More and more research is being conducted in the US and abroad on the role of psychiatric pharmacogenomics in identifying new gene variants and in predicting treatment response to specific medications.

Biomarkers for mental disorders is a field whose time has come. Optimists will say within a few years, pessimists might say a decade or beyond.

When working with patients who are at high risk for relapse or misuse of prescription medications, careful documentation of the informed consent process is a helpful risk management tool.

Researchers have tried lots of different kinds of tests from EEGs to blood-based biomarkers. Now genetic tests are a very popular means of trying to understand different psychiatric disorders.

A New Study Looks at What Works—And What Doesn’t

Are antidepressants active placebos or lifesavers? Are they overprescribed? Are clinical trials of these drugs insufficient?

The Alzheimer’s Association announced in July that the FDA had accepted its recommendations to modify exclusion and monitoring criteria for clinical trials of agents that affect β-amyloid protein in the brain.

In my view, Dr Angell’s assertions reflect both a serious misunderstanding of psychiatric diagnosis, and—equally important—a failure to address the core philosophical issues involved in her use of the terms “subjective,” “objective,” “behaviors,” and “signs.”

On Safety, Efficacy—and Financial Incentives

Psychology Professor Marc Hauser, who last year was found solely responsible for 8 counts of scientific misconduct following an internal investigation, has resigned from his tenured position at Harvard University.

Newly developed blood tests for schizophrenia and for depression designed to augment current diagnostic approaches have attracted increased attention at recent major scientific meetings.

We have argued that both critical traditions are founded on several misapprehensions regarding the nature of disease, the role of values in determining the presence of pathology, and on supposed differences between psychiatry and the other specialties within general medicine.

For women with metastatic or recurrent breast cancer, reductions in depression symptoms over the first year of a randomized controlled trial predicted longer survival times.

The goal of the survey was to go beyond ethical lessons, useful as these may be, and to learn how Psychiatric Times’ readers—who are on the front line of psychiatric practice—handle a series of hypothetical ethical scenarios.

Psychosis at any phase of the illness can be extremely distressing, disruptive, and potentially dangerous for patient and family.

If ketamine is able to turn off a patient’s depression, even for one day, you have accomplished something important, whether or not you can maintain it. This is because you have at least given the patient hope . . . that in itself is very significant from a therapeutic perspective.

As experts in neurobiology, we can conduct and critically evaluate research to identify the short- and long-term risks and benefits of neuroenhancers for patients without recognized clinical indications.

The health reform legislation is likely to affect all mental health professionals throughout their lives, both as consumers and as practitioners of health care services.

The title of Gardiner Harris’s front-page story in the March 6 New York Times was blunt: “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy.” For those of us who see our profession as a humanistic calling, this piece is likely to provoke a mixture of sadness and anger.

Pascal’s “Wager” uses “reason” to conclude that even though the existence of God cannot be determined, one should nevertheless “wager” as though God exists, because one has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.