behavior does NOT alwyas mean you’re fine! Of course, the equation wouldn’t be as bad as it is now if it ran both ways. If behavior were assumed [...]

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“Attention-Seeking”: It’s Not Just Schizophrenia

I am currently reading an inspiring book by Norwegian psychologist Arnhild Lauveng, in which she writes about her experiences with and recovery from schizophrenia. Although in the Dutch media the book is touted as a curebie success story, this doesn’t seem to be the main theme really. Actually, Lauveng didn’t use chelation, high doses of [...]

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BADD Behavior: Disablism in Psychiary

Note: in the process of writing this BADD post, it has taken a different turn than I’d initially intended. As I reread it, I feel that it may come across like I’m targeting specific people, eg. my former social worker, with my criticism. This was not my original intention. Rather, I was meaning to write [...]

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The Paradox of Psychiatric Hospitals and Tolerance for Non-Hamrful Quirks

A few days ago, I got in big trouble because I’d allegedly offended other patients by telling them to shut up when they kept talking to themselves (they’re psychotic so apparently can’t help this behavior). One other incident that I was at first reprimanded for was later found to be provoked when the nurse heard [...]

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When They Say “Danger” and Mean “Inconvenience”

Quite often, I’ve heard doctors and nurses here use the words “safety” and “danger” when really they seemed to mean “quietness” and “inconvenience”. An example is when the doctor told me about the time-out policy and said she wanted to talk about safety. While there’d been one safety incident a few days before the policy [...]

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Thoughts about Expressing Emotions

Since being on the psychiatric ward, I’ve been accused of throwing objects for fun, or being funny about serious issues such as suicidal ideation, because I had a smile on my face when coming to the nurse. And today, I laughed a short while after a fellow patient had told us he has cancer. In [...]

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