Alcohol Abuse

I have been practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy for more than 30 years. During this time, there has been an accepted taboo against coupling psychotherapy with spirituality-despite a number of articles that have been written on this subject.

Make no mistake: Dr Torrey is on the side of the patient. He is enraged by the plight of the seriously mentally ill in the postinstitutional era, and he takes aim at a troika of villains-deinstitutionalization, the civil liberties bar, and the antipsychiatry movement. These 20th-century forces have conspired to relegate citizens with mental illness to a deplorable state of neglect that puts us all at risk. The Insanity Offense threads a needle of making us fear the violent mentally ill without stigmatizing them as a group.

Kia Faridi MD, a psychiatrist at McGill University in Montreal, discusses the results of his study on the impact of marijuana use in patients with psychotic symptoms.

Christopher Janish, BA and Melanie Buskirk, BS, students at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, discuss the results of their study on representations of homicide portrayed in dramatic television series compared with US homicide data from the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System.

In “Major Depression After Recent Loss Is Major Depression-Until Proved Otherwise” (Psychiatric Times, December 2008, page 12), Dr Pies highlights one of the more provocative questions encountered when we train in clinical psychiatry: “Suppose your new patient Mr Jones, tells you he is feeling ‘really down.’ He meets all DSM–IV symptomatic and duration criteria for a major depressive episode (MDE) after having lost his wife to cancer 2 weeks ago. Should you diagnose MDD?”

Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also referred to as social phobia, is a chronic and potentially disabling anxiety disorder characterized by the intense and persistent fear of being scrutinized or negatively evaluated by others. At its core, people with this disorder fear and/or avoid the scrutiny of others. Symptoms may occur only in circumscribed situations, such as a fear of speaking in formal or informal situations, or eating or drinking in front of others.

Several classes of hypnotic medication are available: the older barbiturates and their derivatives; benzodiazepines; chemically distinct “z-compounds”; antihistamines and antihistaminic antidepressants; and melatoninergic compounds. The use of hypnotic medications continues at a high rate. However, some switching to the shorter-acting benzodiazepines has occurred. The z-compounds-eszopiclone, zolpidem, and zaleplon-have become popular; they seem to have fewer residual effects than the benzodiazepines. Even so, care is needed in prescribing such hypnotics for the elderly.

Child murder by parents is an upsetting topic for both the public and clinicians. It is even more distressing when a mother kills her child than when a father does because we expect mothers to love and protect their children at all costs.

The financial tsunami that has hit the United States and most of the rest of the globe is causing unparalleled misery for hundreds of millions. In America, millions of jobs have been lost, and it appears that millions more will be lost. In a nation where home ownership is a cherished expectation and goal, millions are losing their homes. The GNP is shrinking, the value of nearly all investments has plummeted, and the retirement plans of millions have been decimated.

Psychotropic treatment can often prevent the relapse of psychotic and mood symptoms. However, many patients take medication intermittently or not at all; or the symptoms may be only partially responsive to medication. Therefore, there is a need for interventions that can supplement the effect of medication and improve treatment outcomes.

The assessment and treatment of psychiatric symptoms in persons with cognitive dysfunction are becoming increasingly important. Prevalence estimates of dementia in the United States range from 5% in those aged 71 to 79 years to 25% to 50% in those 90 or older.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of 5 neuro developmental conditions (autism, Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified [PDD-NOS], Rett syndrome, and disintegrative childhood disorder).1 Once thought to be rare, the incidence of these disorders is now estimated to be 1 in 150 children in the general population.2 Furthermore, the number of recognized cases has increased markedly in recent years.

The co-occurrence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) and psychotic illness has been a challenge for clinicians and investigators for more than a century. Over the past decade, interest in this area has burgeoned because of recognition of higher-than-chance comorbidity rates of schizophrenia and OCD.

Optimal management of bipolar disorder (BD) includes the careful selection and regular ingestion of appropriate medication to stabilize mood. Unfortunately, between 40% and 50% of patients with BD in routine clinical settings take breaks or forget to take their medication or even discontinue the drug altogether.1-3 Treatment nonadherence is associated with mood relapse, hospitalization, and suicide.4,5

The central tenet of clinical comorbidity, the occurrence of 2 syndromes in the same patient, presupposes that they are distinct categorical entities.

This article emphasizes core philosophies and components of effective dual disorder programs.

Over the past century, the syndrome currently referred to as ADHD has been conceptualized in relation to varying cognitive problems including attention, reward response, executive functioning, and other cognitive processes.

Eli Lilly and Company pleaded guilty on January 30 to one misdemeanor violation of misbranding Zyprexa (olanzapine) by promoting it for dementia. However, a question raised by bloggers and others remains: did the drug benefit the elderly despite the fact it was not approved by the FDA for such purposes?

My first job after residency involved working at a large Veterans Affairs hospital in an outpatient dual diagnosis treatment program that focused on the comorbidity of schizophrenia and cocaine dependence. Having recently completed a chief resident position at the same hospital’s inpatient unit that focused on schizophrenia without substance abuse, I was struck by how “unschizophrenic” my new patients were. They were organized and social. Their psychotic symptoms were usually limited to claims of “hearing voices,” for which insight was intact and pharmacotherapy was readily requested.

The words attributed to Socrates resonate with the perspectives of many contemporary parents and clinicians.1 The endurance of the concern suggests something fundamental about the psychopathology of deviant, disruptive behavior of youth. Yet clinicians struggle to understand its origins, to help parents control their children, and to help the children control themselves. Clinically, this manifests in failed pharmacological treatments, incompleted courses of individual therapy, problems in engaging families in treatment, and controversies over which therapy is most effective.

Because numerous diseases- infectious, endocrinological, metabolic, and neurological, as well as connective-tissue disease-can induce psychiatric and/or behavioral symptoms, clinicians need to distinguish these neuropsychiatric masquerades from primary psychiatric disorders, warned José Maldonado, MD, the director of Stanford University’s Psychosomatic Medicine Service.

Suicide risk assessment is a core competency that all psychiatrists must have.1 A competent suicide assessment identifies modifiable and treatable protective factors that inform patient treatment and safety management.2 Psychiatrists, unlike other medical specialists, do not often experience patient deaths, except by suicide. Patient suicide is an occupational hazard. A clinical axiom holds that there are 2 kinds of psychiatrists: those who have had patients commit suicide-and those who will.

Although most studies have focused on the risk of metabolic syndrome for patients with schizophrenia exposed to atypical antipsychotics, other psychiatric patients appear to be at risk for metabolic disturbances as well.7-9 Major depressive disorder (MDD) may be of particular interest because it is much more common than schizophrenia and is treated with a broad range of psychotropics.

Psychiatrists will average a 4% fee increase in 2009 from Medicare, which compares very favorably with many other subspecialties.

A large percentage of youths use and abuse psychoactive substances. According to the 2007 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey, the percentage of US adolescents who used illicit drugs or drank alcohol continued a decade-long drop, revealing that 19% of 8th grad­ers, more than 36% of 10th graders, and 47% of all 12th graders have taken an illicit drug (other than alcohol) during their lifetime.1 According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the rate was 3.3% for misuse or nonmedical use of prescription drugs.2 The misuse of prescription drugs among adolescents was second only to marijuana use. In fact, prescription drugs increasingly have become a part of the repertoire of drug-using adolescents.

The insanity defense represents a prominent symbol of the relationship between law and psychiatry. Despite the fact that it is infrequently raised and seldom successful, the insanity defense is the subject of intense legal and public scrutiny.

For some couples, the transition to parenthood is not filled with this rich mixture of great perplexity and great joy.

The development of new, more effective antipsychotics with fewer adverse effects (eg, extrapyramidal symptoms, tardive dyskin­esia, metabolic syndrome) is paramount.

An increasing youth suicide rate may point toward an emerging public health crisis, necessitating national efforts to develop effective interventions, experts recently warned.

Recent headlines point to research that suggests atypical antipsychotics are no more effective than their older counterparts in the treatment of children and adolescents with schizophrenia and psychosis.