Medcast news and blog
Learning to Manage Your Bipolar Disorder
Managing bipolar disorder is challenging for patients and practitioners alike. Making the diagnosis in the first place is often a challenge, but once it’s made many patients and their health care practitioners are unaware that there’s more to managing bipolar disorder than juggling the medications and doing the blood tests. Listen to the podcast and read the blog.
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Black Dog Institute’s e-Mental Health in Practice (eMHPrac) initiative has won this year’s LearnX Social/Collaborative learning award.
Rightly or wrongly, the KFP has become the most feared of the current crop of FRACGP exams. This stems from relatively high failure rates, an apparent ‘randomness’ of responses and the common belief that you have to ‘read the examiner’s mind.
Is that a typo in the title? Should it say hugs? Well, “hugs” is getting close but not really quite there.
The team here at Medcast are pretty excited – we’ve just been notified of some prestigious awards for excellence.
The Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) is the most straightforward of the FRACGP exams, and yet many still struggle with it. In the 2016.1 exam cycle, the pass rate was around 64%, meaning that one-third of the candidates still have some trouble passing the AKT.
Do you feel comfortable about using computers to help people with their mental health? If not you are not alone and this might give you some insight into why you feel that way. Earlier this year I read a book called The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North, a pseudonym belonging to British author Catherine Webb. The story revolves around two interesting ideas.
Black Dog Institute’s Lifespan integrated suicide prevention research project includes an arm of mental health education in schools. The schools-based program is a local adaptation of Youth Aware Mental Health (YAM), a program developed at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. The YAM program has, in longitudinal analyses, been shown to be effective in reducing depression, negative emotional symptoms, conduct problems and suicidal ideation, plans and attempts.
Ear problems are such a common issue during childhood but like many areas of medicine, a lot of the traditional treatment protocols used in the past were really based on anecdote and opinion rather than high level evidence. There has been a push over the last decade to modernise practice and try to identify more clearly which patients will benefit from grommets (and who doesn’t).
Podcasts are a great way to get a dose of education or relaxation without having to stop whatever else it is you are doing. I listen to This American Life on long drives from one workplace to another, to the BBC Comedy shows while exercising (I need something to take my mind off the pain of it all) and to Radio Lab while I knit or make jewellery or cook dinner.