Blogs

The discovery of an unknown family member can bring about joy or grief, and raise many clinical questions about the psychodynamics that are at play within families.

Concerns are raised about DSM-5 revisions in the definition of depression. Many worry that eliminating the bereavement exception in the guidelines for the diagnosis of major depressive disorder represents a dangerous move.

DSM-5 has moved a section called “Psychological Factors Affecting Medical Condition (PFAMC) from the of the book (where it is not a mental disorder) to front and center in the chapter on Somatic Symptom Disorders (where now it will be a mental disorder).

Diagnosing rape as mental disorder is an improper use of psychiatric diagnosis and promotes the abuse of psychiatric commitment to further what would otherwise be an unconstitutional form of preventive detention.

Childhood has so many conflicts and worries, so many triumphs and disappointments—how can one reduce it to a notion of normality?

The therapeutic effect of animals on humans. If we treat them well, they can provide healing to us.

DSM-5 must emphasize that physical symptoms deserve the respect of a thorough work-up before assuming their cause is psychiatric. And people with defined medical illnesses should not be casually mislabeled as also mentally ill just because they are upset about being sick.

Refractory psychiatric illnesses are no different from complicated infectious diseases in that they both require multiple concurrent medications and treatment modalities.

The team psychiatrist for Super Bowl Champs, the Baltimore Ravens, draws on his own professional career of working with athletes of all ages and levels and provides a comprehensive presentation of the literature in the emerging field of sports psychiatry.

Emil Kraepelin diagnosed the paranoid, catatonic, and hebephrenic forms of dementia praecox, a disease he created.