Maternal infanticide and postpartum psychosis

As reported by NPR, a motivation for the tact is Dr. Janjic’s own decades-long battle with chronic pain. Personal introspection and literature searches led her to the view that chronic pain can be rooted in inflammation. Quelling the inflammation without disabling the good that the immune system does in fighting infections and other harms might help ease the pain.

“As a patient, I want an answer,” Dr. Janjic says in the interview. “I want to figure out this.”
 

Marshmallows and self-control

The world recently bid goodbye to Walter Mischel, PhD, who died on Sept. 12. Dr. Mischel is chiefly remembered for his ionic marshmallow test.

In the test of delayed gratification, children were presented with a treat (sometimes the famous marshmallow) then asked to hold off gobbling down the treat in exchange for an even more treats later.

As described in The New Yorker, an inspiration for Dr. Mischel was his repeated attempts to quit his prodigious smoking addiction. His research was one of the first glimpses into the role of self-control as a beneficial strategy in life. Learning to mentally temper that got-to-have-it moment is, according to Dr. Mischel, key to self-control.

“If we have the skills to allow us to make discriminations about when we do or don’t do something, when we do or don’t drink something, and when we do and when we don’t wait for something, we are no longer victims of our desires,” he said in the New Yorker interview.