This CME article reviews the pathophysiology and epidemiology of delirium and provides strategies for assessment, prevention, and management of this syndrome.
Continuing Medical Education Articles
This article reviews the reasons for measuring serum levels of psychotropics and provides optimum serum levels for various psychotropic agents to optimize their effectiveness and safety.
This CME outlines distinguishing features of PTSD, complex trauma, and the dissociative subtype of PTSD (DPTSD), with an explanation of the distinctive neurobiological subtype of DPTSD.
Glutamatergic models have led to greater understanding of the causes of social and occupational disability in schizophrenia, and thus have provided new targets for remediation and compensation strategies.
Clinical applications for the most commonly used anticonvulsants are reviewed here, along with complications and recent findings for day-to-day practice. Also: an update on findings from research on anticonvulsants used less often, but which may be potentially beneficial.
Psychiatry must remain a profession defined by an organizing model of the mind, rather than by specific treatment techniques. Psychodynamic psychiatry offers such a model, and it is applicable to all psychiatric patients.
This review focuses on clinically important interactions that occur between foods and medications prescribed for psychiatric disorders.
Psychiatrists may find themselves embroiled in matters that extend beyond the routine doctor-patient relationship unless they are clear about the differences between their treatment and forensic roles.
Dysexecutive syndromes result from damage to the anterior regions of the brain and present as a combination of disinhibition, disorganization, or apathy.
This article reviews end-of-life decision making by providing the information on associated legal decisions as well as a personal account of what is involved in making the final decision.
In this CME article, the focus is on persons with a formally recognized recurrent wintertime mood disorder that rises to such a level that it merits a diagnostic title and clinical intervention.
Psychosis is one of the key dimensions of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression. Clinicians are familiar with patients whose psychosis improves dramatically with antipsychotic treatment; however, these patients may be left with cognitive impairment, negative mood symptoms, or suicidal symptoms, as well as impaired work and social functioning.
In this CME article, the focus is on the significance of metabolic changes that develop during antipsychotic treatment, as well as on strategies to incorporate metabolic monitoring into clinical practice.
The two most widely used classification systems are ICD-10 and DSM. These systems are mutually influential. Recent diagnostic guides highlight the importance of an integrated approach to presenting problems in a patient-centered framework. Specifics here.
This article explores the current state of knowledge regarding personalized medicine in psychiatry and discusses how the tools might be used to help psychiatrists understand the components of their patients’ unique endophenotypic profiles.
New findings provide powerful evidence that inhibition of inflammation or its downstream effects on mood may open up a host of new approaches to treatment for depression, especially for patients with treatment-resistant depression.
This article explains the rationale and evidence for 2 novel treatments of Alzheimer disease: a reformulated Mediterranean diet and an antidiabetic agent, liraglutide, marketed as Victoza.
Most often, psychiatric medications are discontinued unilaterally by the patient, without the psychiatrist’s input or consent. Setting the stage early with a discussion about medication discontinuation is time well spent. More in this CME.
This article covers the spread of substance use problems in adolescents and some of the currently available scientifically proven behavioral treatments for these conditions.
The electroencephalogram (EEG) has a limited but definitive role in understanding and managing psychiatric conditions. When the presentation is unusual, a neurological workup that includes an EEG is essential.
All types of antidepressants have been found to be effective for major depression with comorbid substance dependence.
This article summarizes the reasons for switching an antipsychotic and explains when it becomes necessary to switch, as well as how the switch is best accomplished.
Demonstrating the importance of psychiatric advance directives and the benefits and obstacles involved in implementing them.
Drug interactions are more frequent in elderly patients because more medications are taken. In addition, drug interactions may be more serious because of insufficient physiological reserves. When new medications are started or stopped in elderly patients, it is very important to take note of potential interactions with other drugs or foods.
An overview of the characteristics of auditory hallucinations in people with psychiatric illness, and a brief review of treatment options.
Hans Asperger considered the disorder a personality factor rather than a developmental issue. How things have changed.
Psychiatrists, primary care physicians, neurologists, nurse practitioners, psychiatric nurses, and other mental health care professionals. Continuing medical education credit is available for most specialties. To determine if this article meets the continuing education requirements for your specialty, please contact your state licensing board.
