Comments on: Recommended Reading for February 18th

By: Sacha

Sacha — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:08:58 +0000

I’ve seen someone with PTSD post-partum, which had a profound influence on my practice. Fortunately, I was able to spend a lot of time with her discussing what her anxieties were surrounding birth and labour. Essentially, her problems stemmed from needing an emergency intervention (and we are talking about one of the few “true emergencies” in obstetrics where minutes can mean the difference between a live baby or not) and inadequate debriefing afterwards.

Debriefing is often forgotten, but it has a profound impact on the long term mental health of both the patients and the staff. There’s no excuse for not consenting properly for any procedure that’s not an emergency (and poor communication is a common cause for litigation) and no excuse for not debriefing in an emergency situation.

I rarely hear anything positive heard about maternity care in the US. I appreciate that this compounded by the healthcare system there, and by the interference of the extreme religious right.

By: A new kind of war story: PTSD in childbirth | fertilefeminism.com

A new kind of war story: PTSD in childbirth | fertilefeminism.com — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:32:47 +0000

[...] Lauredhel of FWD/Forward, who included the following [...]

By: hsofia

hsofia — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:30:38 +0000

I’ve been watching Lost since reading PWD and every time John Locke’s off-island disability comes up, I think about depictions of PWD. I feel like the depiction of him is ableist. I’m hoping that there is some commentary about how he is a complete human being, even tho he doesn’t think so. The fact that he was so emotionally wounded before his paralysis is not highlighted enough … and even though I’ve watched it from the beginning, that emotional pain still seems to be conflated with his physical injury. They don’t have many episodes left to get this right ….

By: KJ

KJ — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:21:03 +0000

Getting insurance to cover mental health treatments is especially hard. My parents fought tooth and nail to get my father’s relatively good insurance to cover my treatments when I was in high school. Mental health parity laws or not, most insurance companies don’t want to cover mental health treatment.

And the article about Sheriff Joe? I wish I could say it surprised me, but I’d be lying. I live in Arizona and everyone knows that he is a mean son of a gun and you really don’t want to have any encounters with him or his men. They are even worse to you if you are Hispanic.

By: codeman38

codeman38 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:38:06 +0000

Incidentally, on the insurance note… it surprises me just how many insurance companies and doctors’ offices provide no means of contact other than telephone.

if you’ve never had to call an insurance company or big doctor’s office via relay? Be glad. After dealing with the voice-mail menu timing out after the relay operator has finally transcribed it, you’ll then end up getting the receptionist utterly frustrated in having to deal with the CB-radio-style relay protocol.

It’s slightly better with the new CapTel system, but still full of awkward pauses as one waits for the transcription to catch up– and the menus still frequently time out by the time the option one needs has finally been transcribed.

Seriously, there are turnkey secure web/email messaging systems out there for the taking for confidential communications like this… but nobody bothers to use them.