Jury Convicts John Odgren of First Degree Murder

After a relatively short 12 hour deliberation, a Massachusetts jury found John Odgren guilty of first degree murder. Odgren, who was 16 at ...

Massachusetts Murder Trial Goes to Jury

On January 19, 2007, John Odgren, a 16 year old sophomore at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts, fatally stabbed 15 year ...

Psychiatrists should talk with patients, not just give pills

My psychiatrist friend Danny Carlat has an important and deeply moving article in today's New York Times Magazine. Danny describes the ...

Why We Need Wise Primary Care Physicians - A (small) Personal Experience

Last week, while working at my desk at Harvard Medical School, my left foot started to hurt. I stood up. The foot felt like it was on fire. ...

Tea Party and Health Reform

Yvonne Abraham, a columnist for the Boston Globe, attended the Tea Party gathering yesterday on the Boston Common. Abraham reported a fascin...

The Latest Republican Posturing on Health Reform

Ever since South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford turned down $700 million in stimulus funds just prior to visiting his sweetie in Argentina, ...

A Choice Environment

There is a new book out about how we make choices, The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar. In her Voices of the Family interview , she discu...

Massachusetts Health Plans - Damned if You Do and Damned if you Don't!

Yesterday Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel denied the request from six not-for-profit Massachusetts health plans to be allowed to go forwar...

Health Reform from the Ground Up - National Alliance on Mental Illness

For the past year "health reform" has meant activities on Mount Olympus (Washington DC) and the foothills (state capitals). But tr...

Can Massachusetts Control the Cost of Health Reform?

In the course of 20 years of studying and writing about health system ethics and health reform I've gotten progressively more humble abo...

April - Women with Disabilities Awareness Month

Within sex and gender health disparities, there can be another layer preventing optimal health outcomes - disabled status. Many of your pati...

Massachusetts Health Insurers Sue the State

The health reform pot is boiling over in Massachusetts! In a post three days ago I described how the Governor rejected 235 of the 274 insur...

Battle of the Bulge - Addressing the Bulge from Hibernation

So Philadelphia's weather is certainly summer-like. It enables us to shed our coats and problem solve in shedding our hibernation-induce...

Pogo Possum in Massachusetts

's Where is the matchless political philosopher Pogo Possum? We need him in Massachusetts! On Thursday Massachusetts Insurance Commissio...

Human Trafficking

Having just given the IFM lecture on approach to a patient who's been assaulted, I mentioned that we didn't have time to cover elder...

Google, Facebook, and a Suicidal Patient

A recent Washington Post article posed a fascinating ethical question about psychotherapists and the web: As his patient lay unconscious in...