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In his blog for Mental Illness Awareness Week, NIMH Director Thomas Insel talks about the complexity of mental disorders and the need for scientists, clinicians, patients, and families to work together in searching for better treatment.

After a managed care company calls me to be “a prescriber,” I recall The Book of Dinosaurs my grandfather gave me the day I turned seven.

Although the brains of men and women are much more similar than different, the hormonal influences on the female brain seem to tend toward verbal agility and deeper relationships.

The psychopath has the image of a cold, heartless, inhuman being. But do all psychopaths show a complete lack of normal emotional capacities and empathy?

Clown faces and masks are obvious disguises, but we also disguise ourselves in everyday and therapeutic life, and often therapy has to work through these disguises to get to the core.

Despite the growing body of evidence that supports the existence of a specific epidemiological, genetic, and neurobiological relationship between OCD and schizophrenia, the association remains poorly understood. Here, a brief overview.

In this video, Dr Karl Doghramji, describes the various agents available for managing sleep disorders and discusses the adverse effects associated with over-the-counter, nutraceutical, and prescription sleep aids.

This is the fourth in a series of blogs devoted to our society’s shameful neglect of people with severe mental illness.

Leaders (and really that is all of us in one way or another) have the challenge of understanding and responding to future risk.

The manner in which a clinician enters the room and approaches and engages with an intercultural patient and family can either set off or relieve “culture shock.”

Standardized, quantifiable outcome measures exist for most major psychiatric disorders, yet they are rarely used in routine clinical practice. This article identifies the rationale for using psychiatric scales.

There is much concern about any breach at the White House: the most recent intruder could have been shot and possibly killed during his run. Why wasn’t he?

What to do once treatment-resistant depression is established based on risk factors and exclusion of other conditions? Insights here-and a treatment algorithm.

Because cognitive and negative symptoms have the greatest impact on overall recovery, interdisciplinary strategies that target these symptoms are necessary. This article offers details.

The discovery that a single IV infusion of low-dose (subanesthetic) ketamine exerts rapid antidepressant effects constitutes an expansion in our understanding of the neurobiology of depression and provides new avenues for drug development.

It seems to this psychiatrist that a significant cohort of his colleagues conduct their practices in what might best be described as an “underground economy”: a system of services and charges disconnected from the conventional constructs by which these activities are presumably measured.

You don't need to be religious to say this prayer . . . do you?

The ISIS uniform is a particularly powerful weapon in its PR arsenal. . . an elegantly crafted blend of commando, ninja, and superhero. It is meant to inspire fear and trembling in its opponents, Arab or Western.

If you're up for a little ancient humor, you'll love this original translation of an ancient Babylonian text in which a physician is jilted on a fee, then is further embarrassed in his efforts to collect it.

Having just completed my first year as an attending physician, I realize that there is simply nothing that prepares you to be an attending-except being an attending.

Like all good comedy, there must have been some therapeutic benefits to the laughter Robin Williams and Joan Rivers both elicited.

Of all the transferences that emerge in the consultation room, sexual feelings are by far the least talked about and the most challenging for therapists to manage. This author talks about erotic transferences here.

Genius and madness: does one phenomenon cause the other-or do both share a common underlying factor or mechanism? How are geniuses able to accomplish “creative fits”? The author explores both questions.

Given ongoing climate change here on earth, could Mother Earth turn out someday to be Mother Mars?

Why do patients with eating disorders resist treatment? How can the clinician address resistance?

To me, the following psychiatrists were spectacular in their life work: they often ended it in a blaze of glory-- like the fall leaves -- before they fell silent on the earth.

Boyhood’s power-and poignance-centrally derives from one’s visceral experience of the authentic signatures of time on its actors’ features and forms . . . life cycle theory made flesh as it were.

To combat opiate abuse and its dire consequences, drug makers have developed a number of strategies--which are detailed here.

Today's headlines about security breaches leave me wondering: how do we accurately assess our own security risk?