sensicle

Psychiatric RN here that has a little coding background as well (a few years ago I made a small app just for my hospital staff to calculate how much staff we need on any given shift). Anyhow, I think what you're doing for your mother is absolutely awesome and I really wish her well. I recently lost my father last year as well and it's hard trying to keep my mom happy and living a somewhat normal life.

So I've had a few app ideas that I've wanted to implement, but since my skill level is so basic and it's been so long, it's a little overwhelming getting back into it but you've been an inspiration. I think I'll take the Allen Wong route and learn on weekends and down time the way I've been learning 3D rendering software. Obviously the time and effort you put into something is directly correlated to what you get out of it.

Any tips or advice would be appreciated. Just wanted to give you a shout out for taking care of your mom though. I think that's awesome and beautiful at the same time.

Psychiatric RN chiming in here. The way I've explained it to my students in the past is that personality disorders aren't often, if ever, treated with medications. Other diagnoses are treated with psychotropic agents (meds) given with the intent to treat the illness. With personality disorders, the most effective treatment is a willingness to change and behavioral therapy (see dialectical behavioral therapy or DBT).

This isn't to say that personality disorder patients won't get any meds at all, they do, it's just that the meds are often given to treat a concurrent psychiatric illness, like bipolar disorder, for instance.

Yes.

Exactly. This is why I decided to do this AMA, to shed some light on the treatment. You should know a couple things:

1. There's always an informed consent for the procedure. It's never done against the will of the patient.

2. Anesthesia is involved. The patient feels no pain.

3. It's never used as a primary form of treatment. It's only considered when other options are not sufficient.

4. I've seen it work. It can be extremely effective for some. Why suffer from an illness when there's a safe and effective way to treat it?

The main things they must do with it that do benefit us all are:

• commute times on Google Maps. How did it know there was a five minute slowdown two miles up the road? Because all the other drivers Google was tracking that drove that stretch of road took five minutes to get through it.

• busy times at your local restaurants, stores, and other places of interest. How could Google know that 7PM is crazy busy at your Walmart on Wednesday nights? It must keep record of how many of its users are there at any given moment.

That being said, they shouldn't do it if you opt out. I would imagine their thinking goes something like Well, if we don't track them, Google Maps loses X million number of data points that it used to compile accurate, real time data. Then Google Maps would start to be inaccurate and lose market share.