Psychiatrists who are concerned with the perils of misdiagnosing a psychiatric presentation as primary mental illness will find Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire of great interest.
Periprocedural advancements, including liberalization of concomitant and pre-treatment medications, add to the comfort and tolerability of ECT, but adverse effects do exist. More in this quiz.
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 fiscal year (FY) 1999 budget for National Institutes of Health funding totals more than $15 billion. This figure reflects an increase of 15% over the FY 1998 budget and is $320 million less than President Clinton's requested budget for FY 2000 (Varmus, 1999). The Foundation Center reports the funding from U.S. grant-making foundations in 1998 as $15.4 billion from independent foundations, $2.37 billion from corporate foundations and $1.48 billion from community foundations (Foundation Center, 1999). Additional funds are available from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has a $3.95 billion budget request for FY 2000, up almost 6% from FY 1999 (NSF, 1999). With all of this available funding, how can medical clinicians and researchers increase their chances of obtaining a medical grant?
The debate over the accuracy of memories of childhood sex abuse that are recovered decades later, usually during the course of therapy, has led to the polarization of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. There are those who claim that -recovered memories are, in the main, accurate, and there are others who believe that most, if not all, recovered memories are false.
When Colorado psychiatrist Ann Seig, M.D., wrestled with erotic transference and countertransference issues, she didn't have to struggle alone. Seig's feeling of "stark terror" signaled "a need to talk to someone" about this troublesome case. She brought her concerns to her peer consultation group, where colleagues helped her discern how issues in her private life were contributing to the countertransference.
In the early 1960s, the Internet was born out of the idea of a "Galactic Network." By the late 1980s, technology had advanced to allow for computer-based exchange of scientific information between academic and research institutes. From these humble beginnings, the Internet has experienced explosive growth in the last five years, evolving into a powerful global information resource and new media format unto itself. Psychiatrists can now reap the full benefit of this fast-paced evolution to extend the reach of their medical practice.
Group therapy expert Irvin Yalom, M.D., calls the increased use of group treatment by HMOs a wise ideal, but he is concerned that insufficient time is spent screening and matching prospective patients. "There's a lot of evidence to show that preparation for groups is exceedingly important or you're going to get high dropout rates," Yalom told Psychiatric Times. "You really have to prepare patients for group treatment and have to compose your groups and select patients for that particular group with some care."
In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers found that mice and rats subjected to stressful stimuli were more likely to develop viral infections and tumors than nonstressed animals (Miller, 1998). Today, that once-pioneering research in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) has burgeoned into sophisticated clinical studies that look at, for example, how caregiving can affect the immune system, how stress may delay wound healing and how pretreatment with an antidepressant prevents cytokine-induced depression in therapy for cancer.
When The New York Times decided to run a story in July about refractory depression, the article was entitled "Some Still Despair in a Prozac Nation." Even after a decade on the market, and despite the availability of a host of competing drugs, the headline exemplifies the extent to which Eli Lilly and Company's popular antidepressant remains a pop culture icon. So when the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical manufacturer launched a 30-minute program that featured Prozac (fluoxetine) in May-it avoids using the term infomercial-the cutting edge direct-to-consumer (DTC) ad naturally raised questions and a few eyebrows as the company sought to gain even wider exposure for the drug.
Mood-stabilizing drugs slipped into the vocabulary of psychiatrists during the last 15 years without a proper discussion of their definition. Consequently, these medications have been used in ways that have no empirical justification.
Comments from your peers on our website and across our social media sites:
DSM-5: If You Don't Like the Effects, Look at the Causes •“‘Post-modern’” outlook on psychiatric diagnosis often leads to cynicism and nihilism—as if to say, ‘Nobody really knows anything about anything, and we shouldn’t trust anybody!’ Actually, there is a good deal of secure and well-founded scientific knowledge in psychiatry. ” Add your response...
Migraine and Psychiatric Comorbidity •“Sleep-related bruxism is high among those with fibromyalgia, anxiety, and migraines—but it is often overlooked as a dental problem. A long-acting benzodiazepine at night can make a big difference in patients with migraines who clinch or grind their teeth.” Add your response...
Can a Suicide Scale Predict the Unpredictable? •“The multifaceted nature of suicide requires both formal tools indicated in this article, as well as an awareness of changes in the patient (eg, outlook, behavior, attitude)—these and other factors may indicate suicide risk.” Add your response...
When it comes to aging, is there anything to look forward to from a neurocognitive perspective? What can we do to protect our brains from cognitive and functional decline? In this podcast, geriatric psychiatrist Helen Lavretksy outlines strategies to stimluate and revitalize an aging brain.
Five Steps to Improving Patient Access Judy Capko, May 21, 2013 Patient access is getting increased attention through reform initiatives. Here are five steps you can take to make sure patients get appropriate access to care in your office.
Growing HIPAA Threat – Ignore Windows XP at Your Own Peril Marion K. Jenkins, May 21, 2013 Chances are good that you have some major ticking software time bombs lurking in your medical practice's computer environment, namely Windows XP and Server 2003.
Three Areas to Reduce Costs at Your Medical Practice Greg Mertz, May 19, 2013 By taking a hard look at reducing costs for staffing, overhead, and technology at your medical practice, you may see increased physician compensation.
Dos and Don’ts for Starting a Physician Blog Michael Woo-Ming, MD, May 18, 2013 Starting a physician blog can provide your medical practice with marketing benefits, but it's important to do it right.
ADHD can persist into adulthood and have a significant impact on a person's relationships, careers, and even safety. The ASRS (Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale) is a checklist of 18 questions about symptoms that are based on the diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV. The patient answers the questions and a positive score suggests the need for a thorough clinical evaluation with a healthcare professional.
The Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale (BSDS) was developed by Ronald Pies, MD and was later refined and tested by S. Nassir Ghaemi, MD, MPH and colleagues. The BSDS arose from Pies’s experience as a psychopharmacology consultant, where he was frequently called on to manage cases of “treatment-resistant depression.” In Pies’s experience, most of these cases eventually proved to be undiagnosed bipolar spectrum disorder.
Major depression is a common chronic illness within the general US population. What is the approximate prevalence for MDD in the US population?
DSM-5: If You Don't Like the Effects, Look at the Causes
