Posts in the category «Psychiatry, Psychology, Medicine & Mental Health» :

Gaza Healthcare Workers are Facing Horrific Conditions

Reports of another deadly attack on Al-Shifa hospital are all over the news, but I just want to highlight what really caught my attention. The current working conditions for the medical staff there. I can't even imagine how medics can work for months while they are under attack. Let alone what is being reported as the situation at the moment:

Speaking to the BBC over the weekend, Dr Mutaz Harara said: “The medical staff here …

Book Review: Inflamed Mind - A Radical New Approach to Depression by Ed Bullmore

Book Cover

I enjoyed parts of Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by Edward Bullmore. It is very well written and has some good parts on the history of psychiatry.

However, I was disappointed by the way he presented his main thesis that inflammation is the main causative mechanism in major depression. His argument isn't very convincing and he doesn't provide evidence that is solid enough to support this. There is also a major straw …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Data Organisation (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a series on data organisation. Which is part of a multi-series of posts on digital resources for mental health professionals.

Tags

Tags are non-hierarchical way of organising your data. The keywords you use to describe your data are on the same level. They became very popular with social bookmarking around 2004. Many systems offer tagging as an option when editing the metadata of your files.

Tags offer flexibility in classifying …

أزمة الأدوية مستمرة

للأسف لازالت أدوية كثيرة ناقصة من السوق حتى الآن والمشكلة تتفاقم بسبب الأزمة الاقتصادية الحالية.

  • 💊 أغلب الأدوية المستوردة أصبحت شبه مستحيل الحصول عليها
  • 💉 لا يوجد جنيس مصري الصنع لكل الأدوية المستوردة
  • 🇪🇬 بعض الأدوية المصنعة في مصر غير متوفرة في الأغلب "بسبب ارتفاع تكلفة مدخلات الإنتاج"
  • 🩺 الأزمة ممتدة للمستلزمات الطبية كالخيوط الجراحية ومستلزمات غسيل الكلى وغيرها مما تسبب في "تراكم قوائم انتظار العمليات"
  • 😷 البعض يلجئ للسوق السوداء للحصول على الأدوية والمستلزمات الطبية بأسعار مضاعفة مع عدم …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Data Organisation (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a series on data organisation. Which is part of a multi-series of posts on digital resources for mental health professionals.

File Names

Naming files in a consistent and logical way can help you stay organised. You should:

  • avoid relying on your memory,
  • be able to preserve your ability to recognise your files years from now.

First I would like to introduce you to the ISO date format. This is a …

Two Memoirs I Recommend to Psychiatrists

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 …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Data Organisation (Part 1)

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.

😳 The way people organise their files can be very surprising.

In a place where I used to work, there was a colleague who was responsible for writing and handing out medical certificates to patients. These certificates are a one-page document containing basic information and the length of treatment.

She saved …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Safety and Security (Part 4)

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 …

AI, Health Care and MENA

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 …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Safety and Security (Part 3)

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 …