Cynthia M.A. Geppert, MD, PhD, MA, MPH, MSBE, DPS, MSJ

In my last column I used the ancient metaphor from Homer's Odyssey of being caught between the two monsters of Scylla and Charybdis to describe the predicament of contemporary physicians treating chronic pain.

All of us have heard the phrase "between a rock and a hard place," and many of us have been in the situation that the idiom describes. However, few of us (other than English professors) likely know the origin of the saying and even fewer of us know how it applies to clinical psychiatry. Delving into these seemingly unrelated queries will be the subject of this month's column.

More than any other branch of medicine, the profession of psychiatry is unable to coexist with business because the suffering of mentally ill persons is deeper and darker and more pervasive and powerful than any other form of human anguish, whether biological or social.

Successfully weaving together the long and complex history of melancholic depression as a severe mood disorder with strong biological underpinnings and a distinctive clinical profile.

Several months ago, a new psychiatrist came from a prestigious university in the Northeast to work in the VA hospital out West where I practice. During one of our initial conversations, he expressed the emphatic view that "benzodiazepines are only useful for acute alcohol withdrawal or psychiatric emergencies and other than that they have no place in pharmacology." I juxtaposed this position with that of several of our older clinicians, who are equally strong advocates of the generous use of benzodiazepines for a variety of psychiatric symptoms.

Once reflected on, the concept of acceptance has multifarious implications for modern mental health care. My own work with patients and trainees has convinced me of the significance of acceptance, and I want to illustrate a few examples that may move readers to recognize similar echoes in their own practice

A discussion of the intellectual, social, and historical similarities and differences between sacred texts and the DSM would require a full-length book, but we will concentrate here on 5 main aspects: controversy, communication, interpretation, change, and power.

Friendship with patients, particularly those with serious mental illness, may seem anathema for a psychiatric ethicist, yet there is a long and rich history of physician-patient friendship in medical ethics.

A discussion of new neurobiologic discoveries that bear the promise not just of controlling but of reversing protean levels of damage.

Damage can take biologic, syndromic, social, and personal form, with correlations among the various levels of damage.