Psychiatric Times presents exclusive coverage of the American Psychiatric Association Conference. Here we will report the latest news, resources, and updates from the 2013 APA Conference, the 166th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 18-22, 2013, in San Francisco, CA. Read More
Test your diagnostic skills and knowledge by quickly identifying and assessing various mental health disorders. The Psychiatric Times Diagnostic Champions' Challenge is meant to educate and entertain. Test your clinical acumen in this activity that is sure to make you think.… Read More
We've put many of the clinical scales online, hoping healthcare professionals—whether in specialty practices, primary-care settings, or emergency services—will find this format convenient. … Read More
The power of Superman's spell endures mightily, and the values of truth and justice he communicated through comics, and then television and movies continue to pass undiminished from generation to generation. More »
The important thing about teachers listening to Ebonics is for them not to equate it with the students' being stupid, says Alvin Poussaint, M.D., professor of psychiatry. "It means they've learned a way to speak in their community or home that's a natural way for them to speak, which they then carry with them to school." While the language is part of who they are and their connection to their... More »
The state of North Carolina has relatively liberal policies regarding petitions for involuntary commitment. If such documents bear words like "dangerous" or "mentally ill," even in the most nebulous sense imaginable, the police will surely locate the relevant individuals and dutifully bring them to the emergency department. This generosity of interpretation produces some sticky situations for the... More »
As a practicing psychiatrist, I have watched with growing dismay and outrage the rise and triumph of the hegemony known as biologic psychiatry. Within the general field of modern psychiatry, biologism now completely dominates the discourse on the causes and treatment of mental illness, and in my view this has been a catastrophe with far-reaching effects on individual patients and the cultural... More »
Psychotherapy is as old as civilization. Literally soul therapy, the term is a misnomer, since soul is a mystical notion and what is meant is the whole person. The misnomer also survives in the name psychiatry, literally soul medicine. Yet nobody is crusading against psychiatry and psychotherapy because soul is unscientific. What is important is that psychotherapy and psychiatry are job... More »
This article applies a culture-centered approach to analyze the dietary health meanings for Asian Indians living in the United States. The data were collected as part of a health promotion program evaluation designed to help Asian Indians reduce their risk of chronic disease. Community members who used two aspects of the program participated in two focus groups to learn about their health care experiences and to engage them in dialogue about how culture impacts their overall health. Using constructionist grounded theory, we demonstrate that one aspect of culture, the discourses around routine dietary choice, is an important, but underrecognized, aspect of culture that influences community members' experiences with health care. We theorize community members' dietary health meanings operate discursively through a dialectic tension between homogeneity and heterogeneity, situated amid culture, structure, and agency. Participants enacted discursive homogeneity when they affirmed dietary
U.S. universities have created programs that seek to increase the number of minority health care professionals practicing in underserved communities. One such program, the Urban Health Program (UHP), established at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1978, has graduated more than 5,000 members of underrepresented minorities (African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans) into the health professions from the graduate college and the colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, applied health, and public health at UIC.The author provides a history and description of the UHP and an analysis of the key factors that were fundamental in creating the program and sustaining a commitment to its continuance. These factors include community action and demand for a clear and decisive legislative mandate to increase the number of minority health professionals, early outreach and academic pipeline initiatives designed to increase interest in health-related careers among
To examine the evidence on culturally competent interventions tailored to the needs of people with diabetes from ethnic minority groups.|MEDLINE (NHS Evidence), CINAHL and reference lists of retrieved papers were searched from inception to September 2011; two National Health Service specialist libraries were also searched. Google, Cochrane and DARE databases were interrogated and experts consulted. Studies were included if they reported primary research on the impact of culturally competent interventions on outcome measures of any ethnic minority group with diabetes. Paper selection and appraisal were conducted independently by two reviewers. The heterogeneity of the studies required narrative analysis. A novel culturally competent assessment tool was used to systematically assess the cultural competency of each intervention.|Three hundred and twenty papers were retrieved and 11 included. Study designs varied with a diverse range of service providers. Of the interventions, 64% were
Researchers have gone beyond identity status and been putting more and more emphases on the dynamic process of identity development and its contextual embeddedness. Study of individual's adaptation to the multicultural background is a good point of penetration. Because of the differences in regional conditions and cultural traditions, the minority youths who go to university in the mainstream culture would have special experiences and challenges in the development of their self-identities. Semi-structured interview and narrative were used in this research to discover the characteristics of the self-identity constructing processes of Mongolian undergraduates in a Shanghai university context. Their identity constructing process could be divided into three stages: difference-detecting, self-doubting and self-orienting. The main efforts of identity constructing in each stage could all be described as self-exploring and support-seeking. Special contents of internal explorations and sources
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is transmitted by infectious aerosols, but assessing infectiousness currently relies on sputum microscopy that does not accurately predict the variability in transmission.|To evaluate the feasibility of collecting cough aerosols and the risk factors for infectious aerosol production from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in a resource-limited setting.|We enrolled subjects with suspected TB in Kampala, Uganda and collected clinical, radiographic, and microbiological data in addition to cough aerosol cultures. A subset of 38 subjects was studied on 2 or 3 consecutive days to assess reproducibility.|M. tuberculosis was cultured from cough aerosols of 28 of 101 (27.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 19.9-37.1%) subjects with culture-confirmed TB, with a median 16 aerosol cfu (range, 1-701) in 10 minutes of coughing. Nearly all (96.4%) cultivable particles were 0.65 to 4.7 m in size. Positive aerosol cultures were associated with higher Karnofsky
People with asthma who come from minority groups have poorer asthma outcomes and more asthma related visits to Emergency Departments (ED). Various programmes are used to educate and empower people with asthma and these have previously been shown to improve certain asthma outcomes. Models of care for chronic diseases in minority groups usually include a focus of the cultural context of the individual and not just the symptoms of the disease. Therefore, questions about whether culturally specific asthma education programmes for people from minority groups are effective at improving asthma outcomes, are feasible and are cost-effective need to be answered.|To determine whether culture-specific asthma programmes, in comparison to generic asthma education programmes or usual care, improve asthma related outcomes in children and adults with asthma who belong to minority groups.|We searched the Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), the Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register,
This article reviews research on evidence-based treatments (EBTs) for ethnic minority youth using criteria from Chambless et al. (1998), Chambless et al. (1996), and Chambless and Hollon (1998). Although no well-established treatments were identified, probably efficacious or possibly efficacious treatments were found for ethnic minority youth with anxiety-related problems, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, conduct problems, substance use problems, trauma-related syndromes, and other clinical problems. In addition, all studies met either Nathan and Gorman's (2002) Type 1 or Type 2 methodological criteria. A brief meta-analysis showed overall treatment effects of medium magnitude (d = .44). Effects were larger when EBTs were compared to no treatment (d = .58) or psychological placebos (d = .51) versus treatment as usual (d = .22). Youth ethnicity (African American, Latino, mixed/other minority), problem type, clinical severity, diagnostic status, and
To review the available information on prevalence, complications, and mortality of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and primary and secondary prevention activities in black persons, Hispanic persons, Native Americans, and Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States.|MEDLINE search from 1976 to 1994 through the PlusNet search system.|Use of the key words non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, the names of each specific minority group, socioeconomic status, acculturation, genetics, diet, complications, mortality, treatment, and intervention (lifestyle or medication) produced 290 unduplicated articles. Additional articles cited in the original articles were also included.|Risk factors, incidence, prevalence, complications, and mortality of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.|All minorities, except natives of Alaska, have a prevalence of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus that is two to six times greater than that of white persons. Most studies show an increased
Reviews the evidence for and against hundreds of preventive health services, recommending tests, and counseling interventions when evidence exists that it is effective.
Reviews the evidence for and against hundreds of preventive health services, recommending tests, and counseling interventions when evidence exists that it is effective.
1995; 332: 396-97. 4. Cohen JJ. Time to shatter the glass ceiling for minority facul- ty. ... Minority faculty and academic rank in medicine. JAMA. 1998; 280: 767-71.
Cohen JJ.Time to shatter the glass ceiling for minority faculty. ... Palepu A, Carr PL, Friedman RH, Amos H, Ash AS, Moskowitz MA.Minority faculty and academic rank in medicine.
Primary Care Can't Thrive Without Nurse Practitioners Courtney H. Lyder, ND, May 17, 2013 With a projected shortfall of primary-care physicians, it's time for alternate solutions to patient care. Nurse practitioners are one logical remedy.
