This blog started out to explain psychiatry, critique the usual attacks on psychiatry, and share information about what I read to keep up with the field. Those goals have expanded to include commentary on scientific, social, political, and cultural interests. I think those are natural topics because I must be aware of the lines of demarcation between medicine and psychiatry and everything else. I also have an interest in rhetoric and find that it is little known and widely misunderstood.
My primary motivation for writing is that it has personal meaning
to me. I thank my two liberal arts
English composition professors who saw something in my essays and encouraged me
to write - Lee Merrill and Nathan Hale. That occurred 50 years ago at a now defunct liberal arts college. That does not mean I always get it right or even readable. I am a notoriously poor editor of my own
writing and often must read a post 4 or 5 times to catch all the typos and grammatical
errors. I also run my posts through an analyzer that tells me the reading level
required and it is consistently college level readers. My apologies for all the
subordinate clauses.
The blogger interface that I use here does not seem
ideal. They send me tips on how to
increase the number of readers. I do not
know how to implement those posts and my requests for assistance are
ignored. The good part about that is
that it should be clear I am not trying to be an “influencer” or generate a
massive following.
The same applies to revenue.
I have never generated a single cent from this blog and my licensing agreements
preclude me from ever making money. Every year I pay about $200-$400 for the use
of graphics that I think are necessary for a particular post. For the most part I can use Creative Commons
licensed graphics that are in the public domain.
Some people have encouraged me to do a podcast but I am not interested
for basically 3 reasons. First,
everybody has one. I do not understand the point of that unless you have a
commercial interest and are trying to generate revenue from smaller segments.
Second, podcasts (and for that matter Tik Tok clips) have very low information content. They seem to appeal to emotion, but if it is something
really interesting – a significant amount of research is necessary after you watch
it. My blog posts can be read in much
less time (typically 20 minutes), have more information content, and all the
relevant references. Third, I do not
have the charisma to pull it off. I am an
old man who is not particularly interesting to look at who has been known to
drone on in lectures – even the lectures I am really excited about.
I am very grateful for readers who have endorsed this blog, added comments, and find it useful. I have thought about moving the blog to another site but notice that many new services require readers to subscribe and suggest subscription fees frequently. I write this blog for free so you don’t have to subscribe and have no plans to change that.
If you have the time - let me know what you think or what you want to hear about on this blog. I have accumulated research on a lot of topics that I have not posted on yet and work at that nearly every day. Please keep in mind that none of what I write here is direct advice to any reader about medicine, psychiatry, politics, investing, or life. What looks like patient information are actually composites developed over 40 years of practice and does not represent any single real person. Apart from my personal medical records and the records of my family - no other medical record information is used on this blog.
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA
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