As I said in an earlier blog, knowing how to handle your health insurer is one way to be a smart patient. Knowing how to handle denials is obviously a big part of that, since it’s the one time most of us have a problem with our health insurance.
You probably will see denials more often for courses of talk therapy than anything else. Therapy is the most expensive form of treatment. But your insurer may also deny your doctor’s request for brand name as opposed to generic medication.
George is once again my hero. First of all, for Christmas he got me a Roomba and a Palm GPS system. I hate to vacuum and I’m always getting lost, so I was ecstatic to get both presents.
Unfortunately the Roomba died due to a battery issue, but they’re sending us a new one. It did work really well until then, though. Just put it down, block off any potential danger spots, like cords, and watch it go!
The GPS Navigation worked perfectly right out of the box. We used it to get to my sister’s house in San Francisco on Christmas Day. I love it. It actually talks and redraws route really quickly when you change course.
We wanted to get a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, but they were all sold out. So we waited until this weekend, when I heard that there were more coming in, but a very limited amount to each store. So yesterday morning George went down to our local GameStop at 7:30am and waited till 11:00. He was second in line. So we got one!
We had fun yesterday playing tennis, baseball, Need for Speed Carbon, Happy Feet, etc.
What a guy, huh?
A few days ago someone posted on my depression website that they wanted a natural fix for their depression, because they had heard that antidepressants are “terrible things.” Hearing or reading this type of statement always makes me take a deep sigh. And then I start mentally ranting.
Let me say that first of all, I do understand the desire to treat depression naturally. Natural always seems healthier. “Natural” brings to mind images of a meadow of wild flowers kissed by the sun. “Chemical” brings to mind laboratories or refineries spewing smog into the air. But that’s all image and perception, and often perceptions are not accurate or don’t tell the whole story.
So let’s say that you want to treat your depression naturally. Here’s the one natural treatment for depression that’s been shown to work: exercise. Mild to moderate depression can be alleviated by exercise. Notice that I said “mild to moderate,” not severe. And there’s a problem with this treatment. When you’re depressed, getting your laundry done is an effort. How easy is it to consistently work out? Not very.
What about St. John’s Wort? Again, it should only be used for mild to moderate depression, and it also has not definitively been shown to be more effective than a placebo.
Why are we so determined to treat our depression naturally? I think that for many people the root of the problem is the refusal to think of depression as an illness. If you treat it with a prescription medicine, it’s hard to think of it otherwise. But if you treat it with vitamins or herbs, you can tell yourself that depression is just a nutritional imbalance, or the kind of cranky mood we might inhale lavender essential oil to combat.
MONDAY, Jan. 15 (HealthDay News) — Researchers say they’ve found another reason why video games are so hard to give up: They may help fulfill basic psychological needs.
In a study published in the January issue of Motivation and Emotion, investigators from the University of Rochester and Immersyve Inc. looked at what motivated 1,000 gamers to keep playing video games.
“We think there’s a deeper theory than the fun of playing,” lead investigator Richard Ryan, a motivational psychologist at Rochester, said in a prepared statement.
The gamers were divided into four groups, each asked to play different games. They answered questionnaires both before and after playing the games. The researchers used the questionnaires to look at the underlying motives and satisfactions that can spark players’ interests and sustain them during play.
The researchers found that the games can provide opportunities for achievement, freedom and even a connection to other players. Those benefits trumped a shallow sense of fun, which doesn’t keep gamers as interested. Players reported feeling the best when the games produced positive experiences and challenges that connected to what they knew in the real world.
“It’s our contention that the psychological ‘pull’ of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness,” said Ryan. He believes that video games not only motivate further play but “also can be experienced as enhancing psychological wellness, at least short-term.”
For the participants who played massively multiplayer online, or MMO, games — which are capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of players simultaneously — the need for relatedness emerged “as an important satisfaction that promotes a sense of presence, game enjoyment and an intention for future play,” the researchers found.
Ryan pointed out that while not all video games are able to satisfy basic psychological needs, “those that do may be the best at keeping players coming back.”
I just read a very informative book called YOU: The Smart Patient: An Insider’s Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment . It’s about, as you can imagine, being a smart patient. This means not only reading this book or one like it to learn things you probably didn’t know unless you’re in the health care profession (did you know that the most germy object in a hospital room is the remote control?) but also it means being more proactive about your health treatment than you probably are.
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