Couch in Crisis

A television drama looks at eating disorders from the patient, physician, and family perspectives. What does it get right—and wrong?

At almost every turn, insurance payers, based on seemingly ignorant and unethical justifications, continue to undermine the quality of psychiatric care.

Powerful psychic defenses are keeping humanity from facing a number of interconnected crises. How can these psychic defenses be overcome?

A lawyer discusses how the legal system treats (and mistreats) those with mental illnesses.

A tragedy has rocked the Muslim community. How can psychiatry try to help prevent further tragedies from occurring?

Patients who are report social phobia are unlikely to speak out for themselves. For them, confrontations with their boss or coworkers are even worse than water-cooler conversations. That is where psychiatrists can help.

ECT has undoubtedly been foundational in the field of interventional psychiatry, yet controversy remains an underlying theme.

There is consistent evidence of benefits following state-of-the-art modified ECT.

No one has precise data about how many Americans receive ECT each year, let alone how many treatments each patients receives or how closely providers space treatments. This is a troubling dilemma, according to the authors.

The more tools we have in our treatment toolbox, the greater the likelihood that we will ultimately find a treatment (or combination of treatments) to improve a given patient’s functioning and quality of life.

By considering different team members, it may be possible to address the broader needs of patients with mental illness.

The pandemic has driven a psychiatrist into isolation, but his long history in the arts helps him reconnect.

A psychiatrist reads the news and responds with art.

A winner of the 2020 Sigourney Award reflects on a lifetime of reading, promoting, and revising Freud’s theories.

A DSM-5 diagnosis requires a biopsychosocial case formulation—not just a symptom checklist.

This mindset might be the key to mental health breakthroughs.

Mental health care for victims of violence may be a way out of the darkness for Latin America.

Are current systems of mental health care alienating children and adults from the meaning inherent in their own emotional difficulties?

Every phase of the COVID-19 pandemic brings new ethical challenges.

During the pandemic, Albert Camus’ existential novels have become newly popular—and with good reason.

The story of depression, through time and around the world.

Providing quality mental health care in all treatment settings requires one crucial element: teamwork.

Why superheroes would make the best psychiatrists?

A case for why psychiatrists should discuss the COVID vaccines with their patients.

An interview with Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, vice-chair of the American Psychiatric Association DSM Steering Committee, author of more than 1200 articles, and one of the highest-cited researchers in psychiatry.

What are best practices for difficult conversations about racism? How can psychiatrists help? The authors present 6 ways to advance discussions about racism in psychiatry.

The authors explore the impact of structural racism on psychiatry trainees and the patients they care for (and what can be done about it).

The shortage of mental health care providers is a crisis, but psychiatrists have a potentially powerful ally.

If we had 1 extra minute with our patients, what question would we ask?

Unable to spend adequate time with patients, residents are not learning to function as doctors, but merely as technicians for the human body.