News

The University of Arizona Department of Psychiatry is recruiting adult psychiatrists to join a progressive and growing academic department located in the beautiful Southwest. These two new positions, in addition to recent hires, will support residency expansion and major new facilities opening in early 2011. Both positions below are located at the University Physicians Healthcare Hospital, which is a federally recognized underserved area. Candidates must have current credentials to practice medicine in the United States and be Board-certified or -eligible in Psychiatry.

Army personnel responsible for supervising the Army psychiatrist now accused of the November 5, 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex, may find themselves accused of failing to follow Army policies and regulations and taking appropriate actions.

Highly desirable Inpatient/Outpatient Community Mental Health opportunities for BE/BC Psychiatrist available in Northern Arizona’s beautiful White Mountain vacation area. Be part of a family friendly community with southwestern charm. Step into a hassle-free practice, where you see patients and we take care of the rest. Experience professional, supportive staff, a collegial environment, as well as comfortable work hours and life style. Modern, newly constructed inpatient psychiatric hospital offers a state of the art treatment environment. Arizona’s White Mountain area is renowned for mild summers and beautiful, snow-capped mountain winters, perfect for hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, skiing, snowboarding, and bird watching.

We've put many of the clinical scales online, hoping healthcare professionals-whether in specialty practices, primary-care settings, or emergency services-will find this format convenient. … Read More

In his Putting Research Into Practice column, “Practical Implications of a Study on Treating Chronic Insomnia," (Psychiatric Times, Dec 2009, Vol XXVI, No 12, p 8) Dr Rajnish Mago described a study of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and hypnotics in 160 subjects with chronic insomnia, 15% with a comorbid psychiatric diagnosis.

In the face of 200,000 or more dead and millions injured or homeless in Haiti following the January 12 earthquake, mental health and medical organizations, along with US government agencies, are offering aid both to those suffering and to those helping.

When a soldier is killed while in the military service the President writes a condolence letter to the family. However, if a soldier is psychologically injured and then commits suicide, there is no Presidential letter of condolence.

There are very few, if any, direct mental health provisions in the congressional health care legislation that has passed the House and is now awaiting Senate approval. The Senate bill-the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590)-debated on the floor in December is similar in some respects to the Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962), which the House passed by an extremely thin, Democrat-heavy vote of 220-215 on November 7, 2009. Both bills appear to extend mental health parity to individual and group policies sold within new health insurance Exchanges. They would also expand Medicaid, begin funding medical home demonstrations, and ban insurance companies from denying policies based on an applicant’s preexisting condition.

Of particular utility in the position statement is a checklist for identifying children who are at risk for sudden death, independent of ADHD or stimulant drug treatments.

In a very long essay in the Sunday (1/10/10) New York Times Magazine entitled, “The Americanization of Mental Illness,” Ethan Watters suggests that a kind of psychiatric-cultural imperialism has been foisted on other countries and cultures by “the West.”

Since the inception of the modern era of psychopharmacology, psychotropics have been the mainstay of the care of psychiatric patients all over the world, irrespective of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Until recently, however, variations in treatment response across populations, including effectiveness, dosing strategies, and adverse-effect profiles, have received minimal attention.

The onset of psychiatric illness in a child is a life-changing event for families. Families from immigrant and ethnocultural communities often must come to an understanding of their child’s psychiatric difficulties while simultaneously interacting with an unfamiliar health care system and its practitioners.

-after reading about a health insurance company CEO’s $19,000,000 paycheck

During the past 2 decades, there has been enormous growth of interest in and visibility of cultural psychiatry. Much of this is due to the steady increase in migration of the world’s population from low-income to higher-income regions and countries.

Until the early 19th century, psychiatry and religion were closely connected. Religious institutions were responsible for the care of the mentally ill. A major change occurred when Charcot1 and his pupil Freud2 associated religion with hysteria and neurosis. This created a divide between religion and mental health care, which has continued until recently. Psychiatry has a long tradition of dismissing and attacking religious experience. Religion has often been seen by mental health professionals in Western societies as irrational, outdated, and dependency forming and has been viewed to result in emotional instability.3

The term “evidence” has become about as controversial as the word “unconscious” had been in its Freudian heyday, or as the term “proletariat” was in another arena.

What do we know about circadian rhythms and melatonin? And what further lessons do we need about circadian rhythms, light exposure, and melatonin to help our patients with disturbed sleep/wake cycles?

CATIE can be viewed as a switch study. Switches offer both opportunity and risk. Data from CATIE demonstrate differences in overall effectiveness, but these differences depend on the individual patient context.

The ancient role of conscience as a moral pilot is rejuvenated, and its neglected function as a spiritual daemon is refurbished for more psychologically minded modern readers.

After formulating and signing “Melancholia: A Declaration of Independence,” an international cadre of psychiatrists recently launched a campaign to have the upcoming DSM-V recognize melancholia as a distinct syndrome rather than as a specifier for the mood disorders of major depression and bipolar disorder.

This commentary suggests how the research community can be instrumental in improving DSM-V and helping it avoid unintended consequences. According to several converging, anonymous (but I think quite reliable) sources to which I have had access, the draft options for DSM-V will finally be posted between mid-January and mid-February 2010. There will then be just 1 month (until mid-March) for collecting comments. The good news is that the products of a previously closed process will finally be available for wide review and correction. The bad news is that there will be only a brief period allotted for this absolutely crucial input from the field.

On October 19, 2009, the Office of the Deputy US Attorney General issued a memorandum, “Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana.”1 The memo announced a federal policy to abstain from investigating or prosecuting “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The memo made clear, however, that it did not “legalize marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law.” Rather, it was “intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion.”

I don’t know how many psychiatrists paid much attention to the climate-change conference in Copenhagen last month, but I came away convinced they need our help. Here’s why.

The most rigorous scientific review of “medical marijuana” to date was carried out by the Institute of Medicine in 1999, under the direction of Drs John A. Benson Jr and Stanley J. Watson Jr.1 The institute’s conclusions were considerably more nuanced and qualified than those of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.2 The institute report found that:

The empirical basis for the effectiveness of 12-step recovery and the psychotherapeutic benefits of opioid agonist maintenance were among the topics of several symposia with introspective views of time-tested treatments at the 40th Annual Medical-Scientific Conference of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) in New Orleans.