News

Poetry of the Times

While fear stirred the nation during the Washington, D.C.-area sniper episodes, some members of the media were irresponsible in their analysis of the sniper's motives. Has this confirmed the general public's false belief that mental illness is linked to violence?

Groups are important throughout the course of a patient's therapy, especially for patients who have substance use disorders. Group therapy's clinical and cost benefit is evaluated for its efficacy in preventing and treating substance abuse.

Repetitive self-injury can be one of the more difficult conditions to treat. What is the biochemical basis for self-injury and how can psychiatrists treat this condition?

Behavioral and Emotional Problems Among Children of Drug Abusers

Although patients taking opioids for chronic pain may sometimes appear to display addictive behaviors, addiction may not be the case. How can you tell if addiction is the problem or if inadequate pain control is to blame?

When physicians struggle with substance use disorders, physician health programs are an important source of information and support. Certain medical specialties are at higher risk for substance use disorders than are others, and drugs of choice vary by specialty. Physician health and patient safety must be considered, but colleagues can help.

Combination treatment with both a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy may be more effective than either treatment alone for this debilitating and often chronic disorder.

Standardized test scores and adaptive functioning will now be used to determine who may be sentenced to death and who may not. Yet, legal and psychiatric experts continue to challenge each other to define mental retardation. Some say that retardation can be feigned and used to weaken the power of the death penalty. Others say the issue will not arise.

Assessing the Violent Patient: An Additional Case of Legal Implications

Physicians are seeing more patients, but obtaining less reimbursement. Recent graduates of medical school finish residency with increasing debt-to-income ratios. What can doctors expect in this changing environment?

The Killer

Medication and psychotherapy or counseling can be safely and effectively combined in patients with substance use and other psychiatric disorders. Differentiating between substance-induced psychiatric disorders and pre-existing psychiatric disorders facilitates the successful treatment of dually diagnosed patients. Find out what the latest research offers in the prognosis of psychiatric disorders and substance use.

The patient who presents with vague psychiatric somatic complaints may, in fact, be suffering from chemical sensitivities. Such sensitivities are tied to lower incidences of certain psychiatric disorders while correlating with the higher prevalence of others. Neurogenic inflammation, limbic kindling and psychiatric co-factors are discussed.

Treatment with psychopharmaceuticals may prove problematic for pregnant women. The decision to discontinue medications or to adjust dosages to minimize the risk to the fetus has to be addressed. The dynamic balance of treatment options, maternal concerns and practitioner responsibility depends upon staying abreast of the latest research in psychopharmacology and pregnancy.

The threat that a patient may commit an act of violence challenges psychiatrists to wrestle with the legal system as they attempt to successfully build a therapeutic alliance. Patient history, solid medical care, and the duties to warn and to protect must be successfully balanced to navigate the crossroads between psychiatry and the law.

Two new studies have raised questions about the placebo effect in clinical trials. Issues of methodology must be examined and the changing trends of placebo responses need to be evaluated.

Despite the widespread, long-standing notion that pregnancy is a time of happiness and emotional well-being, accumulating evidence suggests that pregnancy does not protect women from mental illness. Like their nonpregnant counterparts, pregnant women experience new onset and recurrent mood, anxiety and psychotic disorders.

A new report released by the Bush administration details the fragmentary nature of the current mental health care system. A few successful programs work despite the current system, not because of it.

I try to make him an ordinary patient with a list of drugs and diagnoses strung together in a necklace of initials: CAD, CABG, DM2, HTN.

There is no doubt that the number of applications for disability is rising. How should psychiatrists deal with patients who ask for disability without compromising the therapeutic alliance or the goals of therapy?

Mental health care professionals must be aware of the responsibilities and conflicts that present when patients are children and adolescents. Prescribing medications to minors and working with the child's guardian in treatment decisions are discussed.

Psychiatrists must identify ethical conflicts that arise among their practice, personal beliefs, and the needs and beliefs of the patient.

Discussions of psychiatric ethics often devolve into discussions of applicable law. Although ethics is often operationalized by a society's laws, ethics differs dramatically in its foundations, framework and purpose.

As the economic boom of the'90s slows down, more and more insurance companies are realizing less profit. As a result, physicians find it more difficult to get the malpractice insurance they need; when they do find it, it is usually at a higher cost.

How does a clinician deal with those patients for whom they can ultimately do nothing but help them stay numb for the majority of their days?

Is history repeating itself? Has China taken up the political abuse of psychiatry by adopting the methods that made the Soviet Union infamous? That is the claim now being made by human rights groups who are calling on organized psychiatry to intervene.

Each wound containsits own beauty--

New developments in neuroimaging and effective diagnostic tools can help obtain early diagnosis of and timely treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

The promise of natural products as possible sources of new treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other dementing illnesses is on the rise. Scientific evidence for the 13 dietary supplements most commonly used for memory impairment is analyzed and evaluated.