Shopaholics need therapy

By Emily Nash.

 

Popping out for some retail therapy in the lunch-hour is a source of comfort for many stressed and depressed workers.

 

But those who take it too far and become real shopaholics have a serious psychiatric disorder, experts said yesterday.

 

Easy credit, advertising and the glamorous designer clothes featured on TV contribute to lavish spending, they claimed.

 

Now compulsive shopping has finally been recognised as a unique condition and listed alongside addictions to gambling and alcohol in the official reference book for US psychiatrists, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 

The inclusion is likely to be mirrored in its European equivalent.

Researchers believe the disorder affects about one in ten people, with women nine times as likely as men to be hooked.

 

The addiction is high profile — society girl Tara Palmer-Tompkinson famously sought help after spending £20,000 in a designer clothes spree.

 

'You can't open your eyes, you can't eat your cereal without being persuaded to buy something,' said Dr Adrienne Baker, senior psychotherapy lecturer at Regent's College in London.

 

'It is usually written off as affecting only bored, affluent, middle-aged women but it affects people from any background.'

 

Robert Lefever, director of the Promis recovery centre in Kent, has treated the condition with group therapy for 17 years.

 

One former patient was dubbed Anne of the 1,000 T-shirts. 'She didn't even unwrap the T-shirts, just piled them up to the point where she could not even get into her bedroom,' he added. 'But she's doing fine now.'

Smoking marijuana increases the risk of schizophrenia

A study from the Lancet has suggested that cannabis users have a 41 per cent increased risk of developing a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia.

 

A team of researchers led by Dr Stanley Zammit from Bristol and Cardiff Universities undertook a meta-analysis of 35 studies. The researchers concluded that there is 'a consistent association between cannabis use and psychotic symptoms, including disabling psychotic disorders'.

 

An accompanying editorial from two Danish researchers suggests that up to 800 schizophrenia cases each year in the UK can be linked to cannabis use.

 

Although this study is one of the most comprehensive of its kind, the researchers emphasise that a randomised controlled trial with a long-term follow-up is required to investigate whether there is a direct link.

 

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The real reason why Blair wouldn't leave

At last we know the real reason why Blair wouldn't resign.

What would you do if you knew your successor was going to be better than you, at everything?

You would do what you could to stop him - at least you would if your name was Tony Blair.

Since Brown came to office about a month ago, we have had two terrorist attacks, the worst floods in living memory and the usual summer wingeing. Gordon Brown, bless him, has not missed a beat.

Just imagine what would have happened if Blair had been running the country, his little face would have been everywhere! and we would have half a dozen new laws on the statute book allowing the police to detain anyone anywhere, anytime because they felt like it. To his credit, Brown has only made one change, keep suspects detained for longer. Fair enough.

Well done Gordon! we have hardly seen you and you haven't missed a beat. You have just done it. Blair was right (from his perspective) to stop you taking over, he could see how good you might be - its early days but what a star you have turned out to be! It must be galling indeed for Tony Blair to see how you have handled your first month in office. No fuss, no spin, you have just got on with the job. For the first time in many years, the country can breathe again. At last someone with real leadership qualities, not just a good sales pitch !!

By the way, we now know why Tony Blair supported George Bush in the American invasion of Iraq. Being the US appointed International Envoy to the Middle East should secure Tony's pension fund even it won't resurrect a Blair legacy from the shambles that is now Iraq

- not the man Gordon would have chosen by all accounts

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=189096&Sn=WORL&IssueID=30131


Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller

http://www.drlizmiller.co.uk

Junior doctor shambles threatens the NHS

From letter to The Times

Sir, Last week a ministerial statement confirmed that almost half this year's applicants under the junior doctors' career and appointments system have had their careers in UK medicine abruptly cut short.

 

This stark fact was transmuted by the subsequent press release into "good news", because 85 per cent of available jobs will be filled by August 1. Even if this obfuscation of job-fill with appointment rates were true – and we believe it is a gross overestimate – it fails to acknowledge that a 15 per cent vacancy rate is ten times that of previous years in most specialties.

 

Alarmed at so many posts being vacant on August 1, the Department of Health gives trusts two weeks to manage what the hugely expensive national competition failed to achieve in six months. Before August, trusts are ordered to find somewhere to shuffle 10,000 doctors for three months until the current crisis is past, and these doctors can then be quietly lost from the NHS for ever.

 

Our poll shows that one third of the 4,000 who have not found jobs as doctors are among our very best graduates, with either a first-class degree or distinction. This cull of the best happened because the best graduates naturally apply for the most competitive posts and the new system randomly limited half of the applicants to just one interview.

 

This new career structure is a top-down straitjacket forcing doctors to choose immutably their area of training merely two years after qualification. Hundreds of doctors now face transportation for seven years to posts geographically remote from their families. Although the professionalism of doctors will save the NHS from chaos in August, the NHS cannot be saved in the long term from the consequences of culling 30 per cent of our best doctors.

 

Some flexibility and free market in posts must be reintroduced into training and appointments. Those discarded this year should be guaranteed the right to compete again on a level playing field for the next rung up on the career ladder.

 

Yrs faithfully,

 

MORRIS BROWN, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Cambridge

PETER BARNES, FRS, Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Imperial College

NICHOLAS BOON, President Cardiovascular Society

NICHOLAS BROOKS, Past-President Cardiovascular Society

JOHN CAMM, Professor of Clinical Cardiology, St George's Hospital

MARK CAULFIELD, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Queen Mary London

ANGUS DALGLEISH, Professor of Oncology, St George's Hospital

JON FRIEDLAND, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Imperial College

JOHN GIBSON, Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Newcastle

ASHLEY GROSSMAN, Professor of Endocrinology, Queen Mary London

TONY HEAGERTY, Professor of Medicine, Manchester

HUMPHREY HODGSON, Vice-Dean, RFUCMS

JUAN CARLOS KASKI, Professor of Cardiovascular Science, St George's Hospital

CHRISTOPHER KENNARD, Vice Principal, Charing Cross Hospital

KAY-TEE KHAW, CBE, Professor of Clinical Gerontology, Cambridge

JOHN LAZARUS, Professor of Clinical Endocrinology, Cardiff

STAFFORD LIGHTMAN, Professor of Medicine, Bristol

JIM McKILLOP, Professor of Medicine, Glasgow

PETER McCOLLUM, Professor of Vascular Surgery, University of Hull

JOHN MONSON, Professor of Surgery, Hull

STEPHEN O'RAHILLY FRS, Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry, Cambridge

MARK PEPYS FRS, Professor of Medicine, RFUCMS

RODNEY PHILLIPS, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Oxford

PHILIP POOLE-WILSON, Professor of Cardiology, Imperial College

JON RHODES, Professor of Medicine, Liverpool

JIM RITTER, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Kings College London

BRIAN ROWLANDS, President of the Association of Surgeons

NEIL SCOLDING, Professor of Neurology, Bristol

JAMES SCOTT, FRS, Professor of Medicine, Imperial College

RAJ THAKKER, Professor of Academic Endocrinology, Oxford

DOUGLAS TURNBULL, Professor of Neurology, Newcastle

ROBERT WILCOX, Professor of Cardiology, Nottingham

MARK WILES, Professor of Neurology, Cardiff

LORD WINSTON, Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies, Imperial College London

Salman Rushdie - Unreadable and unread

Before we get too excited about defending Salman Rushdie rather than handing him to Iran, has anyone actually read his novels? does anyone know anyone who has read his novels? I have bought more than my fair share, and have not managed to get beyond the first hundred pages. I lie I got a dutifully ploughed a third of the way through Midnight's Children and had a fair stab at Satanic Verses. They are unreadable and consequently unread. He doesn't sell, and even the people who have his books on their bookshelves, haven't actually read them.

Why waste an honour on him? his book sales belie the real picture. The man has less appeal than a Turner prize and at least people go and look at the Turner prize. The reason that Salman Rushdie was given a knighthood was political. Lets provoke the muslims extremists, show how awful they are, and then we can remove further civil liberties.

Giving Salmon Rushdie a knighthood can only be seen as an act of deliberate provocation. Well personally I don't want to see London bombed for the sake of a second rate novelist. Bad books, in bad taste, that no one reads. Let him return to literary obscurity, and falling sales without undeserved publicity for his overrated books.

Hand back the knighthood Salman, you didn't deserve it anyway and enough people have died defending your self promoting agenda. Return to oblivion, from where you should never have been raised. I loved Suitable Boy and God of Small Things, but Satanic Verses, Midnights Children, not in the same league, Unreadable and unread!


Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller.

Terror checks pledge on NHS staff

A Jeep Cherokee was driven into the main doors of Glasgow Airport An immediate review of NHS recruitment will be carried out following the attempted bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, Gordon Brown says.   The review comes after eight suspects with links to the health service were arrested. Two are brothers.   Background checks on skilled migrant workers will be expanded, said the prime minister.   Meanwhile, security experts are considering relaxing the terror threat to the UK from "critical" to "severe". It sends rather a chill down the spine to think that people's values can be so perverted Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee How doctors are vetted Mr Brown told his first question time as prime minister it was "vitally important that the message is sent out to the rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror". The new terrorism minister Sir Alan West will carry out the NHS review.   Mr Brown said sponsors of skilled workers would be asked to provide background checks on them. The Home Office was unable to provide more details about how the new checks would work.   NHS Employers, which represents health trusts, said on Tuesday that the NHS checked applicants' clinical and linguistic ability rather than their political or extremist affiliations and did not think that this should be changed.   Among other measures, Mr Brown also said a watch list of potential suspects would be expanded to warn authorities across the world, and the admissibility of intercept evidence in court would be reviewed. New agreements will be signed with countries around the world to ensure a co-ordinated response to the terror threat.   Threat level A burning green Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders crashed into the doors of Glasgow Airport's on Saturday afternoon. The previous day two Mercedes containing petrol, gas cylinders and nails were found in central London.   ARRESTS TIMELINE 30 June Dr Kafeel Ahmed and Dr Bilal Abdulla arrested at Glasgow airport after burning car driven into doors of main terminal 30 June Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, and his wife Dana Asha, 27, arrested on the M6 near Sandbach, Cheshire 30 June/1 July Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, arrested near Liverpool's Lime Street station 1 July A 28-year-old man and a 25-year-old man, thought to be medical students or doctors from Saudi Arabia, arrested in Paisley 2 July Dr Mohammed Haneef, 27, detained in Australia, and a second doctor is questioned 3 July Second doctor questioned in Australia is released without charge Timeline: Failed bomb attacks Send us your comments Brown and Cameron clash Seven of those arrested are believed to be doctors or medical students and one used to work as a laboratory technician. Six are being questioned at London's Paddington Green police station.   A seventh, Dr Kafeel Ahmed remains in hospital after the Glasgow attack, and an eighth, Dr Mohammed Haneef, is still being questioned in Australia after his arrest at Brisbane Airport.   Dr Kafeel Ahmed is the brother of Dr Sabeel Ahmed, who was arrested in Liverpool on Saturday.   The first phase of the investigation - rounding up suspects to prevent further attacks - is drawing to a close.   Investigators are instead focusing on analysing evidence and interviewing suspects.   If the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre concludes another attack is no longer imminent, the threat level will return to severe.   That would mean a slight reduction in security procedures and controls.   MI5 database Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and new shadow security minister, said she was shocked by the NHS link.   "It sends rather a chill down the spine to think that people's values can be so perverted.   "It means obviously that you can't make any assumptions, or have any preconceptions about the kind of people who might become terrorists. It does mean that you widen the net, obviously." Controlled explosions were carried out on a car in Glasgow on Tuesday Who are bomb suspects? Vetting foreign doctors Security sources have told the BBC none of the suspects had been under surveillance or the subject of an anti-terrorism operation before.   But details of some of them were on an MI5 intelligence database because of their alleged links with other individuals or inquiries. Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working in Baghdad, claimed an alleged al-Qaida leader in Iraq warned of the attacks.   Mr White said the man warned his group was planning an attack and said "those who cure you will kill you", an apparent reference to the NHS link. Meanwhile, passengers at Heathrow Airport suffered further disruption on Wednesday as thousands of travellers tried to re-book flights cancelled following a security alert.   Queues formed early outside Terminal 4 as passengers who were turned away on Tuesday after a suspicious package was discovered tried to continue their journey.   More than 100 flights were cancelled on Tuesday.   Police have urged anyone with information to phone the confidential Anti-Terrorism hotline number on 0800789321.

Needle sticks endanger surgeons-in-training

 

 

By Gene Emery

 

- Surgeons in training are accidentally stuck with a potentially contaminated needle once every seven months, increasing the risk that they will develop AIDS or hepatitis, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

 

Many do not bother to report it, the researchers said in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

If reported immediately and treated within 24 hours, the chance of getting the AIDS virus following a needlestick from an infected patient is almost zero, said Martin Makary of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

 

Half of the surgical residents failed to report such injuries to their employee health center, usually saying they were too busy. Two-thirds of the injuries were self-inflicted, often while putting in stitches.

 

Even when doctors were treating high-risk patients, they failed to report the needlestick in 16 percent of the cases.

 

Male doctors, those who had been stuck frequently before, and surgeons who knew that nobody else had seen them get stuck were the least likely to report the incident, the researchers found.

 

Doctors "don't talk about it," said Makary. "There's no public reporting system they're part of, no focus groups, no chat rooms. This is something people keep to themselves and, understandably, they don't want the stigma. There's some degree of humiliation involved" when you have to acknowledge that you made a mistake.

 

And the treatment itself "takes a huge toll on someone, especially when you're working 30- and 36-hour shifts routinely each week. It's a stressful job, long hours, high responsibility," and the medicine you have to take for a month to prevent illness produces nausea, said Makary. "That's a bad combination."

 

He said the system puts surgeons in training at risk because "we tend to put our most vulnerable and least-trained surgeons on the front lines of battle" doing simple surgical procedures on the patients that are the most likely to be infected with hepatitis B, hepatitis C and the AIDS virus.

 

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has tracked thousands of needlestick injuries that are reported, and infection rates vary. An estimated 0.3 percent of healthcare workers get HIV from a needle stick and up to 30 percent are infected with hepatitis B after such a stick.