Authors
Latest:
Common Augmentation Strategies for Depression: Findings Show Lack of EvidenceIt is estimated that at least half of persons who begin antidepressant treatment will not respond to monotherapy.
Latest:
Addressing the Youth Mental Health Crisis With Coordinated Systems of CareHow can integrated systems of care help us provide the appropriate level of high-quality care to each individual child?
Latest:
The Once-Forgotten Factor in Psychiatry: Research Findings on Religious Commitment and Mental HealthAs previously discussed, new research has made us look much more closely at the influence of religion and spirituality on overall health. Now more than 30 psychiatric residencies including Harvard, Baylor, and Georgetown provide focused training on addressing patients' religious/spiritual beliefs.
Latest:
Benefits of Social Media in Mental Health Practices (Part 2)Social media is not a fad. It allows physicians to “get out of the office” in real time, to learn about patients’ concerns, and to connect with others.
Latest:
Social Media: A Key Component to the Psychiatrist's PracticeHaving even a basic idea of the potential--as well as of the perils--of social media is therefore not only important to good practice, but it may be essential to good practice.
Latest:
Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Bipolar Disorder: Effect on Psychosocial FunctioningThere is growing evidence that individuals with bipolar affective disorder have cognitive impairments, even during periods of symptom remission.
Latest:
Diagnoses From Clinical Evaluations and Standardized Diagnostic Interviews Don’t AgreeA recent meta-analysis showed that diagnoses generated from clinical evaluations often do not agree with the results of structured and semistructured interviews-together called standardized diagnostic interviews (SDIs).
Latest:
7 Components of Depression EvaluationThe co-occurrence of depression and cognitive impairment doubles every 5 years after the age of 70. Here we present a list of elements in a comprehensive and extended evaluation of depression in the elderly.
Latest:
Biopsychosocial Model: Another Reader Weighs InI was Dr George Engel's assistant and associate for 14 years. His biopsychosocial model was a conceptual effort designed to get beyond the reductionistic biomedical model that still prevails. In his letter, Dr Victor Schwartz reads Dr Engel much more closely and to the point than does Dr Waterman "Biopsychosocial Model: Helpful or Hindering?" Psychiatric Times, May 2007).
Latest:
Progress in the Treatment of Bipolar Depression: Advances and ChallengesA discussion of the pharmacologic management of bipolar depression, including emerging treatments and expert recommendations.
Latest:
The Psychiatry of Work: Is Residency Training Adequate?It has been estimated that depression alone results in a loss of $31 billion per year for employers. This slideshow reports findings from a survey on work psychiatry.
Latest:
How Frame Analysis Can Guide the Therapeutic ProcessFrame analysis can not only help us to discern the roots of such standoffs but also to conceptualize specific ways of addressing the conflicts in therapeutic language with the patient, with the goal of forging an integrated approach to treatment.
Latest:
Exposure Therapy for Anxiety DisordersExposure-based therapies are highly effective for patients with anxiety disorders, to the extent that exposure should be considered a first-line, evidence-based treatment for such patients. In clinical practice, however, these treatments are underutilized, which highlights the need for additional dissemination and training.
Latest:
Psychopharmacology in the Acute Setting: Review and Proposed GuidelinesThere are two goals in the acute treatment setting (e.g., emergency department): initiation of treatment and reducing the symptoms of agitation and aggression that frequently accompany an acute psychotic breakdown. Treatment options and considerations are reviewed.
Latest:
Development of a Transdiagnostic Unified Psychosocial Treatment for Emotional DisordersResearch emerging from the field of emotion science suggests that individuals who have anxiety and mood disorders tend to experience negative affect more frequently and more intensely than do healthy individuals, and they tend to view these experiences as more aversive, representing a common diathesis across anxiety and mood disorders.1-5 Deficits in the ability to regulate emotional experiences, resulting from unsuccessful efforts to avoid or dampen the intensity of uncomfortable emotions, have also been found across the emotional disorders and are a key target for therapeutic change.
Latest:
Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Practical Guide, 3rd ed.It is notoriously difficult to capture in writing the essence of what constitutes ethical practice in contemporary psychotherapy. Authors who take on this daunting task face the potential pit-falls of presenting their ideas in an abstract manner that bores the reader and is clinically irrelevant or risks coming across as overly moralistic and preachy.
Latest:
Psychotherapy for Gay and Lesbian ClientsScientific, social or legal redefinition is only slowly reflected in changed practitioners and practices. It is not surprising that surveys continue to report high levels of ignorance and prejudice encountered by homosexuals in their contacts with health care providers. This also contributes to a negative feedback loop in which many homosexuals are reluctant to utilize, inform or confront their care providers, impairing collaboration in treatment.
Latest:
Vascular Psychiatry: A New Specialty?Vascular surgeons, internists, and neurologists all exist-but why aren’t there any vascular psychiatrists? There certainly is a need.
Latest:
From Cinderella to Straw Man?We are living in an evidence-based era in all fields of medicine, including psychiatry. For the most part, this represents progress because clinicians can start to base their interventions on treatments that have been supported by the results of research studies.
Latest:
Setting the Record Straight: A Response to Frances Commentary on DSM-VThe commentary “A Warning Sign on the Road to DSM-5: Beware of its Unintended Consequences” by Allen Frances, M.D., submitted to Psychiatric Times contains factual errors and assumptions about the development of DSM-V that cannot go unchallenged. Frances now joins a group of individuals, many involved in development of previous editions of DSM, including Dr. Robert Spitzer, who repeat the same accusations about DSM-V with disregard for the facts.
Latest:
Antipsychotic Combination Strategies in Bipolar Disorder:Strategies to Maximize Treatment AdherenceOptimal management of bipolar disorder (BD) includes the careful selection and regular ingestion of appropriate medication to stabilize mood. Unfortunately, between 40% and 50% of patients with BD in routine clinical settings take breaks or forget to take their medication or even discontinue the drug altogether.1-3 Treatment nonadherence is associated with mood relapse, hospitalization, and suicide.4,5
Latest:
Behavioral and Pharmacologic Treatment of Aggression in Children With AutismThis article will provide an overview of treatment modalities, with emphasis on the future direction of interventions targeting aggression in children with autism.
Latest:
Psychiatric Aspects of the Impending Avian Flu PandemicI was taken ill with the flu. They gave me up. The paper had my obit set in type. . . . My hair turned white and then it fell out. The first time I tried to rise to a sitting position I fell and broke an arm. I had phlebitis in one leg and they said I'd never walk again.
Latest:
PNIPs, SNPs, and PhenotypesHow can we get even better at customizing treatment for our patients and thereby achieve improved outcomes? How do we avoid becoming relegated to mere brokers of psychopharmacologic commodities? A few thoughts in this brief communication.
Latest:
Anxiety in the Medical PatientAnxiety is a ubiquitous, natural affective state that is essential for evolutionary survival. Nearly as common, however, are experiences of anxiety that exceed social, psychological, or physiological needs, leading to functional impairment. Indeed, primary anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), represent the most common category of mental illness in the United States. Secondary, or reactive, anxiety is also widespread and can arise not only from numerous medical causes but also from the psychological process of coping with illness.
Latest:
Commentary: Against Biologic PsychiatryAs a practicing psychiatrist, I have watched with growing dismay and outrage the rise and triumph of the hegemony known as biologic psychiatry. Within the general field of modern psychiatry, biologism now completely dominates the discourse on the causes and treatment of mental illness, and in my view this has been a catastrophe with far-reaching effects on individual patients and the cultural psyche at large. It has occurred to me with forcible irony that psychiatry has quite literally lost its mind, and along with it the minds of the patients they are presumably supposed to care for. Even a cursory glance at any major psychiatric journal is enough to convince me that the field has gone far down the road into a kind of delusion, whose main tenets consist of a particularly pernicious biologic determinism and a pseudo-scientific understanding of human nature and mental illness.
Latest:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Severe Mental IllnessPsychotropic treatment can often prevent the relapse of psychotic and mood symptoms. However, many patients take medication intermittently or not at all; or the symptoms may be only partially responsive to medication. Therefore, there is a need for interventions that can supplement the effect of medication and improve treatment outcomes.
Latest:
Pinpointing the Cause of Non-Alzheimer DementiaMany physicians, including psychiatrists, may shy away from seeing elderly patients with symptoms of dementia because they imagine that there are a large number of alternative diagnoses and that differential diagnosis is complicated. In fact, however, the number of possible diagnoses in most situations is relatively small and the diagnosis of dementia in older patients is certainly feasible in primary care psychiatry.
Latest:
Can the Efficacy of Psychotropic Drugs Be Measured?Dr Fogelson discusses how science has refined research designs to measure the efficacy of psychotropic drugs.
Latest:
Music Therapy With Emotionally Disturbed ChildrenUsing music as a form of therapy for emotionally disturbed children seems quite natural, given children's innate love of music. How can this form of creativity be used as therapy to help children better communicate feelings and emotions?
