Monday, April 30

Reviewed: Manufacturing Depression: A journey into the economy of melancholy by Gary Greenberg. Published by Harper's, May 2007, pg. 37.

Gary and I share a common theme in our lives. He, when that bible of The American Psychiatric Association is perused, comes up with Major Depression,according to the DSM. I haven't had such "luck" in my life, but I am taking happy pills. Of course, some of this so-called "depression" may be the result of several nurses, CNAs, and doctors(!) but that is beside the point.

He posits a central theory: that the value of antidepressive drugs are suspect. I must say that, at first, I found his theory questionable. But as I read, I found his arguments quite persuasive.

This,in sum, is what the psychiatrist does: blood and urine are taken, then the QIDS-SR and the Q-LES-Q-SF (psychiatric tests) are given. The name is impressive, but they have serious faults.

In sum, this is a good read.

Tuesday, April 24

You might find an interesting post in the website in the top of the Scholar review. Yeah, it's scholarly. Very scholarly. but it really is very interesting in its covering of the leptin levels. Imterestinly, these levels are deficient in both male-to-female and female-to-male subjects. m-to-f subjects had a rising rate, whereas f-to-m subjects rise to a peak after 6 months then fade off a bit 1 year into monitoring. However both mtf and ftm experience a significant rise.

Scholar hat off. See ya.

Saturday, April 21

ah....this finally worked! After quite a bit of work, the work of Blogger finally came through.

I will be meeting later today with a friend, someone who will give me some advice, as well as just sharing a hoot! Surprisingly, another friend, showed up. I didn't realize this at the time, but Dave withdrew from the faith himself. The Baha'i faith and his beliefs had just gone too far.

'Tis all for now.

Emily