Schizophrenia/Psychosis

I wish to comment on the article by Drs McGlashan and Woods, “Early Antecedents and Detection of Schizophrenia” in the March 2011 issue of Psychiatric Times.

The various treatment guidelines are a useful authoritative resource for the reader who wants to know more about this topic.

If psychiatry reduces or abandons its engagement with psychology and social science in understanding and treating mental disorders and focuses predominantly on the biological factors of mental disorders, what will our role as psychiatrists be?

There should be no quarrel over the reality of severe CFS as an instantiation of genuine disease, just as schizophrenia and major depression constitute real disease.

In the sixth edition of his famous 2-volume textbook Psychiatrie, which appeared in 1899, Emil Kraepelin introduced the by now well-known distinction between dementia praecox (soon to be called schizophrenia) and manic-depressive illness.

In this short film directed by Caskey, Ben has to make a difficult choice: continue to live with hallucinations, or confront reality, by taking medications that will destroy his imaginary world.

How accurate is this picture, and what explains the changing patterns of psychiatric practice? Gardiner Harris and The New York Times were near these important stories and missed them.

A large and comprehensive study recently performed in Korea has produced a surprising and disturbing result. The rate of autism is reported to be an astounding 1 in 38...

In a decade-long study of antipsychotic prescribing for hospitalized children and adolescents, researchers found that antipsychotics were used in 44.3% of patients and were often prescribed for behavioral disorders, PTSD, and other anxiety disorders as well as psychotic disorders.

More than 1 in 4 inpatients with schizophrenia received add-on antidepressants as recorded at discharge, according to Megan Jo Ehret, Pharm D., BCPP, and assistant professor in the University of Connecticut’s School of Pharmacy.

Psychiatry is a wonderful specialty. We have highly effective medication and psychotherapy tools. Forty years of accumulated clinical research have given us a pretty clear idea of optimal treatment guidelines. With an accurate diagnosis and an appropriate treatment, most of our patients benefit greatly and many recover completely.

In this column, we explore how the judicious use of neural stem cells (NSCs) has led to a research Holy Grail: the creation of research-ready, patient-specific neurons.

Psychosis at any phase of the illness can be extremely distressing, disruptive, and potentially dangerous for patient and family.

I would recommend it for medical students who have been thrust into the role of primary decision maker for their patients, and clinicians who would appreciate a pocket supervisor to help them make treatment decisions.

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

Does cognitive rehabilitation provides optimal improvements in functional outcome for patients with schizophrenia? What percentage of patients with schizophrenia who have comorbid obsessive compulsive disorder? This and more in this week's quiz.

Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is a behavior in which a person commits an act with the purpose of physically harming himself or herself with or without a real intent of suicide.

When my clinic manager told me that prison may be the best place to practice psychiatry nowadays, I didn’t believe him. After all, prisons often seem like a world apart, often in isolated rural areas or in windowless, nondescript urban buildings.

The NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project raises many questions about DSM-5 and future DSMs.

There is wide agreement that memory loss associated with ECT is short-term, usually temporary, and rarely has a major impact, “although it shouldn’t be taken lightly,” according to Ross.

Discuss the results of the final cognitive testing, review the participant’s initial goals and the progress made toward them, and discuss future ambitions and how the gains made during cognitive training may help the participant achieve those goals.

This article reviews methods to rehabilitate cognition in schizophrenia and suggests strategies for instituting a cognitive remediation program.

Much resistance to disorder status for the psychosis-risk syndrome stems from the fact that only a minority of those given the diagnosis really have the disorder.

This article highlights the biological and clinical links between the two disorders, reviewing shared genetics, brain changes, and similarities and differences in clinical presentations.

Clinicians have long recognized that many of the psychiatric disorders lack clear boundaries, and that there is a substantial overlap in phenomenology and etiopathophysiology of various disorders.

In previous blogs and papers, I have done my level best to skewer the misuse of the misdiagnosis "Paraphilia NOS." I regard it as no more than a flimsy justification, concocted to allow the psychiatric incarceration of rapists who would otherwise have to be released from prison to the street.

United Press International recently reported that construction workers in Hall, Austria have exhumed what may be turn out to be grim remains of the Third Reich’s Action T4 program that sought to exterminate mentally and physically disabled men women and children.

I was asked three interesting questions by a psychologist with 15 years experience evaluating sexually violent predators. She has testified often--both for the prosecution and for the defense in the hearings that determine the legitimacy of involuntary psychiatric commitment under SVP statutes.

Every case of patient violence against clinicians provides lessons to be learned in safety management. Here: some key points that can enhance physician safety and help minimize the risks.

In a recent Psychiatric Times blog, Allen Frances engaged a debate with Andrew Hinderliter over the question of change in the diagnostic categories of DSM-5.