One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the one where Elaine snoops inside her medical chart and reads “patient is difficult.” The doctor takes a look at her rash and says, “Well, this doesn’t look serious,” and writes something in the chart. “What are you writing?” she asks. He sneers and walks out the door....
“Were you frightened to have children with your history of suicidal depression?” a young woman asked me the other day. “Did you have to stop medication while you were pregnant?” In the last ten years writing about mental health issues, these two questions keep surfacing, especially among young women who dream of pushing a baby...
In order to “graduate” from the outpatient psychiatric program of Laurel Hospital in Maryland, we had demonstrate a certain level of competence at assertion skills or confrontation. It’s no wonder why it took me three times longer to be discharged than the other patients. One day an older woman sat in the middle of the...
“You,” he said, “are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.” That quote belongs in Emilie Autumn’s psychological thriller novel, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls. I used it a few months ago in a post to describe Robin Williams and...
I’m reading “50 Shades of Grey.” It’s come to that. I’m not very far, just at the elevator scene when they finally kiss. It’s the safest, cheapest, easiest solution so far that I’ve found to my problem: a libido that exists somewhere on the back of a milk carton (missing). This problem isn’t new, of course....
