The number of medical diseases that can present with psychotic symptoms (ie, delusions, hallucinations) is legion. A thorough differential diagnosis of possible medical and toxic causes of psychosis is necessary to avoid the mistaken attribution of psychosis to a psychiatric disorder.

Differential Diagnosis of Psychotic Symptoms: Medical “Mimics”

 As expected from an Oxbridge graduate, author Catharine Arnold’s Bedlam: London and Its Mad is a well-written and very readable book. “This book is for all whose lives are touched by madness” is a laudable objective. 

Bedlam: London and Its Mad

 Psychiatrists face some unappetizing developments with regard to Medicare fees starting January 1, 2011. The terms of the new benefits are not nearly as specific as mental health groups pressed for. 

Psychiatrists and Medicare: Unappetizing Developments for 2011

 The treatment of incest victims is often painful and difficult. With patience, the vast majority of those who have experienced incest can experience considerable improvement and enjoy an enhanced quality of life without succumbing to repeated victimization. 

Ramifications of Incest

 Erroneous conclusions, and medical harm, can come from accepting any hypothesis uncritically, and growing evidence indicates that treatments based on disorder hypotheses for depression do cause harm. 

Coyne Battles Darwin, Many Other Evolutionary Biologists-and Himself

 ABMS has responded to society’s demand for action to ensure the sustained competence of America’s physicians when they are in unsupervised practice and to ensure that clinicians provide quality care. 

Does Maintenance of Certification Ensure Maintenance of Competency?

 Recently, NARSAD presented its achievement awards for 2010-awards given to physicians and scientists doing cutting-edge work to better understand the mechanisms and causes of mental illness. 

2010 NARSAD Awards for Psychiatric Research

 Forensic psychiatrists expressed near-unanimous opposition to 3 controversial new sexual diagnoses after a spirited debate at a recent conference of the American Association of Psychiatry and Law (AAPL). 

Forensic Psychiatrists Vote No on Proposed Paraphilias

 Cozolino reveals how much those “givens” have strong scientific underpinnings and underlines the urgency of re-integrating them into the training and the minds of 21st century therapists. 

The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain, Second Edition

 Mist rises from the Mediterranean and fills the black folds of mountains like incense . . . 

Baptism

Many psychiatrists, residents, and other mental health professionals believe that psychodynamic therapy lacks empirical support or that other psychotherapies are more effective. 

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

 Critics have noted that meta-analysis, when misused, resembles statistical alchemy, taking the dross of individually negative studies to produce the gold of a positive pooled result. 

Antidepressants in Bipolar Depression: A New Meta-Analysis for an Old Controversy

The team approach to dementia psychiatry services requires leadership for direction, decision making, and policy changes in order to make the process efficient and beneficial for all involved.

Time for Teamwork

Psychiatrists helping nonpsychiatrists refer their patients has a long but not always illustrious history.

Helping Primary Care Physicians Make Psychiatric Referrals

Although acute pain typically resolves on its own with little need for intervention, for some persons pain persists past the point where it is considered an adaptive reaction to injury.

Psychiatry and Chronic Pain

It is not surprising that one of the most complicated aspects of collaboration with faculty and staff in the ED setting is the professional or social contract.

Psychiatric Times Vol 27 No 12