Monthly Archives: May 2012

Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM: "… when there is an opportunity to speak truth to power, I hope you will consider doing it."

Posting this on my virtual bulletin board:

A Note to My Younger Colleagues. . .Be Brave

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the strong forces that steer us into conformity, and Dr Krumholz has much to say about that. And he quotes a colleague, Victor Montori:

If you find yourself with some time (not a lot), let me recommend Letters to a Young Contrarian by Hitchens.1 His argument that clarity emerges from conflict is compelling. And for conflict to emerge, ie for clarity to emerge, someone has to take a position. The question you ask is whether this should be you, now, and at this stage of your career.

If you learn by critical analysis and thinking, if you share the results of this thinking with passion and honesty, you will find fertile ground for growth. This may not happen with certain people or in certain places but will happen. 

"If You’re Not Pissing Someone Off, You’re Probably Not Innovating"

via @ASE


by Philip Auerswald

If You’re Not Pissing Someone Off, You’re Probably Not Innovating

I’d like to add: If you express ideas that are off the grid of normality, a no-response of silent blankness might not mean that you’ve said something stupid, it might mean that there are no receptors for what you’re saying.


You’re not pissing them off, they’re blanking you out.

"… how #Occupy Wall St has affected #psychiatry & #mentalhealth"

Via @Dr_Tad

Op-Ed: Reflections on the 2012 Radical Caucus Meeting

 Excerpt:

“Part of the reason that the AACP members of the Radical Caucus were defensive is that they think they have been trying to live up to recovery concerns. There are two main problems with being too self-congratulatory here. The first is the way that recovery has been taken up is largely controlled by psychiatrists rather than consumers themselves. It is the psychiatrists, powerful budget administrators, and increasingly big pharma marketers who are having disproportionate influence on how consumers can participate and picking which consumers are appropriate. That means many activists are increasingly wary about the way that “recovery” is being adopted. Second, and more to the point of this meeting, the psychiatric activists at this meeting were not talking about recovery. They were talking about coercion and forced treatment.
For whatever reason, and I’m not sure I completely understand it (although of course I can weave a story around it if I have to), psychiatrists, even radicals and AACP members, were unable to hear these concerns. It wasn’t like the activists were hard to understand. They were being very clear, even willing to go to dramatics, to help people know that to their minds the most important issue for the meeting was forced treatment. And, in view of the 100 year monologue of experts, why shouldn’t the activists get to decide what is most important?”