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Nov 7, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
COMMENTARY“Nightmare begins responsibility.” –Michael S. Harper, MA, MFA (1938-2016)And so, the long, exhausting slog to the presidential election is finally over. It may sound cliched, but the people have indeed spoken.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
This article is a response to the article “Will Denial Make DSM’s Validity Problem Go Away? A Reply to Pies and Ruffalo” by Jani Kajanoja, MD, PhD, and Jussi Valtonen, PhD.
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Sep 10, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
Today, in late August,we sit by the lake,eat a tart orangeand watch sailboatsnavigatethe shifting winds. The season pivotsand bendsto the darkening north. The sailboats tackto what the seasonsends. At our feet,we find a maple leafof blazing orange-red,summer’s lifeno longer flowingin its veins. Our eyes meet,and for a moment,we hold our breath,stilledby this marriageof beauty and death. Back home,we glimpseour autumn facesin the hallway mirror. We sigh, then smileat what the seasonreflects.
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Sep 4, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
Imagine that you and your traveling companion are touring the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii. Your historically uninformed companion asks you, “So, what caused the destruction of Pompeii?” You reply that an erupting volcano in 79 AD was the cause, and you go on to describe its features: the expulsion of gases, rock fragments, and molten lava spewing from within the Earth through a vent onto the Earth’s surface.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
This article is a response to the article “Descriptive Labels Are Not Causes, No Matter How Hard You Try: A Response to Pies and Ruffalo” by Jani Kajanoja, MD, PhD, and Jussi Valtonen, PhD. We thank Jani Kajanoja, MD, PhD, and Jussi Valtonen, PhD, for their thoughtful and vigorous rejoinder to our article. While we have many disagreements with their thesis, we know that our Finnish colleagues share with us the wish to provide the best possible care for our patients.
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Jun 26, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
COMMENTARYImagine that you and your traveling companion are touring the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii. Your historically uninformed companion asks you, “So, what caused the destruction of Pompeii?” You reply that an erupting volcano in 79 AD was the cause, and go on to describe its features: the expulsion of gases, rock fragments, and molten lava spewing from within the Earth through a vent onto the Earth’s surface.
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Jun 21, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
COMMENTARY“Above all, I must not play at God.” – from Louis Lasagna’s 1964 version of the Hippocratic Oath, the most commonly used version in medical schools todayA 29-year-old woman named Zoraya ter Beek was recently euthanized in the Netherlands. Ter Beek, who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder,1 among other things, had a history of chronic suicidality and self-injurious behavior.
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Apr 9, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
COMMENTARY “Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.” –Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace In my career as a psychopharmacology consultant for over 25 years, much of the advice I gave to consultees involved discontinuing unnecessary medications, or at least greatly reducing the dose—a practice now termed “deprescribing” and originally applied to geriatric medicine.1 Deprescribing is usually defined as “reduction or cessation of...
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Feb 21, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
COMMENTARY“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?”—Shakespeare, Macbeth to the Doctor in Act V scene iii.
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Jan 10, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Ronald Pies
COMMENTARY“An agnostic is someone who doesn’t know, and di- is a Greek prefix meaning ‘two.’ So ‘diagnostic’ means someone who doesn’t know twice as much as an agnostic doesn’t know.”–Walt Kelly, Pogo1Pogo’s quip aside, the etymology of the term diagnosis is critical to understanding what psychiatrists actually do, as contrasted with what some critics mistakenly believe we do. The term means, literally, “knowing the difference between” (dia, across or between; gnosis, knowledge or knowing).
