Sunday, April 20, 2008

Two Years Of Shrink Rap Tomorrow: Anniversary Post




On April 21st, Shrink Rap will be two years old.

It's no longer ruining my life. I still love having a blog with my two terrific friends, Roy & ClinkShrink. I still love that her blog name is ClinkShrink.

Ducks and chocolate and podcasts with or without prestigious guests,
readers who read and those who comment. Hummus and Cake and Pizza and Beer. And they help me with computer problems and listen to my teenager stories. And people in South Africa and Australia read my random thoughts, they get stirred up or they simply ignore me. What could be better? More chocolate of course, but I don't run like Clink, so I'll watch it (go down....).

So, for lack of anything more brilliant to say: I'm reposting my first blog post. I have to say that Shrink Rap has now become so big and bulky that it's hard for me to find and navigate it. It's not a blog you could really start from the beginning and read through. I found my first post, and two years of psychiatric progress have not outdated it.

The post is called "Plan: Continue Treatment, Return When?"

Our hypothetical patient enters the office; he's never seen a psychiatrist, and he's here because he is overwhelmed with sadness after being laid off from work. He isn't sleeping well, he's lost ten pounds, he's having trouble organizing his job search, he's irritable and arguing with his wife. He is clearly a bright guy, but tells us he's lost jobs before and feels he isn't living up to his potential. He's not psychotic, he's not dangerous. A full evaluation is done and some decisions are made about what type of treatment to begin. So here's my question: When do we have him return for the next visit? Is that a silly question? And do I really want an answer? You want to ask more questions about our patient, talk about how you would treat his depression, or his adjustment disorder, wonder why he repeatedly loses jobs and is there perhaps a personality disorder as well? And no, I don't want an answer, what I want to do is throw out the idea that there probably is no consensus among us about how often patients should be seen. If our patient is seen in a clinic, he may well be started on an antidepressant and told to return in three to four weeks. In a private office, perhaps he'll be told to return in a few days, or maybe not for week or two or three or four. And if there isn't enough disagreement on how often to see patients at the beginning of treatment, what happens if he has a good response to a medication, his symptoms are alleviated, but he still fills the sessions talking-- do we continue to see him daily/weekly/biweekly/monthly if he isn't asking to come less often and if he's paying his bill?

Okay, nostalgic rambling. Come back to Shrink Rap...oh later today or maybe tomorrow.


[Roy here...]  Nostalgia, huh? Okay, here's a link to my first post, which was sort of a Tom-Kat-Scien-tology post called Tom Knows Psychiatry.  We made a very short podcast yesterday (about Virginia Tech, which we podcasted about last year) for the 2-yr blogiversary, but the recording mysteriously disappeared so there will be none this week.  We did take a picture of the carrot cake that Clink got for the occasion, which I've put up top.

And here's Clink's first post on Recertification Exam Fees.

9 comments:

Aqua said...

Dinah, Roy and Clinkshrink (I too love that name),

In case I don't get to your blog tomorrow..."HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Shrinkrap".

I love your blog and your podcasts. While I don't always agree with what you say, or write, you each give me food for thought. I also like that you mix serious topics with more personal topics and sometimes really funny topics. I love that.
...aqua

Dr. Pink Freud said...

Consensus on when to have him return? Too many factors to consider to give an informed suggestion. But, that's the point, isn't it? Even if we had a universal standard of care, there would always be those patients that you believe need to be seen more or less often. Lest we cast science to the side, dare we say there is some "art" to making such decisions?

And just to throw one last wrench in the works, how about a blog on the poor consensus rates across clinicians. How can we agree on how often to see a patient if we can't agree on what he suffers from in the first place. Is a Dx "in the ballpark" good enough? Now that's a tasty can of worms to open.

Anonymous said...

As one who keenly follows both the Shrink Rap blog and podcasts from Australia, happy second anniversary to Roy, Dinah and Clink Shrink from down under. Given the differences in time, tomorrow is in fact today in the land of oz and it is indeed your anniversary.

May there be more years of blogging to come.

HP said...

Congratulations on two years of Shrink Rap. We've all enjoyed it too.
HP
PS From Australia and neither fired up or ignoring ;)

Battle Weary said...

Happy Blogiversary!

NeoNurseChic said...

Happy Blogiversary from someone who's been reading since almost the beginning! Reading this makes me miss my old blog, which started in April 2006 too. Ahh memories. :)

Take care,
Carrie :)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! I love the name "Shrink Rap"!

Anonymous said...

I also should have said that I think you have a great blog and hope that it continues. It's well-written and interesting.

So many blogs just disappear one day. It's no wonder. Newspaper journalists are paid a full time wage to churn out a column per day. Bloggers do the same thing and squeeze it into the nooks and crannies available in their lives. I hope you are able to earn some money with this so you can feel this is a worthy part of your work lives rather than a hobby. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Dinah said...

Thank you all for the kind wishes for our blog-iversary