Dr Devavrat Harshe

Psychiatrist by training. Science communicator by choice. Making mental health make sense in English, Marathi, and plain human. 🧠 Cricket enthusiast| Kolhapur

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@TRealspd जर ती रोड वरून खूप चालत असेल, तर ती कदाचित रोडावलेली राहील.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@Antardrshti Sangakkara could have achieved an even higher average, had he not kept wickets for almost 50 games.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@imacuriosguy Re-tire.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Children mostly are protected by parents against setbacks, disappointments and roadblocks in school.
Thats a natural parental instinct.

Competitive exams, professional exams are often the first hit of the cold, ruthless, unfair world children get to see and experience live.

Every child is different.
This was part of the session we conducted for some of my patients who faced this problem this year.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Full paper:
Raymer DM, Smith DE. Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007;104(42):16432-16437. doi:10.1073/pnas.0611320104

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

All of us have seen this. Headphones in a drawer. When pulled out, knots formed. Frustrating, right?

Science finds out the cause, and the solution.

Scientists dropped a string in a box, spun it for 10 seconds, opened it up, and a knot fell out. They did this 3,415 times.

The findings, which explain why your earphones hate you:
→ Under ~46cm: almost no knots. Too short to misbehave.

→ 46cm–1.5m: knot odds shoot up fast.

→ Past 1.5m: plateaus near 50%, not 100%, because a long string jams itself against the walls and stops tumbling.

Why it happens: a string can't pass through itself, so knots only start at a loose END. Confined, the string coils up, laying parallel strands beside the tip. Every jostle, the free end randomly weaves over and under them. Accidental braiding.

Floppy + long + lots of jostling = guaranteed tangle. (Flexible string knots 85%.)

How to beat it:
🔷keep cords short,
🔷coil them loose,
🔷pick stiffer over floppy, and
🔷don't leave them loose in a bag.

Tame the loose end, beat the knot.

#Science
#Physics
#Music
#Life
#Wisdom

Image courtsey: ChatGPT

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Since we are on this, take this highly academic exercise.

An OBGYN sees a patient. 3 month ANC.
Patient's age: 18 years 2 months.

Should he/she invoke POCSO disclosure?

1) The patient is an adult now and what led to the pregnancy happened when she was a minor.

2) POCSO disclosure rules state that,

19. Reporting of offences.—(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of1974)any person(including the child),

In this case, there is no child.

Whats the consensus on that?

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Unfortunately, it's not upto her.

However, the doctor shouldn't wait for the disclosure to provide the standard of care. There has been a court ruling against one hospital from Mumbai, I think JJ. Not sure.

The resident, must,

1. Provide care if emergency.
2. Provide options of non emergency and let the mother take the call with the daughter.
3. POCSO disclosure. Even if, the mother says, "I don't want your treatment" and leaves the hospital with her daughter AMA.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@autopsy_surgeon Offer standard of care. Consents from the mother for being a minor. POCSO disclosure to the police.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@pixelated666 @CricFan_69 @mondalishan6 @BarkusMaximus There is a reason for this.

If a ground is small with only a 65 meter boundary, then sixes hit with modern bats won't ever be measured, as most would land outside the stadium, and exact point of impact would be impossible to detect.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

There has to be.

Please search longest recorded sixes in cricket.

Then check the size of those stadia.

Those distances would be impossible without extrapolating.

Longest six in IPL history was hit by Albie Morkel in 2008. The record says 125 meters.

The ball is seen hitting the roof of the stadium and then vanishing.

It's impossible to calculate the distance without extrapolating it.

Video of that six is available on YouTube.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@solankineha01 The weirdest, and the most indefensible argument I read, modern medicine wants Indians to get away from their traditions and culture by rejecting homeopathy.

Which originated in Germany.

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Full paper here:
Roberts L, Little DR, Jackson M, Spittal MJ (2023) Test cricketers score quickly during the ‘nervous nineties’: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design. PLOS ONE 18(6): e0287700. https://t.co/Fw56z7rs5x

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Nervous nineties in cricket: Is it really a thing?

For generations we have called it the nervous nineties. The bit where a batsman on 94 supposedly turns into a quivering mess, pokes, prods, and gifts his wicket five runs short of glory.

Four researchers in Melbourne decided to stop assuming and actually check. The data has a rude surprise for the commentary box.

What they did
No interviews. No vibes. They went to cricsheet, pulled ball-by-ball data from 712 test matches played between 2004 and 2022, and ended up with more than 1.4 million deliveries to chew on.

Then they zoomed in on every innings where a batter passed through somewhere between 70 and 130 runs. That left 366 players and nearly 1,400 centuries to study.

For every single ball they noted three simple things. How many runs came off it. Whether it went to the fence. Whether the batter got out.

They used a method called regression discontinuity. Forget the jargon. You park yourself right at the 100 line and ask one question. Does anything suddenly jump the moment a batter crosses it? If behaviour snaps exactly at 100 and nowhere else, then reaching the century is what caused the change. Same trick economists use on a pass mark. Compare the student who scored 39 with the one who scored 41 and you learn what the line itself does.

What they found
Turns out the nineties are when batters floor the accelerator.

Runs per ball climbed steadily on the way up, from about 0.59 at a score of 77 to 0.71 at 99.

Boundary chances rose right alongside, from roughly 6 percent to nearly 9 percent by the time they hit 99. The closer to the century, the harder and faster they went.

Then they reach 100. The brakes come on. Scoring drops, boundaries fall by about three percentage points, and the batter eases into a calmer rhythm.

And the wickets? The thing we are all so certain spikes in the nineties? Flat as the Chepauk pitch on day one. Around a 1.3 percent chance of getting out per ball before 100, at 100, and after 100. No spike. No carnage. The famous nervous collapse simply never shows up in the numbers.

Translation: most batters do not seize up at 95. They go chasing the finish line, get the job done, then relax once it is safe.

Why do we think about nervous 90's?
Most likely, it is because our emotional involvement in the game. We forget the 50 centuries Sachin scored successfully, and remember the one he missed.

Do you agree? @imVkohli @stevesmith49 @root66

@Cricketologist @bestcricstories

#Cricket
#Batting
#Century

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@surajbaidy6320 @DrAditya2935 https://t.co/bFy1FxnNhs

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

𝗠𝗮𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝘆𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗱.
That neat, colourful triangle in every management PowerPoint and psychology textbook?

Maslow didn't make it. Not in his 1943 paper. Not anywhere in his published work.

So what did Maslow 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 say?
◆ ◆ ◆
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗱.
Maslow himself said the hierarchy is not nearly as rigid as we may have implied.

He listed 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 exceptions. Some chase esteem before love — not because esteem matters more, but because they believe being powerful is the only way to 𝘣𝘦 loved.
Some create 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘦 unsatisfied basic needs. Some who've been chronically deprived simply stop wanting anything higher — aspirations permanently deadened.
Not a ladder. A living system with reversals baked in from the start.
◆ ◆ ◆
𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 "𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲" 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁.

Maslow gave illustrative figures for the average person clarifying that these are not steps that you can cross and move on. He clearly states, a person can have different levels of satisfaction on multiple steps at once.

All. At. The. Same. Time.

Not sequential. Overlapping. A gradient of decreasing satisfaction, not a staircase of locked doors.

◆ ◆ ◆
𝗧𝗵𝗲 vision 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘄.
Maslow made a claim most health professionals today would hesitate to make: a person thwarted in basic needs can fairly be called 𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘬. Not metaphorically. Sick like a person lacking vitamins.
"Who is to say that a lack of love is less important than a lack of vitamins?"

He connected thwarted love needs to the most common core of maladjustment and severe psychopathology. Not safety. Not esteem. 𝗟𝗼𝘃𝗲. He even descibe8
the phenomenology of anxiety-driven compulsions — in 1943 — without calling it OCD.

◆ ◆ ◆
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀.
"A want that is satisfied is no longer a want."
A satisfied need doesn't sit ticked off on a checklist — it 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 as a motivator. And 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 is as important as deprivation, because gratification 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘴 the organism to pursue higher goals.
The patient stuck in survival mode isn't lacking willpower. Their lower needs are actively unsatisfied, dominating the entire organism. Telling them to "focus on growth" is like telling a drowning person to admire the sunset.

And the flip side: people whose basic needs were always met become 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 against future deprivation. Those loved well can withstand hatred. Early gratification breeds frustration tolerance.

That's attachment theory, resilience research, and trauma-informed care — anticipated by six decades.

◆ ◆ ◆
Maslow called his own paper "a suggested program or framework for future research." He listed 13 unresolved problems he couldn't address. The man was humble about his limits. The internet was not.

"Man is a perpetually wanting animal."

That was the real thesis. Not a triangle. A restless, layered, deeply human hunger that never fully resolves.

Far more honest than any pyramid could ever be.

So next time you see the hierarchical needs pyramid, remember, Abraham Maslow has contributed to its creation as much as he has to the Great Pyramid Of Giza.

For his complete work.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.

It's free, it's beautiful its an eye-opener.

#MedTwitter #Psychology #MentalHealth #Motivation #Management

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@TRealspd पाल चे पुल्लिंगी काय?

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

Everyone thinks fast bowlers break down because they bowl too much. Half right. The research says bowling too LITTLE injures them too.

A 2016 systematic review (McNamara, Gabbett, Naughton) went through the literature on what actually wrecks elite fast bowlers.

They started with 751 papers, threw out duplicates, pre-2005 studies, abstracts and anything not done on real bowlers in the field, and were left with 17 solid studies covering 984 players.

Caveat worth saying out loud: 82% of that research is Australian. So this is the gospel according to Cricket Australia's sports science department.

What they found is more interesting than "rest your bowlers."

The number that matters is not how much you bowl. It's how SUDDENLY you ramp it up.
Researchers split workload into two:

Acute load = what you bowled in the last 7 days (your fatigue)
Chronic load = your rolling 4-week average (your fitness)

When the acute spikes way above the chronic, the bowler gets hurt. Often in the week right after the spike. Sometimes the injury shows up 3 to 4 weeks later, which is why nobody connects the dots.

The bowler looks fine, plays two more games, then snaps a hamstring and everyone blames the hamstring.

Some hard thresholds from the data:

Bowl over 50 overs in a single match and your injury risk jumps for the next 21 days.
Bowl heavy in the second innings (over 30 overs) and per-over injury risk climbs over the following 28 days.

And here's the bit selectors hate: a bowler who has been UNDER-bowled is also fragile. A low chronic load means no built-up resilience, so the first proper spell becomes a spike.
This is why wrapping your strike bowler in cotton wool before a big series can backfire. You didn't protect him. You just made his comeback the most dangerous spell of his season.

The injury types even sort themselves by workload history:

Tendon injuries = high recent load on top of a high previous season
Bone stress (the dreaded lumbar fracture) = high medium-term load but LOW career load, basically a young bowler ramped up too fast
Joint injuries = the high-mileage veterans

Then T20 walked in (first international, 2005) and scrambled everything. GPS data showed T20 and one-dayers demand 50 to 100% more sprinting per hour than multi-day cricket. Higher intensity, lower volume, and the same bowler now switching between all three formats in a single month. Try building a clean chronic load through that.

Summary for cricket fans:
High volatility in fast bowlers' load has the potential to wreck their rhythm.
Resting them without a thought might add to the volatility.

Basically;
If you want to climb, control the angle of the ramp.

#Cricket
#Science
#Injuries

@bestcricstories @AMP86793444

Image courtsey:
McNamara DJ, Gabbett TJ, Naughton G. Assessment of Workload and its Effects on Performance and Injury in Elite Cricket Fast Bowlers. Sports Medicine. 2016;46(11):1525-1538. doi:10.1007/s40279-016-0588-8

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@DrShauryaGarg Vaibhav needs Sheldons around him.

https://t.co/06wkvVCih2

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

The #Journal of Stuff Beyond Psychiatry.
Vol. 1, No. 4. Skill: Civil Engineering
Every building has two kinds of walls, and from the inside they look exactly the same.

Which Supports Are Structural and Which Are Decorative

One holds the roof up. The other divides the room. Both get painted the same colour, hung with the same pictures, finished with the same skirting. Stand in the room and you cannot tell which is which.

The two walls

A load-bearing wall carries weight. Remove it and that load has nowhere to go. The structure sags, cracks, and eventually fails.

A partition wall carries nothing but itself. It exists to divide space and to look like a wall. It is genuinely useful. It gives you privacy and somewhere to hang a painting. But it holds up nothing. You can remove it on a whim and the house does not notice.

Here is the part that matters. You cannot tell them apart by appearance. The smoothness of the finish tells you nothing about the structure. The decorative wall is often the better looking one, precisely because it has no load to carry and can afford to be smooth.

The people version

People are the same. Some of the people around you are load-bearing. When the weight of your life goes up, illness, money, grief, a 2 a.m. crisis, they take some of it. Others are decorative. They are pleasant company, they make the room nicer, and when the load goes up they carry none of it. Not because they are bad. Because that was never their function.

And as with walls, you cannot sort them by how pleasant they are to stand next to. This is the error. People assume the agreeable ones are the supports and the difficult ones are dead weight. It is frequently the other way round.

Exhibit A:
Consider Sheldon Cooper.

By any reasonable social measure, Sheldon is a problem. He is rigid, condescending, and tone deaf. He keeps a schedule for the bathroom. He explains things nobody asked to have explained. To Penny, his neighbour, he is openly rude. He informs her that she is a failed waitress. He notes that the acting career is not happening. He keeps an itemised mental ledger of what she owes him. Spend an evening with him and you would call him a pain, and you would be correct.

However..
When Penny slips in her bathroom and dislocates her shoulder, alone and unable to move, it is Sheldon who comes. He hates germs. He hates disruption to his routine. He is visibly horrified by the entire situation. And he gets her dressed, drives her to the hospital, and stays. When she later needs to learn the material for a job she is not qualified for, he does the unglamorous, accurate work of actually teaching it to her. He shows up. He tells her true things she does not want to hear. He carries weight.

Sheldon is a load-bearing wall. Rough finish. Scrapes your knuckles when you pass. Does not move when you want it to move. And it is holding up the roof.

Blunt is not toxic

This brings us to the distinction that the word "toxic" has nearly destroyed.

Blunt is not toxic. A pain is not toxic. Honest is not toxic.

Toxic has a specific meaning, and the meaning is structural. A toxic person does not merely fail to carry your weight. They transfer their weight onto you. They extract. They distort your information so that you make worse decisions. They are warm when it costs them nothing and absent the moment a load appears. Toxic is a partition wall that has somehow also started rotting the foundation.

Sheldon is none of that. When he calls Penny a failed waitress, the information is accurate, it is offered in the open, and the cruelty buys him nothing. It is tactlessness, not extraction. So the test is not "did it sting." Structural walls scrape you constantly. The test is the direction of the weight. Is this person taking load off you, or loading you up?

How to find the load-bearing walls

Three questions, then, to find the supports and to stop mistaking them for the decoration.

First, what happens under load. Not on a good day. On the worst day. Decorative walls are wonderful on good days, which is exactly why they fool you. You learn a wall's job only when you put your whole weight on it.

Second, which way the weight is moving. A blunt friend hands you accurate, uncomfortable information and leaves you stronger than they found you. A toxic one hands you their moods, their problems, and their version of reality, and leaves you carrying more than you arrived with.

Third, what it costs them to show up. The decorative person gives you what is free: agreement, flattery, easy company. The load-bearing person gives you what is expensive: time, honesty, the hospital run at an hour that wrecks their week.

Two warnings

Do not knock out load-bearing walls because they are unpleasant. The fashionable advice is to remove anyone who causes discomfort and keep the company that soothes.

And the opposite warning, which matters just as much. Bluntness is not a permit. Not every unpleasant person is a secret pillar. Some difficult people are simply difficult and also carry nothing, abrasive and decorative at the same time. And some genuinely toxic people will tell you they are "just being honest" right up to the moment they extract. You still have to check the load path. Honesty, plus reliability, plus a cost paid to show up. All three.
Cruelty on its own is just cruelty.

Why this is our business

For us in psychiatry the application runs two ways.

Patients arrive mid-renovation. They are worn out by the blunt parent, the demanding mentor, the friend who keeps saying the hard thing, and they are being told from every direction to cut these people loose.

Part of our job is to help them check the structure before they swing the hammer.

The other part, equally, is to help them name the genuinely toxic relationships. The skill is the distinction. It is never a blanket rule in either direction.

Find the people who hold weight. Forgive them their finish.

@psychidiaries
This is the recent version. Will share the last week's one now.

#MedTwitter
#PsychTwitter

[Dr Devavrat Harshe @DocDevavrat]

@Ayushihihaha Because he knows this is not going to be a nail-biter.