SPOTLIGHT -
Depression/Anxiety: Dimensional Treatment Decisions
Treatment decisions lie on a continuum—befitting a dimensional approach to diagnosis.
Why Use the DSM When It Is Inaccurate? Cognitive Biases and Solutions
Exploring cognitive biases toward the DSM and their avoidable effects on treatment decisions.
How Can One Mental Illness Generate the Opposite Mood Experiences?
Despite recent advances in research on bipolar disorder, it remains a complex and even mysterious condition.
Bipolar Disorder or Fanaticism?
Whatever the etiology, some extreme views come very close to the behaviors of bipolar mania, as illustrated in a recent documentary.
Bipolar Disorder: The Year Ahead
Let us look at two major trends in our evolving understanding of this complex mood disorder and its treatment, to wrap up 2018 and to consider the year ahead.
A New Treatment for Bipolar Depression: Part 3
Three simple steps may better align your practice with available data on the efficacy and safety of thyroid supplementation in physiologic doses.
A New Treatment for Bipolar Depression: Part 2
Dr Phelps puts thyroid dysfunction into clinical context for patients with comorbid mood disorders.
A New Treatment for Bipolar Depression: Part 1
Old data have recently been gathered and systematically presented-reinforced by a new study, but perhaps contradicted by another. So it’s time to revisit this story.
New FDA Warning
A rare but serious reaction to this treatment can have immunological consequences. As with all medications, however, the latest alert does not change how psychiatrists manage the risks.
Antidepressant Withdrawal, Online Data, and a Bottom Line
How many people who take an antidepressant truly have severe difficulties when they try to taper off? Or, is it “all in their mind”?
First Antidepressant Not Effective? 7 Options and a Reminder
When the treatment doesn’t work, consider the options. Or, question your diagnosis.
New Data on tDCS for Bipolar Depression
Transcranial direct current stimulation delivery systems differ from one another in design, action, and results. One has been shown to be significantly better than sham treatment for bipolar depression. What does this mean for clinical practice?
Simvastatin for Bipolar Disorders?
This statin shows promise in reducing symptoms of bipolar disorder and depression. Still, one must be cautious and think through the treatment plan for each patient.
Mood Bias: A Partial Explanation of Bipolar Disorder?
A working model that explains how a single shift can produce seemingly opposite symptoms.
Lithium for Severe Depression
“We were surprised to find that SSRIs and other antidepressants aren’t very effective at keeping depressed patients out of hospital.”
Vitamin D for Bipolar Depression?
Questions and caveats about dosing remain.
Efficacy Vs Tolerability in Bipolar Depression
Which is more important, for whom?
Clinical Conundrum: Approaching Bipolar Diagnosis Four Ways
We are using 4 different approaches to bipolar diagnosis, according to the author of this commentary.
Efficient Assessment of 20 Questions About Bipolarity: MoodCheck
A spectrum approach to diagnosis.
CrowdStudying Ourselves: Approaches to Bipolar Disorders, Part 2
A window into what your colleagues actually think and do.
CrowdStudying Ourselves: Approaches to Bipolar Disorders
Do you think you have all the answers? For this quiz, you do.
Mitochondrial Clues to Bipolar Disorder
One of the many facets of bipolar disorder is an energy problem-including at the neuronal level.
Might Antidepressants Create Treatment Resistance?
What is the possibility that the very illness we’re trying to improve is getting worse-with treatment?
Online Psychotherapy for Mood Disorders: Are We There Yet?
Look how close we are to the ideal: free online bipolar psychotherapy that is as effective as seeing a live therapist.
A More Nuanced View of Hypomania
Is dysphoric hypomania a phase of mania itself? Or does it represent a descent into a mixed state?
Is Topiramate a Mood Stabilizer?
A brief overview of the many trials that have asked this weighty question.
Borderline or Bipolar: Can 3 Questions Differentiate Them?
Treatments for borderlinity and bipolarity are quite different. What if just 3 items from a standard screening questionnaire could increase your diagnostic certainty by 30%?
The Lowly Dawn Simulator
Is it time to think outside the light box for treatment of seasonal depression?
Light Box Therapy: A Treatment for All Seasons?
A new protocol makes light therapy an option for patients with bipolar depression.
Bipolar Plus OCD: Which to Treat First?
Be cautious: not all obsessive thinking is OCD.