Articles by Nathaniel Van Kirk

Obsessive Compulsive and Body Dysmorphic Disorders in Adults and Children: free educational program

Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015
The Starr Center Auditorium, Massachusetts General Hospital, 185 Cambridge St., 2nd Floor, Boston, MA 02114

Study Title:  A Placebo-Controlled Crossover Trial of Intranasal Ketamine for the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Contact:
Chris Perriello
617-855-2937
cperriello@mclean.harvard.edu

Treatment:
See Study Details at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02234011

Article first appeared in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, Volume 19, No. 4.

Melissa Braaten

How Not to Fast

Fasting is hard to do well.  I ran into the guidelines for Catholic Lenten fasting during my first year as a graduate theology student at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, USA.  I took the rules very seriously: no more than one full meal and two “snacks” on a fasting day.  What qualified as a “snack” was ambiguous, so I spent a lot of time worrying: how small did my bowl of cereal have to be to qualify as a snack?  Did it have to be half the size I would normally eat?  Less than half?  Could a snack consist of bread and carrot sticks if they were both small amounts?  What if I was subconsciously making my full meal bigger than normal since I was hungry?  The carrot stick went back and forth from the refrigerator to the plate, indecisively.