By Dr. David Laing Dawson After recent blogs and comments I thought I would try applying the disease model or the medical concept of disease to the problem of addiction and see if it helps. The modern medical concept of disease evolved within the 19th century through the 20th. The basic idea is that if a number of people suffer a similar or identical set of symptoms/ailments then perhaps what helps (treats successfully) one person would help the other sufferers as well, and the cause or etiology of this specific ailment might be the same for all. Similarities of symptoms, signs, course, and ou ..read more

By Marvin Ross Not sure about any of you, but I’m not interested discussing my mental state with a computer even though, in 2021, companies that focus on mental health managed to get five billion dollars in funding for their artificial intelligence (AI) ventures. That, according to the New Yorker magazine, is more than double the funding for any other medical issue. It’s a bandwagon that is reminiscent of the money that poured into cannabis in Canada when it was being legalized. A report in December 2022 pointed out that medical pot has been a bloodbath for investors. In addition to the proble ..read more

By Marvin Ross Peer support is considered the flavour of the month in treating those with mental illness yet the research on its efficacy is negative. In an era where evidence based medicine is supposed to dictate what should be best practices in the care and treatment of patients, this is very out of character and concerning. In 2019, the Cochrane Review conducted an evaluation of peer support but was unable to demonstrate its value. For those unfamiliar with Cochrane it is “a systematic review (that) attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-spec ..read more

By Marvin Ross A recent article in the Toronto Star described what can only be called a complete absurdity in dealing with some patients with mental illness. At any given time, there are dozens of patients residing in the Centre for Mental Health and Addictions (CAMH) in Toronto who do not need to be there. Even though they are stabilized, they need supportive housing and, in some cases, 24 hour a day supports. There is nowhere to send them so hospital staff, showing some humanity, keep them in hospital. These poor souls can be there for months and, in some cases, for years. At one point, ther ..read more

By Marvin Ross One of the frustrations faced by those with schizophrenia, their families and their doctors is medication side effects. It can result in considerable frustration and in failure to achieve stability. In fact, patients will abandon treatment as a result. However, a group of researchers at McGill University in Montreal have suggested how this can be overcome through pharmacogenetics in a new research article just published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience . Drugs are metabolized in the body via the cytochrome P450 (CYP) super family of enzymes. These are the major enzy ..read more

By Dr David Laing Dawson Schizophrenia is an illness, a disease afflicting a finite number of people in each and every culture, language and country. We have medical treatment that usually works. Relapse and re-hospitalizations are almost always the result of stopping medication or not receiving the right medication in the first place. Of course family support, housing, meaningful activity and good relationships are important components for achieving and maintaining recovery. But we know the numbers. They have not changed over the years except in response to changes in diagnostic criteria and ..read more

By Marvin Ross One of the comments I received from my last blog A Pox on the Woke Folk was that I was not explicit enough with what Woke represents. Let me try again with an example from California. This is from the LA Times of January 26: A coalition of disability and civil rights advocates filed a lawsuit Thursday asking the California Supreme Court to block the rollout of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s far-reaching new plan to address severe mental illness by compelling treatment for thousands of people. I don’t know about you but this confuses me. There are thousands of people suffering needlessly fr ..read more

By Dr David Laing Dawson Some years ago I pitched a screenplay to a producer in Toronto. The story involved a man, a teacher, with bipolar disorder, who becomes manic and delusional in the classroom. I like it, said the producer, and we talked some more. But before the subject of finances came up he said, “But I think at the end we must learn that all his so-called delusions are true.” Literature and film are replete with stories of disabilities, people living with disabilities, surviving disabilities, overcoming disabilities, accomplishing much despite the disability, living with illnesses, s ..read more

By Marvin Ross I wasn’t going to post today as I spent most of the weekend in the ER with what turned out to be Covid. Kudos to our paramedics who came for me, heard my wife cough too and took us both in matching ambulances after arranging for a neighbour to care for the dog. She was released that day and I stayed till Sunday afternoon. Anyway, what gets my BP up is that the media is recognizing that “Toronto seems like a scene out of Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian Clockwork Orange, these days.” That was written by Warren Kinsella writing in the right wing Toronto Sun but also quoting his Sun col ..read more

By Dr David Laing Dawson Evolution has endowed us with an impressive organ between our ears, an organ that allows us to do all the things mankind has contemplated and accomplished. It has also endowed us with self-awareness. Now it has been pointed out that even a lobster demonstrates a kind of self-awareness when it distinguishes its own claw from that of another lobster. But you can be pretty sure the lobster does not contemplate the meaning of its life and the certain end of its life, nor what other lobsters think of it. This terrible awareness of our own existence and the inevitable pain ..read more