July 11th 2024
What is new in research on alcohol use disorder?
Southern California Psychiatry Conference
September 13-14, 2024
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Updates on New and Emerging Therapies to Improve Outcomes for Patients With Major Depressive Disorder
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PER® Psychiatry Summit
November 7, 2024
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5th Annual International Congress on the Future of Neurology®
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2023 Annual Psychiatric Times™ World CME Conference
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Clinical Consultations™: Managing Depressive Episodes in Patients with Bipolar Disorder Type II
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Patient, Provider, and Caregiver Connection™: Exploring Unmet Needs In Postpartum Depression – Making the Case for Early Detection and Novel Treatments
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Medical Crossfire®: Understanding the Advances in Bipolar Disease Treatment—A Comprehensive Look at Treatment Selection Strategies
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'REEL’ Time Patient Counseling: The Diagnostic and Treatment Journey for Patients With Bipolar Disorder Type II – From Primary to Specialty Care
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Real Psychiatry 2025
January 17 - 18, 2025
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More Than ‘Blue’ After Birth: Managing Diagnosis and Treatment of Post-Partum Depression
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Patient, Provider & Caregiver Connection™: Reducing the Burden of Parkinson Disease Psychosis with Personalized Management Plans
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Expert Perspectives in the Recognition and Management of Postpartum Depression
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House and Senate on Collision Course on Parity
September 1st 2007A House committee's passage of a mental health parity bill on July 18 seems to put the House on a collision course with the Senate, raising the possibility that Congress once again will fail to improve on the 1996 law that requires employers already offering mental health benefits to ensure limited parity with physical health benefits.
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Envy-The Forgotten Narcissistic Issue
September 1st 2007Of the 7 "deadly" sins that are committed by humans, envy is primarily directed toward the destruction of an external object. Over the centuries, this unfortunate emotion has been the subject of inquiry by many disciplines (philosophy, religion, sociology, fiction, and so on).
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Sexual Offenders With Mental Illness: Special Considerations for a Special Population
September 1st 2007Whether or not sexual offending behavior-or the predisposition to such-is a mental illness, there are patients with traditional mental illnesses who also present with sexually inappropriate and even sexual offending behavior.
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Abuse of Prescription Drugs Close Behind Alcohol, Marijuana
September 1st 2007About 60% of users of illegal prescription drugs receive them free from friends or relatives, H. Westley Clark, MD, JD, director, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), told attendees at the American Society of Addiction Medicine 38th Annual Medical-Scientific Conference
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Serotonin, Netrins, and Brain Development: Why a Neurotransmitter Is Not Always a Neurotransmitter
August 1st 2007From a research perspective, it is always a joy when molecular mechanisms that were first characterized in petri dishes are confirmed inside a living animal. As molecular techniques have become more sophisticated, such dual results are increasingly commonplace. This month's column is about just such an achievement and takes its cue from a topic I considered in last month's article.
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Toward an Improved Nosology of Sexual Dysfunctions in DSM-V
August 1st 2007Sexual dysfunctions as distinct syndromes were first identified in DSM-III in 1980. At that time, sets of criteria were specified for inhibited sexual desire, inhibited sexual excitement, inhibited female orgasm, inhibited male orgasm, premature ejaculation, dyspareunia, and functional vaginismus.
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Antipsychotics in the Treatment of Comorbid Anxiety in Bipolar Disorder
August 1st 2007The comorbidity of anxiety disorders with bipolar disorder is a rule, not an exception, with a negative impact on both course and treatment outcome. So far, there are no guidelines or consensus for the treatment of this comorbidity.
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There are occasions in which one's best psychotherapeutic efforts are not effective or help only modestly. If the effort has taken place for a relatively long period, the therapist has several options. One is to ask a colleague for consultation. A second is to reexamine one's understanding of the patient's dilemma.
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Nonverbal Learning Disabilities and Sensory Processing Disorders
August 1st 2007In our presentation at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, we suggested that child psychiatrists who come across a child with the profile of the following hypothetical case should consider whether the child may have deficits that are not currently covered by DSM-IV nosology: either a nonverbal learning disability (NVLD) or a sensory processing disorder (SPD).
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Hume's Fork and Psychiatry's Explanations: Determinism and the Dimensions of Freedom
August 1st 2007An item in the Boston Globe recently caught my eye. Apparently, a man who was fired by a large corporation for visiting an adult "chat room" while at work is suing the company. The man is claiming he is an "Internet addict" who "deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal." Another item reported recently concerned a lawyer who argued that her client was not responsible for a rampage that he had committed because he "had been obsessed with comic book superheroes as a kid."
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Sexual Orientation: Neuroendocrine and Psychodynamic Influences
August 1st 2007In this article we discuss psychoneuroendocrine influences on sexual orientation and the psychodynamics of internalized homophobia. Because of space limitations, we focus on homosexual orientation, although research in this area sheds light on heterosexual and bisexual orientation as well.
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Risk Versus Benefit of Benzodiazepines
August 1st 2007Epidemiological studies report a lifetime prevalence rate of 24.9% for (any) anxiety disorder. Feelings of anxiety can also be related to normal fear of pain, loneliness, ridicule, illness, injury, grief, or death. In both these types of situations, anxiety can be difficult to deal with. Consequently, benzodiazepines, which offer almost immediate symptomatic relief for anxiety, can be quite appealing to many persons.
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Suicide in Depression: Balancing Risk Factors, Identifying Vulnerable Patients
August 1st 2007This May, the FDA called for a black box warning on antidepressants to indicate that patients aged 18 to 24 years are at heightened risk for treatment-emergent suicidality. But a member of the FDA advisory committee that recommended that warning has issued his own warning, saying that the "real killer in this story is untreated depression and the possible risk from antidepressant treatment is dwarfed by that from the disease."
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Alejandro Gonzales's Babel is a meditation on the barriers to communication in a world divided by class, culture, and language. Although his vision is dark, he never surrenders to cynicism. His Babel, unlike the Bible story, holds out the promise of a universal language of the human heart. Psychiatrists know this language as empathy--the wordless connection that is the art form of every caring profession.
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The Crisis of Overdiagnosed ADHD in Children
July 1st 2007This commentary arises from my concern about the superficiality that characterizes the process of diagnosing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children--usually followed by the prescription of one of the most powerful drugs on earth, methylphenidate.
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Psychiatric Emergencies in Bipolar and Related Disorders
July 1st 2007Psychiatric emergencies usually involve some combination of agitation, aggression, impulsivity, psychosis, and risk of destructive behavior, including suicide and homicide. The psychiatrist must ensure the safety of the patient and others while identi- fying and treating immediate medical and psychiatric problems and developing and initiating a strategy for continuing the management of less immediate problems. In the diagnosis of acute behavioral disturbances, it is necessary to determine the role of the patient's primary psychiatric illnesses and any complications or treatments of those primary psychiatric illnesses, as well as the role of other medical or toxic disturbances that may be interacting with the patient's psychiatric illnesses or treatments.
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Mental Health Courts Reduce Incarceration, Save Money
July 1st 2007Figures from the US Department of Justice indicate that more than half of prison and jail inmates have a mental health problem. Mental health courts (MHCs) were designed to divert mentally ill persons convicted of nonviolent crimes to supervised treatment instead of incarceration, but while the number of MHCs has grown substantially over the past decade, limited information has been available about outcomes and costs.
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Assessing Violence Risk in Psychiatric Inpatients: Useful Tools
July 1st 2007Psychiatrists who work in inpatient units are faced with daily decisions about predicting which patients will be violent, both in the hospital and after discharge. These decisions are often made using unstructured clinical judgment based on the clinician's experience and knowledge of the literature. How long such judgment stays the standard of care remains to be seen, because psychiatric researchers have produced a number of assessment and management tools to improve the accuracy and use of violence risk assessment. This article briefly outlines 3 tools: the Brøset Violence Checklist (BVC), the Classification of Violence Risk (COVR), and the Historical Clinical Risk-20 (HCR-20).
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While many of the claims at improving cognition are dubious (eg, the "Mozart effect"), there is now ample reason to suspect that parental involvement in children's brain development occurs much earlier than the first 3 years. Data now suggests that maternal cues are critical to proper brain development long before birth.
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