It’s time for physicians to talk to patients about driving while distracted, a problem that has risen to the rough equivalence of drunken driving thanks to the proliferation of phones that allow drivers to talk and text, Amy Ship, MD, a primary care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests.
Writing in the June 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Ship notes physicians routinely ask patients about habits associated with potential harm like the use of helmets, seatbelts, cigarettes, condoms, drugs and alcohol. And with data showing 28 percent of all accidents in the United States are caused by drivers talking on cell phones or texting, it’s time to step into this issue too. [continue reading…]
Despite available information, parents are little aware of concussion risks but support school policies to minimize them; most know other parents who would have young athletes return to play too soon
With growing media attention to concussions among athletes young and old, and recent actions of the National Football League to reduce dangers from multiple concussions among its players, the spotlight is now on what schools are doing to protect their student-athletes. Do parents feel that their kids are safe, and do parents agree with school policies?
The latest C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health finds that nearly two-thirds of parents of young athletes, ages 12 – 17, worry that their children will get a concussion while playing school sports—yet half don’t know if their children’s school has a concussion policy.
Depression is one of the most common forms of psychiatric disorder. It can occur at any time of life and it may affect children and adolescents as well as the elderly. However, depression can usually be suitably managed with the help of cognitive behavioral therapy. Researchers based at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have been able to demonstrate both the efficacy and the extent of the beneficial effect of routine psychotherapeutic treatment for depression. Although controlled clinical studies have already shown that behavioral therapy is extremely effective in depressive disorders, there were still doubts among professionals that the results of this research could be directly applied to the kinds of routine therapy that could be provided in the environment of the normal psychotherapy practice. “We have been able to prove that behavioral therapy is also of considerable value under these conditions,” states psychologist Amrei Schindler of the Outpatient Policlinic for Psychotherapy of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “Although our results were not quite as positive as those reported from randomized controlled trials.”
Yesterday’s NYT Mind over Mass Media – Steven Pinker does a great job of addressing the debate that the internet has a negative effect on cognitive functioning.
Yes, the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to people with attention deficit disorder. But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your Blackberry at dinner time, ask your spouse to call you to bed at a designated hour.
And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet. continue reading
