Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Suicide Prevention -- Does it Work? Are psychiatric services successful in preventing suicide or do we actually cause more suicides than would otherwise happen. We create a culture of helplessness in which people expect rescue and do not believe they are in control of their actions. They can attempt suicide thinking they will be saved, but can miscalculate and accidentally die. An Australian man stopped 160 suicides by giving people breakfast. Is this better? 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Working to Recover, or Adjusting to Illness? Existing research is pessimistic about the value of our currently dominant biomedical paradigm for treating mental illness. Long-term antipsychotic use appears to make people worse rather than better. While the research continues to accumulate, practice does not change. Doctors continue to practice as if psychosis comes from lack of medication. People recover without medications. How do we reconcile these two models? 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The difficulty of practicing narrative medicine I look at the stories that people hold about their lives that sometimes work against them. I tell the story of a driven man whom I warned 25 years earlier that he might drop dead if he didn't take a break, and discover that he did, in his fifties. I discuss the problems we face in medicine, how to help people change their stories that are leading them toward illness. This is one of the hallmarks of narrative medicine. 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The High Cost of Medically Unexplained Symptoms I write about how the search for the diagnosis for medically unexplained symptoms is an important aspect of what is bankrupting our health care system. We have to solve this problem for manage costs no matter what health care system we have. I acknowledge that some diseases are missed and that some diseases are yet to be found, but suggest that we are much better at findings serious and life threatening illnesses than before.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The Debate Over Obamacare I offer my views on health care financing. I suggest that we have reached a point as a society in which we are not willing to let people die in hospital waiting rooms who do not have insurance. We even have laws that require hospitals to care for whoever appears regardless of ability to pay even if we do not have any means to remunerate those hospitals. It's time to wake up to the reality that this kind of reality costs.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 8 of the Australian Journey 2012 This is Day 8 of the Australian cross cultural adventure. Today we went to the heart of the community where the elders from the Northern Territories demonstrated some of their ceremonies and procedures to the community. That included the burning ceremony for healing pain, the smoking ceremony for purification, and spear throwing. On the way back to the island, I interviewed a patient advocate from Western Australia.

Judith Acosta: Beyond Biofeedback: How Words Can Help Children Heal Children learn who they are in the world via an organic form of biofeedback. Everything we say and do communicates and that communication is received by them not only cognitively but, perhaps more importantly, physiologically and genetically.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Explanatory Plurarlism I ask the question, what if all knowledge existed in the form of stories and all stories were true? If we practiced in this manner, as advocated by Uncle Albert, an aboriginal elder, how would we act? The notion of explanatory pleuralism argues that explanatory stories on any particular level do not have to relate to any other level of explanation; rather they must correspond to the level of which they are explaining.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Psychology and Health Care Reform A lunch meeting with Dr. Martin Johnson, a Honolulu psychologist, taught me much about how mental health coverage will change under health care reform. Insurance companies will have to provide mental health coverage on par with their coverage of medical conditions. But, who will be credentialed to provide these services? remains a question. Credentialing could limit access to services by limiting the numbers of providers. 1 

Bernard: On the sidelines of a travesty Describes efforts to promote EEG neurofeedback as a mainstream treatment option for epilepsy and seizure disorders.