Since the inclusion of the borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis in DSM, there have been multiple efforts to recast the disorder as part of an Axis I illness category. While the initial focus was on the schizophrenia spectrum, more recent authors have attempted to link BPD to mood disorders.
Racial/ethnic and sexual orientation minorities and women historically have been relegated to social, legal, and economic disadvantage in the United States.
What do functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging findings reveal about the neurobiology of borderline personality disorder? Take the quiz and learn more.
An overview of the critical issues involved in overcoming personal and organizational barriers to help substance abusers quit smoking.
Brain Capital: a fresh approach to technologies and investing.
In this CME article, learn more about the opportunity for collaboration with dermatologist, psychologist, and social worker peers to improve patient mental health.
A psychiatrist discusses his hobby of juggling and demonstrates a few tricks.
Many abusers of methamphetamine in rural areas manufacture the drug for their personal use. These "mom-and-pop cooks" produce methamphetamine in and around homes where children are also living. This article provides an overview of the mental health of children whose parents abuse methamphetamine.
Treatment resistance in bipolar disorder is clinically familiar but lacks a standard definition. Numerous evidence-based treatments exist for all phases of bipolar disorder, and these should be optimized and fully explored.
Assessing the Violent Patient: An Additional Case of Legal Implications
Patients who exaggerate, feign, or induce physical illness are a great challenge to their physicians. Trained to trust their patients’ self-reports, even competent and conscientious physicians can fall victim to these deceptions.
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.
Anorexia nervosa is often complicated by devastating medical problems and may result in death. Although studies suggest a multifactorial cause for the disorder, treatment trials have yet to provide clinical guidance about how best to approach anorexia nervosa.
Making cost, clinical, and service compatibility matches with referral partners pays off in five key ways.
Sleep changes associated with psychotropic drugs are common enough to justify routinely obtaining a baseline sleep diary before beginning treatment, even when the initial screening for sleep disorders indicates that no further investigation is needed.
Learning to talk openly with patients about their suicidal ruminations poses more of an emotional than intellectual challenge.
While the public perceives that many criminals escape punishment by pleading insanity, the truth is that very few people are ever found not guilty by reason of insanity. Society has to decide whether they want to lock up everyone who does any bad thing or excuse the behavior of people who are not capable of controlling their own behavior.
Although a large body of research has documented the risk factors for and negative effects of depression in mothers, little is known about depression in expectant or new fathers.
The chances for full recovery from major depressive disorder diminish the longer a patient remains depressed-a fact that lends a sense of urgency for appropriate therapy.
What has happened to our nation since the 1960s and 1970s? The quest for racial equality appears to be rapidly dissipating. Blatant pre-civil rights racism has been replaced by a more virulent, yet camouflaged, form of racial bigotry.
The 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.
Although social anxiety can be a challenge at any point across the lifespan, it can present a unique set of challenges during the teenage years. More in this podcast.
As early as the 1970s, researchers and practitioners became increasingly aware of the necessity for services that would address the varied needs and treatment implications for consumers with the co-occurring disorders of substance abuse and mental illness. High percentages of consumers in substance abuse treatment centers were identified with mental illness disorders, and consumers admitted to psychiatric facilities often were identified as having additional substance use disorders.
I teach doctors and nurses how to assess, treat, and prevent delirium-an acute confusional disorder caused by multiple medical problems that mimics mental illness-but is actually a medical emergency.
A brief psychosocial tool that offers compassionate, tailored care using existential neuroscience, a new perspective for conducting bedside psychotherapy.
Learn more about topics of interest in forensic psychiatry in this month's Special Report!
The prescription of psychotropic medications for patients with complex comorbid medical and psychiatric conditions is a cornerstone of psychosomatic medicine (PM) practice.
In this CME article, explore the mental health consequences associated with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the potential role for complementary and alternative approaches.
Why do patients with eating disorders resist treatment? How can the clinician address resistance?
An important adverse effect of SRIs: their association with increased bleeding.