The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), the primary source of statistical information on Americans' use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, will be expanded in upcoming years to include substantial information on mental illness and state-level data on drug abuse, according to Nelba Chavez, Ph.D., administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

National Household Survey on Drug Abuse to Include Mental Health Data

Verdicts in separate malpractice cases have heightened apprehension over the erosion of patient-physician confidentiality and the increase in malpractice liability exposure. Psychiatrists now face the more serious prospect that they could end up, in essence, having to guarantee society that their patients won't act dangerously.

Psychiatrists Found Liable in Two Verdicts Malpractice Awards Renew Concerns Over  Confidentiality, Liability

Meeting the mental health needs of the millions of immigrants from diverse cultural backgrounds and homelands who now live in the United States may require more than a thorough knowledge of psychiatry or psychology, according to a number of cultural psychiatric practitioners.

Cultural Sensitivity for Psychiatrists

What I Love
(after Stephen Dunn) - Poetry of the Times

What I Love (after Stephen Dunn)

Consider the following scenario: You are contacted by the major health plan with which you contract and are told that your average length of inpatient stay is longer than their standard. You believe this is because your patients are more severely ill than average. How do you respond?

The Value of Measuring Health Care Quality

The term managed care has become the new blasphemy in the health care industry. Symposia, lectures and other presentations on this topic at the 1997 American Psychiatric Association convention all seemed to conclude that managed care in any form is evil and unethical and that by maintaining the moral high ground, physicians holding out against managed care would ultimately win because the cause is just.

Managed Care: The New Colonialism

Insufficient intake of essential fatty acids (EFAs) may contribute to the pathogenesis of mental diseases, while their supplementation may relieve some symptoms, according to researchers who attended the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Workshop on Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids and Psychiatric Disorders held in Bethesda, Md., in September 1998.

Dietary Fatty Acids Essential for Mental Health

This is the second of two articles regarding herbal medicines as discussed at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Toronto. Potential benefits and risks of kava, St. John's wort and hoasca were considered at the recent American Psychiatric Association's symposium on herbal medicine.

Clinical Trials Indicate Value of Herbal Medicines

While managed care generally has limited inpatient care and contained short-term costs for mental health and substance abuse services, significant questions remain about how these changes in health care delivery affect the quality of care patients receive.

Assessing and Improving Quality of Care Programs Under Managed Care

To understand how mental health law is changing, one must begin with a sense of its traditional orientation. The underlying principle of the law that governs psychiatric practice has been that patients require protection from unjustified restrictions on their liberty, especially at the hands of the state.

Managed Care and the Next Generation of Mental Health Law: An Update

Psychoanalysis and Couple Therapy

The advent of the new millennium has stimulated many discussions about what changes can-and should-occur in the world. For social psychiatry, there could not be a more fortuitous time to review and reaffirm our role in this country's health care.

Psychiatric Times Vol 15 No 12