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What follows is an adaptation of Dr Ellis’s response to a volunteer who took part in a live public workshop demonstration of the Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy approach.

Abortion is not a pretty subject. An embryo or fetus, while not a fully developed person, has the potential to become one. No one is “pro-abortion.” At the same time, there are circumstances under which a girl or woman feels strongly that her pregnancy is untenable-that she is too young, too poor, too burdened, too ill to properly mother a child. Women have abortions because they take motherhood seriously.

Seventy percent of antidepressants are prescribed by primary care doctors with little training in their proper use, under intense pressure from Big Pharma, drug salespeople, and misled patients, after rushed 7-minute appointments and subject to no systematic auditing. The cash-strapped FDA is beholden to industry for funding. And it gets worse.

With the recent tragedy in Colorado and the high likelihood that questions about psychiatry will be inextricably tied into it, guidance for practicing psychiatrists can be gleaned from this coincidence.

"Internet Addiction" may soon spread like wildfire. All the elements favoring fad generation are in place . . . the profusion of alarming books; the breathless articles in magazines and newspapers; extensive TV exposure; ubiquitous blogs; the springing up of unproven treatment programs; the availability of millions of potential patients; and an exuberant trumpeting by newly minted "thought leading" researchers and clinicians. So far, DSM-5 has provided the only restraint.

This tale involves a “clever” inmate. He enjoyed the respectable rung of bank robber, but found he had suddenly descended to approximately the level of a sex offender. The reason for his slippage was the inmate code, which demands allegiance to other inmates under virtually all circumstances. “Ratting out” a fellow inmate may cost one his life, or at the very least, result in a decidedly anxious, paranoid existence.