Welcome to Benchmarks, a weekly collection of news and notes about the Mass General Research Institute. With a community of over 9,500 people that spans more than 30 departments centers and institutes, there’s more news each week that we can get to. Here are a few highlights:

What is Goblin Mode? A Mass General Psychiatry Researcher Explains

Karmel Choi, PhD, a clinical psychiatrist and researcher at the Center for Genomic Medicine at Mass General, was featured in patient education article on the 2022 word of the year—”goblin mode.”

Defined by Oxford as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations,” what does this word say about the state of people’s mental health going into 2023?

Dr. Choi notes that in its best version, “goblin mode” embodies the idea of owning who you are, taking care of your needs, and living more authentically. During times of stress, it can be a powerful relief to give yourself permission to be as you are, instead of trying to hold it all together.

She also cautions there can be dark sides to this approach. While “goblin mode” may feel liberating in the short term, it is not necessarily a recipe for long-term well-being. Read more.

Mindfulness vs. Medication For Treating Anxiety

Amanda Baker, PhD, director of Mass General’s Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders, recently worked with colleagues from New York University and Georgetown to explore a non-medical approach to treating mental health disorders: mindfulness-based stress reduction.

The team compared the effectiveness of mindfulness training with that of the commonly prescribed anxiety drug escitalopram (Lexapro).

They found participants in both groups improved about the same amount after an eight-week course.

The Harvard Gazette spoke with Baker about the research and its implications for treatment of mental health issues. Read the interview.

Antibiotic Resistance a Growing Problem for UTIs

Lisa Bebell, MD, an infectious diseases physician at Mass General, is quoted in a new Scientific American story about treatment-resistant urinary tract infections and the overall rise of antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases.

About half of women and more than one in 10 men will get a urinary tract infection (UTI) in their lifetime, with many people experiencing recurrent UTIs, writes Jaimie Seaton in the SciAm story.

These common bacterial infections, which can lead to painful urination, have been easily treated and cured with antibiotics for decades.

But as a result of antibiotic resistance—when bacteria become resistant to the medicines used to treat them—a number of antibiotics routinely employed for UTIs have become ineffective, leading to more severe illness, hospitalizations and mortality while driving up medical costs.

“Antibiotic resistance is a huge problem for UTIs, compared to other infections, because UTIs are so common” Bebell explains. “So we see the effects of antibiotic resistance much more immediately and with a higher prevalence.” Read more.

Tweets of the Week

This Week in Mass General History

Seeing the Person Behind the Patient

February 5, 1909—An article in the Salida (Colorado) Record details a new humanistic vision of medicine promoted by Richard Chabot, MD, of the social service department at Massachusetts General Hospital and “one of the most widely known nerve specialists in America.”

Cabot was calling for a new era of medical practice that goes beyond prescribing drugs to patients and treating them in the clinic.

“The new era, the era of better things, is the effort to reach out beyond the hospital and carry the work of healing to limit of thoroughness in treating the whole man,” the paper writes.

“Just as the church is beginning to discover that man has a body as well as a soul, the medical profession is recognizing man has a soul as well as a body, and that he must be treated not merely as an individual and unrelated sick man, but as a component and essential part of our close-knit social life, where one man who is sick endangers the whole city in which he lives.”

What’s a 22-Letter Word for Love Machine?

February 2, 1939—The Society News and Notes Column of the Journal News of Nyak, NY, spotlights a unique machine with a complicated name that was on display at Mass General.

“Invented by John W. Thompson of Harvard University, this machine, being demonstrated at Massachusetts General Hospital, is none other than a haematometharmozograph. What does this mean in ordinary English? Love detector. Working on the same principle as the lie detector, it is said to record various emotional reactions.”

P.S. We ran haematometharmozograph through this Scrabble score calculator and it earned 49 points (without any double or triple word scores) According to Yahoo, though no one’s managed to use it yet, the theoretical highest-scoring Scrabble word out there is OXYPHENBUTAZONE. Ohioan Dan Stock found the word, which is worth a wild 1,458 points.

About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. Our research includes fundamental, lab-based science; clinical trials to test new drugs, devices and diagnostic tools; and community and population-based research to improve health outcomes across populations and eliminate disparities in care.
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