J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD

Celeste, one of my patients, a woman in her mid-30s, unexpectedly had a seizure, fell, and hit her head while at work. She was rushed to a nearby emergency department (ED) where results of laboratory work, an EEG, and an MRI confirmed that she had had a seizure but did not show a cause.

You are surprised when a patient of yours, a physician recovering from a substance abuse problem, tests positive for morphine. Do you believe his explanation of a false-positive result?

Between 50% and 80% of people with mental disorders smoke cigarettes. Are the tobacco companies targeting this population, and are mental health care facilities promoting the use of tobacco? What are psychiatrists' responsibilities in the overall health of their patient?

Nonprofit health maintenance organizations (HMOs) state that their goal is to serve the public, whereas the main goal of for-profit HMOs is profit generation. One might assume, therefore, that the operating procedures of these two types of HMOs would be different from one another. A recent experience of mine, however, suggests otherwise.