Cultural Psychiatry

Until I attended the recent Graphic Medicine conference at Johns Hopkins, I did not appreciate the skyrocketing popularity of “graphic novels” as “illness narratives,” writes this psychiatrist.

This case stresses the importance of identifying cultural issues that arise in mental health clinical encounters.

The recent 2014 Joint Report of the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association could have been a most useful and timely report on the woefully inadequate access to appropriate levels of mental health services for incarcerated seriously mentally ill persons. This author believes the report will only make the problem worse.

Suicide is a pervasive public health issue for adolescents in Hawaii. In response, a youth leadership model was initiated to empower young leaders in suicide prevention through evidence-based training, relationship building, and community awareness.

Minorities remain less likely to receive diagnosis and treatment for their mental illness and more likely to die by suicide. As ethnocultural diversity within the US grows, psychiatrists are increasingly evaluating attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of a broad spectrum of ethnocultural groups.

Epidemiological research has shown that the Māori people of New Zealand are approximately twice as likely to have serious psychiatric illness compared with non-Māori. Here, a child and adolescent psychiatrist describes her work in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

As a psychiatrist, I have spent years training to help others deal with loss and suffering. When it is your own loss, however, you realize that you are sometimes powerless to shield yourself from your pain.

A limited sampling presented here lends no support to Dr Thomas Szasz’s claim that 19th century physicians regarded the term “mental disease” as merely a figure of speech; on the contrary, several prominent physicians of this era recognized such conditions as both real and debilitating.

Media coverage of murderous rampages comprises a grisly-and vastly profitable-reality show. I’ll call it a Slaughterfest. Why do therapists continue to take part in this offensive entertainment?

Psychiatrists experience the impact of managed care perhaps most acutely during the utilization review process, which has become a standard tool for the review of treatment modalities and levels of service in the managed care environment.

What's your first impression of this Rorschach-type image? Is there a place for Rorschach measures in assessing psychotic functioning?

The topics in this Special Report provide a broad picture of the issues psychiatrists face as they take a clear-eyed look at the opportunities and challenges in the emerging health care system.

Vice President of the United States Joe Biden spoke at this year's American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in New York. Here, a video clip from his speech.

It seems ironic that the Oedipus myth about self-inflicted blindness is so central to psychiatry, but there are few guidelines on treating sensory loss. Here, the evolution of an APA workshop on treating patients with visual impairments.

Presenting a Q&A with Dr Rajesh Tampi and Deena Tampi on the issue of behavioral health in accountable care.

Running into an old friend at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting: Use hashtag #APAAM14.

Emergency psychiatry is helping to redefine acute mental health treatment-facilitating timely access, in less restrictive, outpatient levels of care, for patients in crisis.

Global child mental health in low- and middle-income countries faces all of the challenges of Western society and many more. This article examines the issues.

It is time for psychiatry’s critics to drop the conspiratorial narrative of the “chemical imbalance” and acknowledge psychiatry’s efforts at integrating biological and psychosocial insights.

What is your first impression of this ink blot?

This article focuses on 2 ethical issues that the new CPT coding raises to higher stakes: the increased potential for conflict of interest in billing and the erosion of confidentiality.

How does psychiatry in Spain differ from the US? More in this video vignette.

The universe of psychiatric ethics has dramatically expanded. Let us boldly go together where psychiatric ethics has never gone before!

Case-based dialogues illustrate some virtues required in psychiatric practice.

What harms are there in labelling (or rather often mislabelling) more than a quarter of our troops as mentally ill? The harms are numerous and potentially quite dangerous. . .

As psychiatrists, we have a potentially unique-and powerful-influence in the discussion of public figures. But what professional and ethical obligations should we follow in this role?

Federal law now strongly supports a patient’s right to view his or her psychiatric record on request. Here: a look at the ethical and legal issues.

Sid Caesar, who died on February 12, not only pleasured millions . . . he helped me get through a reasonably tormented adolescence.

The new Pope's message resonates with what is becoming a prevailing ethos of good mental health care--a belief that everyone has promise, can recover and rebuild from life's misfortunes and should be able to have what we all want.

Statutes in 8 states are not designed to assure informed decision-making, say these psychiatrists; instead they represent an unprecedented effort by the government to use physician communications as an instrument for discouraging pregnant women from exercising their constitutional right to make their own reproductive choices.