Psychiatric Times Vol 18 No 7

After the recent decade of the brain and in the present era of evidence-based practice, psychoanalytic treatment of personality disorder is being challenged.

With an increasing number of drugs in the pipeline, the efficacy and safety of drug trials become even more important. Who are the various entities sponsoring these trials, and what are their goals?

The issue for us is whether positive thinking is relevant in certain situations. Would it help, or would it create more problems than it would solve?

On May 3, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., launched a national plan to reduce the suicide rate in the United States. A collaborative effort by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention maps out 11 goals and provides a blueprint for action on those goals.

The great debate over whether to allow psychologists to have prescribing privileges continues. What is ultimately the best for the patient's well-being? Ali Hashmi, M.D., a practicing psychiatrist from Arkansas, tells both sides to this story, and offers his opinion on the matter.

There are three types of integration practiced by psychotherapists: Common Factors, Assimilative Integration and Theoretical Integration. How do they differ from each other, and how does psychotherapy integration differ from an eclectic approach to therapy?

In addition to improving patients' emotional well-being, aggressive treatment of psychiatric illnesses such as depression can substantially increase patients' cognitive functioning and even decrease mortality. A growing number of psychiatrists and other medical doctors are joining forces to create integrated care settings where the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders occurs alongside that of physical illness.

Can brain scans show a difference between drug therapy and psychotherapy? A researcher at University of California at Los Angeles uses positron emission tomography to observe the difference in brain changes between these two types of treatment for major depression.

Since adolescent patients often retreat into fantasy worlds of their own making, they can be difficult to treat. Psychotherapists can create a common fantasy world for successful group therapy with the use of popular fiction books, television series and movies.

After the recent decade of the brain and in the present era of evidence-based practice, psychoanalytic treatment of personality disorder is being challenged.