The following information is from the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Hormone Therapy web page. Children’s hospital. There are two types of hormone therapy (obviously): feminizing hormone therapy and masculinizing hormone therapy. Feminizing hormone therapy This means giving estrogen and possibly androgen blockers to people “assigned male at birth.” (That is a phrase I don’t like. People “assigned male at birth” are male and will be male their entire lives no matter what. Do a DNA test if you have any doubt about it.) Here are the changes you can expect from feminizing hormone therapy: Body fat redistribution Breast growth Decreased muscle mass and strength Decreased libido Decreased penile function Decreased testicular volume Decreased sperm production Slowed growth of body and facial hair Softening of skin To maintain these changes, you need to keep taking hormone therapy for the rest of your life. Masculinizing hormone therapy This involves giving testosterone to… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Mental Illness
Johns Hopkins Chief Psychiatrist: Transgender is a Mental Disorder
Real doctors tell people the truth regardsless of who gets furious. pic.twitter.com/mKkmCzUJz1 — Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) May 5, 2023 I’d rewrite that headline to say Stupid People Furious! Well, that’s a little harsh. Let’s change it to Uninformed People Furious! Let me start my saying that I’ve had a couple of cancerous skin lesions removed, and because the removal was medically necessary, the cost of the removal was covered by my health insurance. I’ve also had a couple of benign lesions removed just because I thought they were unsightly. Those removals were not medically necessary so I had to pay for their removal myself. People identifying as transgender don’t want to pay for puberty blockers and hormone treatments and surgeries out of their own pocket so what we came up with is “gender dysphoria,” a mental disorder. Now everything becomes medically necessary and can be billed to health… Read more →
Bring Back Mental Hospitals
Schools Focused on the Wrong Things
In a study of mass shootings from 2008 to 2017, the Secret Service found that “100 percent of perpetrators showed concerning behaviors, and in 77 percent of shootings, at least one person—most often a peer—knew about their plan.” — dailysignal.com 100 percent is pretty high. It doesn’t get much higher than 100 percent. It’s always seemed to me that mass shooters turn out to have been known to family, friends, co-workers, law enforcement, mental health professionals, etc., as violent and unstable, but no one took effective action to keep the person from going off the rails. For example, co-workers of the Uvalde school shooter had a nickname for him: “school shooter.” Meanwhile, here’s what the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is focusing on. Last September, the NSBA drafted a letter to President Biden calling for use of the “Army National Guard and its Military Police” to prevent parents from becoming… Read more →
Who is to Blame for Buffalo?
From Kevin D. Williamson: Before the blood was even dry in Buffalo, Democrats were asking the most important question: “How can we well-heeled white progressives most effectively use the murders of all these black people to our personal and political advantage?” The murderer in Buffalo didn’t kill anybody you’ve ever heard of, and so the first thing to do if you want to exploit the deaths of all these people — and that is what Democrats intend to do — is to connect the crime to some famous name or prominent institution. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t any actual connection: Just assert it, and that’s good enough for the newspapers and the cable-news cretins and the impotent rage-monkeys on Twitter. The usual suspects: social-media platforms, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Fox News, the National Rifle Association, etc. The shooter was actually well known in advance as a… Read more →
San Fransicko by Michael Shellenberger
From a podcast featuring Michael Shellenberger: Progressives have controlled California for decades. Democrats have a supermajority in Congress. We spend more than any other state per capita on homelessness and mental illness, and we have the worst outcomes. So I wanted to write “San Fransicko” to both get to the bottom of what’s really going on and also figure out what the solutions are because, obviously, we’re dealing with a catastrophe. I mentioned drug overdose deaths rose from 17,000 to 70,000 by 2017. Last year, drug deaths were 93,000, which is almost three times as many people than die from car accidents and four times as many people as die from homicide. Clearly, we are in the midst of a massive drug crisis, and it felt like nobody was offering a particularly clear explanation of it or offering very good solutions. San Francisco remains one of the most spectacularly beautiful… Read more →
An Open Letter to My Former CEO
Today is my last day with Company X. I’ve really enjoyed working with my colleagues. That said, the events of two weeks ago really made me ill. To call an all-hands webinar, announce that the company is losing too much money, as a result of which 80 people will have their jobs taken away, then boom, meeting over. Not even the decency to take a comment or question. I feel like those 80 people probably did not lose the money, probably just did what they were told to do to the best of their ability. The responsibility for losing the money lies with whoever told them what to do, starting with the CEO. There’s a law of the sea, I think it’s a good law, that the captain goes down with his ship. Not that he grabs hold of 80 people and throws them overboard, then follows up with a… Read more →
Will $5 Billion Solve LA Homelessness?
Rep. Lieu seeks to fight homelessness with a $5 billion federal program — smdp.com Rep. Lieu is Ted Lieu, who represents California’s 33rd District, encompassing the coastal areas of Los Angeles from Palos Verdes through Malibu, including Santa Monica, where I currently live. Who’s going to pony up the $5 billion, Ted? You, or you’re going to stick it to the taxpayers? The bill would authorize $1 billion in grants annually for five years for local governments to spend on supportive housing models with comprehensive services and intensive case management. Are there examples of this kind of plan actually working somewhere? Because I can give you examples of plans that don’t work right here in your district. There isn’t a Republican elected official for 100 miles. The LA mayor is a Democrat, every member of the city council is a Democrat, any proposal they want to implement, there’s no one… Read more →
Why Can’t Democrats Fix LA?
According to my local paper, the Santa Monica Daily Press, LA’s “unhoused” population is being plagued by an epidemic of mental illness. (The search for euphemisms continues unabated as well. People living on the street used to be “bums,” then “homeless” and now “unhoused.”) One of the puzzling things about Los Angeles is why our political leaders can’t figure out how to solve any of our local problems, for example, what we fondly refer to as “the homelessness crisis.” It’s puzzling because the mayor is a Democrat, every member of the city council is also a Democrat, there isn’t a Republican in sight, so there’s nothing to stop them from enacting any policy they want to. It’s like they really have no idea how to solve any of the problems. It’s possible that in a city in which every elected official is a Republican that they would turn out to… Read more →
Starbucks Open-Door Poses Challenge
After a much publicized confrontation in a Philadelphia store last year, Starbucks now aims to ensure all visitors to its cafes are treated like paying customers, regardless of whether they purchase anything. All visitors can now use cafe bathrooms and also occupy tables. That policy has brought its own challenges, says a new report in Bloomberg, particularly for baristas and other staff who are forced to regularly confront drug use, homelessness, and mental illness. LinkedIn Read more →
Grounds for Dissolution
Divorce has traditionally been a fault-based proceeding, but California and most other states are now no-fault jurisdictions, and a divorce in legal terms is now called a Dissolution of Marriage. And yet we never hear anyone say “I’m going to dissolve you.” The primary ground for dissolution in California is “irreconcilable differences.” In a Regular Dissolution you are also allowed to use “incurable insanity.” Your spouse may seem crazy to you, but the insanity case is too complicated for you to present without an attorney, so if you want to keep things simple, go ahead and use “irreconcilable differences.” Read more →
What is Life Telling Me Right Now?
“You married a crazy person, you got old, there are women out there hooking up with everybody and you missed it, you dumb fucker . . .” Read more →
The Savvy Clinician
It’s a little hard to read the subtitle on the book cover but — “Savvy”?! I don’t think I want to work with clinicians who consider themselves “savvy.” Being “savvy” sounds like a poor substitute for actually knowing something. Read more →
A Couple of Random Thoughts on Gun Control
Laws don’t turn crazy people into good citizens. What reasons are there to think that gun laws would make it difficult for anyone to obtain a gun? We’ve had a War on Drugs for decades. How difficult is it to obtain illegal drugs? Read more →
25 Concepts to Facilitate Judicious Use of Psychiatric Drugs
I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night . . . I also took a Colgate University class on medicating for mental health and judicious use of psychiatric drugs. A psychiatric medication is only one useful tool among a collection of useful tools. Remember to also consider non-drug options for therapy. The benefits of psychiatric medications are always accompanied by risk. Become familiar with the potential risk of your medication. Be alert to potential risks that might be intolerable to you. Establishing a diagnosis is a difficult and imperfect task, but it establishes the starting point for determining which treatments are appropriate. Engage your physician or a psychologist in a dialogue regarding the structure of your treatment program. Be an active participant in establishing the structure of that program. Having confidence that your treatment program will… Read more →
EppsNet Book Reviews: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Richard Yates poses the question of how much reality people can stand, and the answer he comes up with is “not very much.” Alternatives to facing reality head-on are explored in Revolutionary Road: avoidance, denial, alcoholism, insanity and death. Some excerpts: “You want to play house you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, you got to have a job you don’t like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me buddy you’ve got nothing to apologize for. Anybody comes along and says ‘Whaddya do it for?’ you can be pretty sure he’s on a four-hour pass from the State funny-farm; all agreed.” And all because, in a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to… Read more →
Japan, Day 2: Kinkakuji Temple, Nishijin Textile Center, Tea Ceremony, Bullet Train, Atami
Kinkakuji Temple Kinkaku-ji (lit. “Temple of the Golden Pavilion”), officially named Rokuon-ji (lit. “Deer Garden Temple”), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. The site of Kinkaku-ji was originally a villa called Kitayama-dai, belonging to a powerful statesman, Saionji Kintsune. Kinkaku-ji’s history dates to 1397, when the villa was purchased from the Saionji family by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and transformed into the Kinkaku-ji complex. When Yoshimitsu died, the building was converted into a Zen temple by his son, according to his wishes. During the Onin war, all of the buildings in the complex aside from the pavilion were burned down. On July 2, 1950, at 2:30 am, the pavilion was burned down by a 22-year-old novice monk, Hayashi Yoken, who then attempted suicide on the Daimon-ji hill behind the building. He survived, and was subsequently taken into custody. The monk was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was… Read more →
If I Am Out of My Mind …
… it’s okay with me. Read more →
Don’t Bring a Gun That Shoots Plastic Pellets to a Gunfight
Man shot to death by police even though family told 911 his gun was fake — U.S. News Read more →
Two of the Strangest Mental Disorders Ever
Cotard’s Syndrome – The patient believes he is dead. Capgras Syndrome – The patient believes that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. The second one reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke: “Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates … When I pointed it out to my roommate, he said, ‘Do I know you?’” Read more →