Asperger's Conversations

Education vs. Psychotherapy

Tomorrow is the first day of classes at Keene State College and I'm thinking about what I really want for my students.  Here are a couple of big goals:

1. CHANGE- I want my students to be changed by what they learn.  In this sense, the boundaries between therapy and education blur:  We psychologists want our patients/clients to change and We College professors should want our students to change.  I want the ideas covered in class to impact their lives in a meaningful and purposeful way.

2. GLOBAL CITIZENRY- I want my students to be participants in the global world, through blogging, podcasting, contributions to Wiki, and, by studying the connection between culture and clinical psychology.

3. BECOME IDEA MAVENS- I want them to learn to love ideas.  And to collaborate with others in the process of analyzing clinical and social problems and generating new ideas and solutions.  And, to believe that their thoughts and contributions matter.

That's enough for now, isn't it?  Back to preparing for tomorrow's classes.

APA Meeting in Boston: Psychologists Working to End Sad Chapter

I couldn't make it to APA this past week in Boston but was glad to see my old Professor Tony Marsella from U. of Hawaii and others working to end psychologists involvement in military torture and interrogation.

Asperger's Conversations named one of 100 top mental health blogs

I'm not sure what it means to be named "one of 100 top mental health blogs" but special thanks to Kelly Sonora of University Reviews online for alerting me of this.  This might be as good a time as any to reference a piece in the NY Times that mentioned my work in Asperger's in Colleges and universities.

Do You Go With The Data?...Traveller's ills, drugs, empiricism

I continually encourage my students to be good "Personal Scientists" and to question whatever doctors, their friends, news magazines, and so on tell them is the right course of treatment for anything.  "Go to the source" I tell them...read the original data and see if it makes sense (they have a hard time believing that their own doctors or psychologists or news sources may not have done so).  So, when my own Doc prescribed me a fairly new drug for "ahemm"..."travelers' diarrhea caused by noninvasive strains of Escherichia coli" after I returned from 2 days in Mexico City with "ahem...well you know" I happily grabbed the pills.  And after (yes "after") I swallowed the first of about 10 pills (I'm in the middle of treatment right now) to be taken across several days, I decided to check on research for "Xifaxan" (aka rifaximin).  First off, I'm always impressed when the promotional teams at drug companies come up with a name with 2 letter "X's"...remember Xanax (aka alprzolam). 

Here is one set of data from their clinical trial:

Clinical Response in Study 1 (ITT population)

	Rifaximin (n=125)	Placebo (n=129)	Estimate (97.5% Cl)	P-Value
Median TLUS (hours)	32.5	58.6	1.78a (1.26, 2.50)	0.0002
Clinical cure, n (%)	99 (79.2)	78 (60.5)	18.7b (5.3, 32.1)	0.001

a Hazard Ratio
b Difference in rates

So, what's the deal you might ask?  Well, I'm not sure, but as an old colleague, Elmer Streuning, Ph.D. of Columbia University's Clinical Epidemiology Research Center would always remind me, "The data is always interesting."  In the chart above, according to Salix Pharmaceutical, Inc., TLUS refers to "time to last unformed stool."  If interested I would encourage you to read the data and descriptions from Salix's website, but I was intrigued by, for example, the "clinical cure" rates in which, while they point out were significantly greater in the active pill group (about 79%) compared to Placebo (60.5%), I was surprised to see such a high placebo rate.  In other words, nearly 2/3 of the patients were "cured" by a fake pill.   And, according to their TLUS data, placebo patients took about an additional 24 hours to improve.  In defense of me taking the pills (I just swallowed my 6th at noon today), I'd like to get this over with ASAP.  But it is interesting, isn't it, that the placebo response rates are so high (should my Doc have given me a fake pill instead?).

Blogging and Dancing: Global Citizenry

Thanks to my friend Scott Menge in Seattle who sent me this video tonight!  It made me think of all the blogging I've been doing since practically the beginning of blogging when Jon Udell introduced me to it and encouraged me to be the first blogger on my academic topics of interest.  What is the ultimate goal?  To share ideas and co-create new ones...across the planet...to become a global citizen.  So, I blog and podcast, but Matt dances!

Solidarity at APA

Stephen Soldz passed on this announcement about an important gathering for those of us opposed to psychologists' involvement in military interrogations and torture.  My old professor, Tony Marsella, Ph.D., will be among those speaking in protest to the American Psychological Association's continuing (and puzzling) resistence to precluding psychologists involvement with unethical activities at Gauntanemo and elsewhere. 

Here's the core announcement:

Please join us. This is an issue for all concerned citizens, not just psychologists. All are welcome.

Come join Boston Psychologists for an Ethical APA

Rally at the American Psychological Association Annual Convention

Protest Psychologists’ Involvement in Abusive Interrogations and Illegal Detention

Where: Plaza at front entrance of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St., Boston

When: Saturday, August 16^th,  12:00-2:00

Voice your outrage at the APA’s continued acceptance of psychologists’ participation in Bush administration interrogations and detention centers where  human rights and international law are continually violated. “There is no right way to do something wrong.”

Unfortunately I'll be out of town attending a colleague's wedding in L.A., but those of us who signed up early on to withhold our APA dues should consider attending.  And a big Aloha to Tony who will be traveling from my old Ph.D. Alma Mater at the University of Hawaii!

Happiness Is...Interview with Shawn Shea, MD

Download SheaInterview.mp3 (9mins,22secs; 3.22MB Podcast)

I still marvel at how the internet has made the world so much smaller.  I finally got to assemble my podcast interview with Shawn Shea, MD while flying from Hartford to Miami two days ago.  And I just found a weak wifi signal where I'm staying in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico (up in the rainforest).  Shawn is well known for his work in suicide assessment and has most recently written a compelling book on Happiness (which I will be using for a class I'm teaching this fall).  His "matrix" breaks down Happiness in an accessible and useful way (I've even been talking about it with my Asperger friends and clients.

American Nerd by Ben Nugent

I'm really enjoying Ben Nugent's new book, American Nerd, which disects modern notions of "Nerdism" and "Geekdom" in our culture.  I happend to pick up an interview he did the other day on WBUR's "On Point" from NPR (if you're driving just a few miles to the east of Keene, NH you can pick up the Boston stations, but not here in Keene).  The book should be of interest to anyone on the spectrum or anyone who knows anyone on the spectrum.  Ben has offered to do an interview for Asperger's Conversations...I'm hoping he can wait until I finish what so far is a terrific book!

Autism in the Third World

My local newspaper here in Keene, NH USA, The Keene Sentinel, ran a story about a woman originally from New Hampshire (now living in New York City) who has worked hard to bring Autism awareness and some help to the Third World, including Ghana.  I can't provide a link to the article since it will "fall behind a pay wall" in a few days, but you can check out Molly Ola Pinney's website for The Global Autism Project.  I've been wondering what's been up in non-Western countries, especially economically strapped ones, given that it's not easy to access state-of-the-art services even in the U.S.  A few years ago I asked serval political activists from several African countries (I'll have to pull out the recordings some day) at a Keene State College sponsored conference on Genocide, about individuals with developmental disabilities....What happens to them, I asked, somewhat naively.  The question obviously surprised and upset them.  "Why do you ask such a question?" and "They just die" were among the responses.

We tend to be somewhat "Western-centric" in this and many other fields.  All the more reason to check out what Ms. Pinney is up to.

What is Happiness? Some Vacation thoughts...