In 1944, Hans Asperger published a description of 4 boys who had major social problems despite adequate cognitive and verbal skills. His original term for the condition was Autistischen Psychopathen im Kindesalter, usually translated as autistic psychopathy or autistic personality disorder in childhood. His use of the term “autistic” occurred a year after Leo Kanner’s classic description of the syndrome of early infantile autism but, because of the war, Asperger was likely unaware of Kanner’s... More »
Patients who exaggerate, feign, or induce physical illness are a great challenge to their physicians. Trained to trust their patients’ self-reports, even competent and conscientious physicians can fall victim to these deceptions. In doing so, the treating physician may unwittingly provide support for specious claims of illness or injury by conferring official diagnoses, or by delivering treatments that transform the patient from a pretender into a person with a genuine, although iatrogenic,... More »
A 24-year-old veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) presents to the ED mid-morning on a weekday. While the veteran is waiting to be triaged, other patients alert staff that he appears to be talking to himself and pacing around the waiting room. A nurse tries to escort the veteran to an ED examination room. Multiple attempts by the ED staff and hospital police—several of whom are themselves OIF veterans—are unsuccessful in calming the patient or persuading him to enter a room. More »
When the term “borderline” was first used in 1938 by the psychoanalyst Adolf Stern, he was defining a group of patients who were “extremely difficult to handle effectively by any psychotherapeutic method.”1 In the early 1950s, Robert Knight emphasized their regressive responses to unstructured treatments.2 In hospitals, borderline patients were referred to as “help-rejecting complainers.” More »
The concept of treatment resistance in bipolar disorder is clinically familiar but lacks a standard definition.1 Whether the term refers to nonresponse to 1 or more standard treatments, at what dosages, and for what phases of bipolar disorder is unclear. Treatment resistance in bipolar disorder should always be based on a specific phase of treatment: mania or depression and acute or maintenance. More »
Since the inclusion of the borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis in DSM, there have been multiple efforts to recast the disorder as part of an Axis I illness category. While the initial focus was on the schizophrenia spectrum,1 more recent authors have attempted to link BPD to mood disorders. More »
Two randomized controlled trials have shown the Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving (STEPPS) program to be effective in reducing the intensity of core aspects of borderline personality disorder (BPD), Dr Donald Black and social worker Nancee Blum announced at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association held recently in San Francisco. Black summarized, “Data from several studies show that STEPPS reduced global severity as rated by clinicians and... More »
Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also referred to as social phobia, is a chronic and potentially disabling anxiety disorder characterized by the intense and persistent fear of being scrutinized or negatively evaluated by others. At its core, people with this disorder fear and/or avoid the scrutiny of others. Symptoms may occur only in circumscribed situations, such as a fear of speaking in formal or informal situations, or eating or drinking in front of others. More »
The co-occurrence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) and psychotic illness has been a challenge for clinicians and investigators for more than a century.1 Over the past decade, interest in this area has burgeoned because of recognition of higher-than-chance comorbidity rates of schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and observations of appearance or exacerbation of OCS during treatment of schizophrenia with atypical antipsychotics. More »
What exactly is a “mental disorder”? For that matter, what criteria should determine whether any condition is a “disease” or a “disorder”? Is “disease” something like an oak tree—a physical object you can bump into or put your arms around? Or are terms like “disease” and “disorder” merely abstract, value-laden constructs, akin to “injustice” and “immorality”? Are categories of disease and disorder fundamentally different in psychiatry than in other medical specialties? And—by the way—how do the... More »
