I enjoyed reading both My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor and Brain on Fire My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan. Both books recount their authors' lived experiences with quite severe and acute neurological conditions. Taylor had a haemorrhagic stroke and Cahalan had anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

I picked up Taylor's book while supporting a family member in hospital. I must say I really enjoyed reading her account of what happened on the day …

This is part 1 of a series on data organisation. Which is part of a multi-series of posts on digital resources for mental health professionals.

This is part 4 of a series on digital safety and security for mental health professionals, read part 1, part 2, part 3.

Losing data can be frustrating. I've learnt the hard way that syncing data to another computer or to a cloud provider (e.g. Dropbox) is not a good way of backing up data. Corruption in a single file can spread to synced copies¹.

3-2-1 Backup Strategy

My search for backup software …

في العشر سنوات الماضية، تم بناء عدد قياسي من الطرق السريعة خارج وداخل المدن وتوسعة عدد كبير من الطرق السريعة لإضافة المزيد من الحارات، أدت إضافة المزيد من الحارات إلى زيادة السرعة على الطرق.

أدى ذلك إلى زيادة الاعتماد على السيارات، مما أدى إلى تغيير شكل المدينة وتخطيطها، فتم بناء المزيد من المجتمعات العمرانية البعيدة مما زاد مسافات التنقل، وتم تخصيص المزيد من الأراضي للطرق السريعة.

قُطعت الأشجار لتوسعة الطرق وهدمت منازل الفقراء لزيادة …

I have updated the bookmarks section of this website. It used to be a single TiddlyWiki HTML file that displayed all my bookmarks (3900+) which was easy for me to setup but didn't make sense that each visitor would be served a 5MB file just to browse my bookmarks.

I still use TiddlyWiki to store my bookmarks on my devices but I managed to export a CSV of all the bookmarks and put together a …

I was invited to attend the annual workshop by the AUC's Access to Knowledge for Development Center A2K4D.

I was in the audience of a panel titled Data Governance for AI in the Health Sector which was more about data unavailability than AI. Prof. Fatima Roumate raised an important point about the sovereignty of data and systems, Meriem Ben Tarjem addressed the emigration of doctors as being one of the most pressing issues in Tunisian …

This is part 3 of a series on digital safety and security for mental health professionals, read part 1, part 2.

Encrypted Communication

End-to-end encryption (E2EE)¹ is a welcome layer of security for communicating with patients. Signal was the first IM application to offer this. Signal is also very good for audio and video calls.

Whatsapp offers E2EE but it is developed by Meta which is not to be trusted.

Try to set Whatsapp …

This is part 2 of a series on digital safety and security for mental health professionals, read part 1 here.

Password Managers

• 🖥️ Always use a password manager. They help you generate very secure passwords.
• 🗂️ Create a different password for each account. Reusing passwords between services is unsafe. For example, if you reuse a password between a social network and email. If one of them is compromised, these passwords will be traded online and attackers will …

As psychiatrists we are required by law to keep our patients' information confidential. Knowing that their data is secure, patients feel comfortable disclosing personal details crucial for accurate diagnosis and treatment.

According to where you work you are required to follow certain laws regarding data protection. In Egypt, things are limited. We depend on paper records and IT departments aren't as resourceful. Occasionally you have to write a medical report on your laptop. Sometimes, patients …

يتواصل معي مرضى مصريون مقيمين في الخارج لحجز جلسات عبر الإنترنت للكشف والعلاج، والسبب المتكرر في طلب المساعدة هو شعور المرضى بأن طبيب نفسي من خارج ثقافتهم لن يستطيع مساعدتهم.

وبالرغم من انتشار الجلسات عبر الإنترنت بعد الجائحة وتقبل المرضى لها وظهور أدلة على فاعليتها في تقليل أعراض الإكتئاب وقدرتها على مساعدة المريض على الإلتزام بالعلاج إلا أنني لا أستطيع الكشف على مرضى خارج جمهورية مصر العربية لأسباب التالية:

• روشتة العلاج لن تقبل …