By John M Oldham MD As Halloween approaches, the networks roll out the horror movies, the scarier the better. Some of us love this scary season and revel in the spooks and goblins. But make-believe witches on broomsticks are one thing; what about blood-drenched monster movies or zombies or the walking dead? There are plenty […]
By John M Oldham MD Not long ago, an interesting piece appeared in the New York Times entitled “What Does It Take to Get Men to See a Doctor?” (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/magazine/mens-health-doctor-masculinity.html?searchResultPosition=2). The author, Helen Ouyang MD, reports that in the US, men are more likely to die at younger ages than females. And that men die […]
by John M Oldham MD In a previous blog entitled “Trust and treatment of borderline personality disorder” (December, 2021), I provided a link to an article on the same topic in Clinical Psychiatry News, in which several colleagues and I were interviewed about treatment strategies for patients with BPD. I was recently contacted by Vumedi, […]
By John M Oldham MD A psychologist at the University of Toronto, Paul Bloom PhD, wrote an interesting article in a recent issue of The New Yorker entitled “Losing Loneliness” (Bloom, Paul, The New Yorker, July 21, 2025, pp53-57). He refers to a common perception that we are in a “loneliness epidemic,” and that loneliness […]
By John M Oldham MD Recently I was contacted by a colleague in New York, Julio Licinio MD, an academic psychiatrist who is Publisher and CEO of a relatively new publishing house: Genomic Press: Bridging Neuroscience from Bench to Society. Genomic Press publishes 3 online open access journals: Brain Medicine: From neurons to behavior and […]
By John M Oldham MD Empathy is a word we use a lot these days, and rightly so. I see it as a foundational feature of what it means to be human, in the best sense of the word. To me, its most straightforward definition is the ability to conceptually put yourself in someone else’s […]
By John M Oldham MD Recently a piece appeared in the Medical Examiner section of Slate newsletter entitled “Why Being Generous Can Destroy a Relationship” (https://slate.com/technology/2025/03/generosity-gifts-backfire-downside-relationships.html). The author, psychologist Sarah Gundle, described saying to a patient: “You gave too much—it made them hate you.” She referred to this behavior pattern as “the tyranny of the […]
