The 2026 Colgate Writers Conference will take place June 7–13. With expanded workshop offerings designed to support both emerging and established writers, as well as enhanced scholarship opportunities, the 2025 conference drew writers from more than 20 states and three countries. bit.ly/4stmUkF

🚀 Delighted to announce the publication of our new #MedHums101 brochure: ‘What is Medical Humanities?’ We hope it sparks your imagination, inspires your curiosity & encourages you to engage in our vibrant interdisciplinary field! tinyurl.com/what-is-med-...

Diagnosis is unstable. Institutions pursue stability because it is administratively useful. When unstable human experience is forced into stable categories, people adapt to survive. The costs increase when labels carry stigma, are treated as final, and systems resist acknowledging error.

For a time, my life intersected with a sociologist. Thirty years a professor. Critical theory: Marcuse. Alice’s Restaurant each Thanksgiving on San Diego radio. “You can get…” Eagleton, Jameson, Baudrillard, Berger. Postmodern theory in the air, in the arts. Today the meta-. Aware, reaching anyway.

The “Clinical Ceiling” Blocking Lived Experience Leadership Lived experience workers describe a “clinical ceiling” that confines peer roles to the margins while hospitals and services preserve traditional chains of command By Kelli Grant www.madinamerica.com/2025/12/the-...

6 Suggestions for DSM-6 Making the next DSM look less like a house of mirrors www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/6-suggesti...

Design thinking starts with empathy. Empathy isn’t sympathy, pity, or even sincere concern. It’s curiosity. It’s the practice of stepping into another’s shoes.

Clinicians know this tension well. You can recognize that a diagnosis is provisional and still be required to treat it as stable. That gap between what you know and what the system demands is not a personal failure. It is a structural problem we have not named clearly enough.

Not everything that resists classification is awaiting a better name. Some experiences are asking for care without capture. #CriticalPsychiatry #EthicsOfCare

St. Edward’s University, Austin, 2013. A counseling psych MA program. Prof: “There’s nothing wrong with you.” A little over a decade later: For the Misnamed. A call to restore the narrative.

Open Dialogue also sits on my internal map of alternative forms of care. An approach grounded in relationship.

Just a few months before the release of the results of 9 years of research into the Open Dialogue method of supporting mental health. There will be headlines & global impact #ODDESSI #MentalHealth

We use many languages to describe human difference. Some rely on diagnosis; others resist it. I’m interested in how these stories shape who we believe we can become.

James Baldwin: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” Sometimes the work is learning what we inherited, what we chose, and what we can name differently without losing ourselves.

Systems simplify. People don’t. That’s our saving grace, the part that keeps us whole.

UT. Abnormal Psychology. Psych 352. 1994. First day: “Who here can define normal?” Decades later, Grinker’s Nobody’s Normal (2021) made the question feel even louder. We keep studying “abnormality” without ever agreeing on what normal is.

Some focus on diagnostic architecture. I’m working on the epistemology beneath it.

Biopsychosocial: A framework. Human health and behavior as shaped by the interaction of three domains: • Biological factors (genetics, physiology, neurobiology) • Psychological factors (thoughts, emotions, beliefs, coping) • Social factors (relationships, environment, culture, systems)

Just had our fondly nicknamed "pretty pictures" paper published in Psych Medicine: doi.org/10.1017/S003... We mapped the repetition among the 1419 symptoms described in 202 diagnoses of adult psychopathology in Section II of the DSM-5, finding some cool results (and bad news for MDD) along the way.

Another place where classification shapes access is mental health law. SB 1164 in Texas keeps the danger requirement but broadens how danger is inferred through “lack of insight.” Anosognosia codified. Interpretive standards can be unevenly applied, especially to people without protection.

The old LGBTQ debates about who counted were never only about identity. They were about rights. Marriage. Protections. Safety. Stakes also feel high around diagnosing. Whenever rights hinge on a label, people draw tight lines. But lived experience is wider than the definitions built to contain it.

We can name a thing without ever capturing its essence. Yet the words we choose still enter the world and take on a reality of their own.

UT undergrad. Sociology. Reflecting back. The Thomas Theorem kept echoing: what’s defined as real becomes real. No wonder identity shifts when someone names your story before you can.

When my nephew was three, he pointed to a moth and shouted “bird!” Either way, we still had to help it back out of the house. We often reach for the nearest name we have, the closest our understanding can offer at the time.

My new essay in Please See Me explores the shadow side of a mental health diagnosis—the parts our diagnostic tools can’t hold and the slow work of finding language that truly fits. #Nonfiction #NarrativeEthics #LivedExperience #MentalHealth #NarrativeMedicine pleaseseeme.com/issue-17-fre...

Here is one psychoanalyst's use of humor in writing by poking fun at how uncomfortable a first day at class can be...sometimes. granta.com/clown-school/

Here is something from ACT. It speaks to the dialectic, also key to DBT. Even IFS uses this approach--"there is a part of me that feels"... Some mistake this for ambiguity. It is more about synthesis. Internal Struggles (The Chessboard Metaphor) by Dr. Russ Harris www.youtube.com/watch?v=phbz...

Hi 👋, I’m Monica. I’m cautiously exploring Bluesky to see if it feels like the right fit. I’m a licensed therapist with an interest in digital health technology—something I view as both a powerful tool and a complex challenge. Excited to connect and explore here!