Thursday, November 26, 2009

My Three Shrinks Podcast 47: Genital Retraction Syndrome


[46] . . . [47] . . . [48] . . . [All]


Happy Thanksgiving!!!


As a big thank you to our readers (and listeners), we three shrinks got our act together and edited one of our most recently recorded podcasts and got it out there, finally. I did the editing and posting this time instead of Roy, which means that it will be less polished, more crackle-and-pop filled and less balanced volumetrically (if that's a word) than usual. So be it. After leaping over a high Garage Band learning curve I figured that was enough of a time investment to begin with and I'd figure out the more polished aspects later. But enough about the process. On to the podcast.


For podcast 47 we started out with a discussion of gender bias in civil commitment when we discussed the book (which none of us have read) entitled Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors. Clink talked about the history of civil commitment law (with a brief diversion into the "Beauty and the Beast". Don't ask.).


Then we talked about cholesterol in relationship to suicide (yes, there is one---how weird is that?). Dinah mentioned an article from the March 2008 issue of Psychiatry Cholesterol Quandaries: Relationship to Depression and the Suicidal Experience. Low cholesterol levels were associated with increased rates of suicidal ideation. Unfortunately, the article didn't mention actually what was considered a "low" cholesterol level. A number of PubMed studies supported a relationship between increased rates of low mood and hospitalization for depression in people with low cholesterol levels.


Finally, we talked about disappearing genitals. At the time the podcast was taped there was a rash of alleged "penis thefts" in the Congo; several people were accused of being sorcerers who cast spells to shrink or steal men's penises. We talked about the koro delusion (believing one's penis is disappearing) versus a cultural belief or mass hysterical phenomena of sorcerer accusations (believing that others are causing many men's penises to disappear).


After that last topic I even have the nerve to add: Please, go to iTunes and write a review.


[Roy was here, adding usual podcast footer links...]





Find show notes with links at: http://mythreeshrinks.com. The address to send us your Q&A's is there, as well (mythreeshrinksATgmailDOTcom).

This podcast is available on iTunes (feel free to post a review) or as an RSS feed or Feedburner feed. You can also listen to or download the .mp3 or the MPEG-4 file from mythreeshrinks.com.
Thank you for listening.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

YAY!