Resident's Corner

Carve out a career in the area of psychiatry that interests you. If you’re drawn to specialized topics, such as atypical bipolar disorder, club drugs, glutamate transporters, or genetic links to autism, then pursue those avenues. Here, advice to psychiatry residents.

The President and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges outlines the reasons psychiatrists are well positioned to lead in this emerging culture of medicine.

In this Masters Series contribution to the Resident's Corner, the author writes that he made a deliberate choice to give up pediatrics for psychiatry. When he was a psychiatry resident, his mentor told him, “You should pick a field on the frontier.” Now he offers his insight for early career psychiatrists.

After seeing Death of a Salesman on Broadway, I knew I had seen something extraordinary—but it was only after a few days’ separation from the performance when my mind cleared and my emotions settled that I realized 2 of the reasons that made me very appreciative to see this play as a young psychiatrist.

The paradigm for modern psychiatry is evidence-based medicine (EBM)—it represents proven treatments for defined diagnoses. But there are major problems with this position, starting with the fact that while they are superior to placebo, evidence-based treatments too often are ineffective.

Agitated individuals—defined as displaying “excessive verbal and/or motor behavior”—can be loud, disruptive, hostile, sarcastic, threatening, or hyperactive, even combative. Here, Dr Zeller discusses new patient-centered interventions for agitation, endorsed as part of new, comprehensive Best Practices guidelines.

Recently our inpatient psychiatric unit moved into a brand new facility. In the months and weeks preceding “the move,” there was much preparation and nervous energy. We had been preparing our patients and ourselves for this day. “

During their time in Ayacucho, these visiting psychiatrists learned that American psychiatric training has wide-reaching cultural value.

He wasn’t the first person I met days before I was to start my psychiatric residency, but as I walked about in my new city, he caught my attention much more than most. As psychiatrists, we typically assume that we will hear the inside stories, even if in bits and pieces, that will help us better understand and help patients. But perhaps we are too expectant . . .

Each of the boys in question could meet criteria for the DSM-5 proposed criteria for Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD). But do you think that these presentations are all the same syndrome that share a similar neurobiological basis, family history, and response to treatment?

Reimbursement? Diagnostic debates? Insurance? Privacy? Ethics? What challenges concern you? Tell us in this open poll.

Any physician can predict death as the outcome of a fatal illness, but the physician who can predict death from among seeming randomness has certainly acquired a superior level of insight.

We now communicate in ways that are very different from those available just a decade ago. The iPhone, iPad, and similar devices also enable us to observe ourselves as we perform any number of activities. These and other new devices may have an application their designers never considered.

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.

Major depression is a common chronic illness within the general US population. What is the approximate prevalence for MDD in the US population?