Hot MedFax

Would you be more likely to go to a therapist if you could do it over the phone?  I'm not talking about dial-a-shrink, but an actual appointment you had every week for an hour, just not in person but over the phone? "Teletherapy's" been around for a while.  I remember writing about it last year when it came to prisons (and really helped), but it's taken a while to get into the mainstream.  (I also remember reporting on all the dot coms who thought therapy could be done online, with patients -- or "clients," as they're now called -- posting questions and a specific therapist answering.  We saw how well that worked out!) But teletherapy is gaining new ground, according to Audrey Quinn at smartplanet.com, and one therapist has even partnered with 50 other therapists in a variety of fields and she will soon bring that number up to 100 to do this very thing. TalkSession was recently chosen by GE Ventures and Startup Health Academy to participate i...

Thumbing through The New York Times this afternoon, I came across a story about how hair salons are becoming the new "seats of power." Hair stylists have known for years the intricate, intimate facts of their clients' lives.  What else are you gonna do, sitting in that chair for an hour? I've heard that that's how many women finally wind up telling about domestic violence in their lives. It made me think of my husband, a dentist, who also finds himself hearing stories about divorce, estranged children, fatal diseases, run-amok kids, and truly tragic stories, almost every day. I'll admit, it's hard to talk with those tools in your mouth, but somehow people still confide the most amazing things to him. One of his toughest patients, a burly, brusque NYC transit worker, told him how his heart was breaking because his girlfriend's 5-year-old grandson was moving with his mom and dad to Florida and he would never get to see him. Another, one he's ha...

There's hope for those who would be violent.  Thomas Insel, the U.S. mental health chief, said yesterday that the risk of violent behavior "drops 15-fold for people who receive treatment for psychosis," compared to those who do not, according to a story at Healthwatch, THE HILL'S healthcare blog. How do we get them into treatment before they commit a crime, though?  Those with mental illness are notoriously resistant to treatment and even Adam Lanza, who massacred 20 beautiful children in Newtown last month, was reportedly angry that his mother was about to commit him, and that's why he went on his murderous rampage. No one will ever know for sure, and Insel is not saying treatment would have helped Lanza, or prevented the tragedy, but, according to the story, the risk of potential violence multiplies the longer psychosis goes untreated. The scary truth is that one in five people in this country suffer from mental illness.  Not all of it is psychosis, of co...