Two Million Reads - A Blogging Milestone of Sorts

 

Last night around midnight – I noticed that I had crossed the 2 million reads mark on this blog.  The Google Blogger interface that I use is not very granular so it is difficult to tell how many of those hits are actual reads as opposed to something else. By something else I mean hackers, bots, and people trying to use my blog for free advertising.  The products are typically illegal or barely legal drugs or psychiatric services outside of the US.  The increase in VPNs is also probably a factor.  Over the years the number of hits per page has flattened out while the overall number for the blog has increased. My assumption is that individual page reads with a VPN are not counted, but they are counted for the overall blog.

I am reassured and very grateful for the readers of this blog and have corresponded in detail with many of them.   They range from medical students considering a career in psychiatry to very senior medical scientists with hundreds of research publications.  In many cases they are advocating for a specific viewpoint.  In a few they want me to change a blog post in some way.  That rarely happens because of my level of experience and the degree of research I put into these posts.  Somewhere in the past I pointed out that one of my motivations for writing this blog came from colleagues who asked me what I read, where I found certain information, and how I came to know what I know. I hope I am successful at getting that information out there.

I am also very grateful to the academics out there who share their work and give me free advice.  One of the most striking examples was midnight correspondence with two philosophers who wrote a book about diagnostic decision making in the late 1980s. I used it to teach a course in not making diagnostic errors in medicine and psychiatry. Both professors were retired and I sent them emails in a later time zone at midnight. They gave me detailed responses within an hour. I don’t always get a response, but when I do it is exhilarating to be a part of academic discussions with some of the most accomplished people in the world.

It has not always been a walk in the park.  I was confused about gaslighting initially and tolerated too much of that activity before drawing a line.

I often wonder about why people read or do not read this blog.  The appearance is fairly basic compared with other sites that offer better graphics.  I think there is some reluctance or resentment based on the idea that I am profiting from this blog.  I can restate that this is completely non-commercial and not-for-profit.  I not only have not made a cent writing this blog but have had to pay licensing costs out-of-pocket for graphics and permissions.  A friend and colleague recently told me that he never thought about reading blogs.  The era seems to be one of podcasts and TikTok video clips. I have always found reading to be a lot faster.  And unlike TikTok I am intentionally not provocative.

One of the recurrent themes here on my blog is that there is no way to simplify psychiatry and do it well.  A psychiatrist considering themselves to be primarily a psychotherapist or primarily a psychopharmacologist is not considering large areas of the discipline.  The same is true of the psychiatrist who ignores medicine and neurology.  To paraphrase Euclid (325 BCE - 265 BCE)  “There is no royal road to psychiatry.”  You must know it all to do good work.  Complexity is good and necessary in human biology.

I currently have 123 folders in my References 2024 Folder and it’s only March.  I am working on a protocol that will allow me to submit research papers and blog them if they are rejected.  At the rate I am going I will write my own textbook in psychiatry in another 20 years.  Stay tuned!

 

And Thanks again!

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA