If you have ten minutes to spare, here is an audio recording from my remarks at last week’s annual conference of the Psychological Society of Ireland: I was speaking on a panel on the psychological impact of COVID-19. The panel itself arose from a PSI policy statement issued in August, […]
Year: 2020
No More Mr NICE Guy…
The newly released draft NICE guidelines for the management of “myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome” continue to cause a stir. And rightly so. The new guidelines not only repudiate a heretofore favoured treatment approach for a particular illness, they also threaten to discredit an entire (albeit quirky) branch of […]
Could this actually be happening?
Mark this day in your calendar. We could be observing the beginning of the end of a decades-long medical scandal. In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have published new draft guidelines for the management of “myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome”. These are very […]
Make Nostalgia Great Again
Here is a blast from the not-so-distant past: the Republican president speaks the day after the Democrats win a bitterly contested presidential election. Take it away, George W.: No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday across the country. […]
COVIDxHalloween: The Psychology of Wearing Masks
[A version of this article appeared in Psychology Today on 28 October 2020 ] Boo! Scared you. Yes, it’s Halloween. That season when children wear masks and we all pretend to be terrified of them. But as with just about everything else this year, COVID has turned convention on its head. Now, […]
You’re so vain, you probably think this global pandemic is about you
[A version of this article appeared in the Irish Examiner on 22 October 2020 ] The challenges of COVID-19 have been well reported. Death, disease, and debilitation are the scariest. Discombobulation also makes the list — nobody likes it when the entire world (more or less) gets turned upside-down. And […]