This is a forest plot. It is looking at normalized or standardized mean differences of improvement between computerized CBT and controls. The controls are not specified. And if you look at it, you get a significant improvement if you do computerized CBT. This, to a busy clinician or clinical team, sounds very attractive. Computers are cheap, work 24 hours a day, and go nowhere. They … Read More →
DSM-5 is not as user friendly as ICD-10.
One of my duties is to teach psychiatrists-in-training. In AUstralia and NZ, this is a five-year process that takes most people seven (or more) years: there are cases to write, experiences to log (which include quite a lot of talking therapy) and the technique and evidence for treating psychiatric disorders has to be formally taught. And this led to a dilemma. I reviewed the draft … Read More →
Mice, obesity and bugs.
THis is from PNAS. In short, obesity seems to be modulated in mice fed a high fat diet by a bacterium. Reduce the bacterial count, and the mice thin out. From the abstract Obesity and type 2 diabetes are characterized by altered gut microbiota, inflammation, and gut barrier disruption. Microbial composition and the mechanisms of interaction with the host that affect gut barrier function during … Read More →
I made the press.
I was interviewed a couple of weeks ago and then forgot it. They got my job wrong (I’m a psychiatrist not a psychologist — They got that wrong.) I forgot that they talked to me for 30 minutes until a colleague said I was quoted in the university bulletin. Anyway, from Stuff. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a serious illness that society has made fashionable, says an … Read More →
Economic quotage (I hate makework)
Cathy Odgers on women being shareholders not over-educated board slaves. Maori and women now have as equal chance as white boys from Kings of getting to University should they study hard and pass exams. Standardised testing means we can be measured against these little elitist mollycoddled arsewipes from a very young age. Once at University though women study fiscally worthless subjects guaranteed to ensure they … Read More →
Tools for this period — not administration.
Hat tip Zero Hedge and Sovereign Man. Online privacy is becoming more important by the day. And nobody is going to give it to you, you have to take steps yourself to secure it. Below are five different tools and services that will get you started: 1. Tor Browser Tor is a great weapon in the fight for online anonymity as it allows you to … Read More →
Good advice now: bad soon.
This is the time of the night when I either talk economics or politics. And politics is disconnected from real life. As is this comment. Now, before I start, in a social welfare state, this is sort of good advice. It is not great advice: the article it is based on was more conventional, and I will comment on it later. But if you have … Read More →
TC, comments, stats
I try to keep the tracking statistics for this place up and available. Sitemeter, however, is very sensitive to where its code is and moving away from the default theme structure (which I have done) has led to this falling over. Again. So I have added Statcounter, and the stats are linked on the blogroll. TC generally has comments closed. The authors can open comments … Read More →
A small technical post, including fedora 18 beta.
Fedora 18 is almost out. I installed the beta onto a laptop a couple of days ago. The new version of anaconda looks pretty and worked well — until I did something clever, which was try to use cinnamon as my desktop environment. That was broken on install. In the end I installed kde-openbox and that worked. Whenever you do a fresh install of fedora … Read More →
On the new logo.
I have just deleted a commentary on the multiple changes in the site today. I have been trying to balance readabilty with navigability. The last theme kept on sticking a post in a second column, or added ugly heads… So I moved to Aesthetica. And that allowed me to again use a logo. So I found this one. According to the Presbyterian Archives this was … Read More →
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