Cultural Psychiatry

The specific cause of Capgras syndrome has been hypothesized from neuropsychological and psychodynamic views.

As experts in neurobiology, we can conduct and critically evaluate research to identify the short- and long-term risks and benefits of neuroenhancers for patients without recognized clinical indications.

Addressing a few subjects that may have the potential to create a more insidious and enduring form of misrepresentation ... namely, the implications that psychiatrists must now “play the game,” and resign themselves to a bleak future of harried pill dispensing. 

In this blog, Annemone Ligensa reviews The King's Speech from a psychological and historical perspecive.

A well-written volume that provides evidence for the wisdom behind treatment of the family and/or involvement of the family when treating the patient.

On January 24, Dr Ronald Pies posted a thoughtful piece titled “Who Can Forgive Jared Loughner?” which advocates the importance of relinquishing hatred in cases like the ones in Tucson and transforming “our revulsion and rage into something higher and nobler.”

Are you familiar with Google Ngrams? If not, you may find the graphs it produces to be a very visual and interesting way to look back at terms used in psychiatry.

The selection of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, to present the convocation lecture at the American Psychiatric Association’s upcoming annual meeting has so outraged some APA members that they have arranged meeting boycotts and protests.

What goes on in the minds of those who attempt suicide? Here: a psychologist who explores the myths that surround suicide notes "We need to get it in our heads that suicide is not easy, painless, cowardly, selfish, vengeful, self-masterful, nor rash."

In this blog, Dr Pols reviews The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries, by Jolande Withuis and Annet Mooij (eds).

The treatment of incest victims is often painful and difficult. With patience, the vast majority of those who have experienced incest can experience considerable improvement and enjoy an enhanced quality of life without succumbing to repeated victimization.

December 17, 2010 was a special day in the history of psychiatric diagnosis. Bob Spitzer retired after a remarkable 52 year career.

Here’s a question. As you sit across from your patient, what or whom are you treating: Ms Smith’s bipolar illness, or Ms Smith, a person with bipolar illness? The DSM leans toward the first choice.

Psychiatrists helping nonpsychiatrists refer their patients has a long but not always illustrious history.

Just what exactly are university and college students being taught about the history of psychiatry these days? We editors at H-Madness were interested in finding out.

I believe this book will serve as an invaluable resource for all students of psychodynamic theory as well as their teachers-and I would venture to say that this magisterial text is destined to become a classic.

Marco Bellocchio, one of the most psychoanalytically oriented filmmakers of his generation, entered the annals of Italian cinema in the 1960s to almost universal acclaim from critics at home and abroad.

Creative people tend to see the world in novel and unconventional ways, and they often seek out intense and destabilizing experiences. Creative ideas are frequently generated during chaotic mental states characterized by loosening of associations that resemble the psychosis of mania or schizophrenia.

The mental health implications of disasters on individuals and communities are enormous. Psychiatrists play a key role in helping to mitigate and lessen the traumatic burden and in fostering resiliency efforts.

In this autobiographic work, Darryl Cunningham explains mental illness in a succinct and novel way. It is already proving to be of use to both health professionals and mental health service clients. Published in the UK this year, its US release is scheduled for February 2011.

Would you be surprised to find out that Freud is gaining a foothold in China? As psychoanalysis and related therapies are slipping in the USA, psychoanalysts from the US are beginning to train a cadre of interested clinicians in China.

The preface explains why Prime Time is so needed. It provides a refreshing, nonjudgmental summary of how and why we’ve arrived at the 20-minute hour. This is important for disgruntled clinicians from the “good old days” as well as for early-career clinicians who have not learned anything better.

It is well known that black people, compared to white people, are much more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from ‘schizophrenia’ if they are seen at psychiatric units in the UK or USA. .

Clinicians who treat children with ADHD face a challenging conundrum. Although our understanding of ADHD and its evidence-based treatments has increased significantly in recent years, the number of successful treatment outcomes has not.

Clearly, we all share the goals of respecting-not “medicalizing”-ordinary grief; as well as recognizing and treating clinically significant depression. We differ with Dr Frances in how to achieve these goals, while remaining faithful to the best available scientific data.

The aging of the world’s populations represents one of the most remarkable success stories in medicine and of humankind, but it is also a source of various challenges.

Any effort to develop a diagnostic manual for world-wide use must grapple with the question of cross-cultural applicability. The description and diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia must work as well in East Timor as in the US or France. In this piece I choose PTSD to show the complexity of the cultural issue for DSM-5.

Consider the predicament of Mrs M, a 38-year-old premenopausal mother of two. Mrs M tells her primary care physician, “I just don’t have a strong desire for sex. It’s been about 10 years now, and I hardly ever have sexual thoughts or fantasies.

Since the early twentieth century, when Alois Alzheimer and Emil Kraepelin constructed it as a unified clinical-pathological entity, Alzheimer’s disease has been both one of the most stable and one of the most problematic neuropsychiatric entities.

Ethical Questions at the Intersection of Neurotechnology and Psychiatry