Featured Top Papers

When a Patient Asks You For a Neuroenhancer

With the availability of drugs for ADHD and Alzheimer disease, more and more healthy people who have no mental health condition have been asking their psychiatrist to prescribe neuroenhancing medications in the hopes of improving their memory, cognitive focus, or attention span. What's an appropriate response when one of your patients asks for a prescription for a drug for this off-label purpose?
 

What's the connection between cholesterol and mental health?

It has long been known that total cholesterol levels are consistently lower in severely depressed patients. Since the 1980s, when national attention began to focus on reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease with statins, there have been growing concerns that chronic cholesterol depletion may actually increase noncardiovascular deaths by suicide and violence-related deaths.

Is combination therapy with lithium and valproate more effective in preventing relapses in patients with bipolar I disorder than montherapy with either drug alone?

The authors of a study that recently appeared in the The Lancet set out to address that important question. And it’s that study that Dr. S. Nassir Ghaemi chose as his “Top Paper” of the year. Dr Ghaemi, who is professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, will discuss the highlights of that study -- and what it might mean for your practice.