Mind Your Body

Medical trauma is such an under-recognized issue for the chronnically ill. It's a hard topic to talk about because it can seem like we are pointing fingers at healthcare workers. Maybe that's why there are only, now, 4 studies on the topic in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). If you are someone who treats people with IBD please know I am not here to demonize or criticize. I am both a patient and a GI psychologist. I know the medical system from both sides. I know how messed up and broken it is. But ignoring this or rationalizing it away as only affecting a few folks is wrong. So let's talk about it. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) is the term we use for medical trauma due to technicalities in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTS can be less severe that full on PTSD, or it can be full on PTSD. Regardless, the symptoms are identical: Feeling hypervigilant/on-edge (increased

Greetings!  It's been a while. I'll blame COVID brain on my lack of writing over the past year. Can you believe it's been a year of this shit? And it looks like we're about to ride another wave, this time the variants B117 and P4.  I'm not here to write about COVID. I'm here to talk about food. Specifically, the psychology of eating. There's a lot of attention being given to this idea of "ARFID" or Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, in patients with chronic digestive disease. This is a psychiatric diagnosis conceptualized mostly for children with sensory issues or similar concerns. The main questionnaire used to assess ARFID, the Nine Item ARFID Scale (NIAS), is only validated in children .  While I absolutely agree there are adults with chronic digestive disease who meet the criteria for ARFID, this whole thing makes me a bit twitchy. Here's why. First: Did you ever drink too much tequila and puke and maybe have one of the worst hango