News

It is well known that black people, compared to white people, are much more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from ‘schizophrenia’ if they are seen at psychiatric units in the UK or USA. .

Which medications have typically been used as first-line treatment for acute mania? Is comorbidity the rule or the exception in patients with bipolar disorder? These questions and more in this week's quiz.

I am a Registered Nurse of 37 years who has worked in hospice care and psychiatric emergency; I’ve worked as a med/surgical manager and (now) as an inpatient psychiatric nurse. Throughout it all, I most enjoy seeing a patient realize he/she is getting well; I also enjoy conducting small teaching groups to help the patient know how to stay well.

In a recent issue of Psychiatric News, members of the DSM-5 Task Force reported on the dimensional measures being considered for DSM-5. These take 2 forms: severity scales for individual disorders, and “cross-cutting” measures that cut across disorders. For this brief piece, I will focus on the latter, the more interesting and controversial of the proposed dimensions.

This table provides links to many valuable resources for child and adolescent psychiatry. A list of Web sites, books, organizations, and pivotal articles on ADHD and other topics.

Clinicians who treat children with ADHD face a challenging conundrum. Although our understanding of ADHD and its evidence-based treatments has increased significantly in recent years, the number of successful treatment outcomes has not.

In essence, screen media constitute neurologically potent, arousing input to the developing brain. Unlike conventional toxins, their effects are mediated by sense organs. However, they have demonstrable effects on brain activity, and on behavior and function.

Autism is demanding increased attention by professional and lay audiences; prevalence seems to be increasing. There are differing opinions about whether the increase is due to greater recognition and reporting, diagnostic expansion and substitution, or increasing acceptability.

This is both an exciting and challenging time to be a child and adolescent psychiatrist. New findings are changing our knowledge of childhood psychopathology. This Special Report discusses current developments in diagnosis, treatments, and problems for children and adolescents.

The recent disaster that trapped 33 Chilean miners for the past 2 months piqued my curiosity as a psychiatric researcher: how will these hearty survivors cope with the aftermath of being buried alive?

Designers of descriptive diagnostic criteria for mental disorders face some of the same problems as fishermen. Fishermen, like nosologists, want to capture not just any fish but a particular kind. Fishermen deal with this problem in various ways.

The following is a transcript of a podcast by Dr James Lake.

What routine screening for alcohol abuse is recommended to avoid alcohol-related psychiatric emergencies in older adults? How will the presence of additional staff members affect an agitated patient in a psychiatric emergency? These and more in this week's quiz.