Psychiatric Times Vol 28 No 11

In his book, How We Age: A Doctor’s Journey Into the Heart of Growing Old, Dr Marc Agronin helps reduce the stigma of ageism and provides clinical guidance for seasoned geriatric psychiatrists, primary care clinicians, and medical students alike.

This article explores the use of functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP)-a behavioral, evidenced-based approach to psychotherapy that can add psychotherapeutic benefit to your existing brief approaches during medication checks.

Insurance often pushes pills rather than talk therapy, believing drugs are less expensive (although there is a fair amount of evidence to the contrary).

ADHD is often inaccurately diagnosed and prematurely treated with medication-especially under the pressure of heavy drug company marketing to physicians and direct advertising to parents and teachers.

More than 50 years ago, Charles M. Schulz, creator of “Peanuts,” coined the term “Happiness is a warm puppy.” Schulz may have been more visionary than he recognized.

Although memoirs have become all the rage, they are rarely written by anyone in the field of psychiatry . . . and for good reason.

The purpose of suicide risk assessment is to identify treatable and modifiable risks and protective factors that inform the patient’s treatment and safety management requirements.

Max Fink, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology Emeritus at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, received the Thomas William Salmon Award for outstanding contributions to the field of psychiatry.

The report notes that pain is a significant public health problem that affects more than 100 million Americans, costs our society at least $560 to $659 billion annually, and can be severely detrimental to the lives of sufferers.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is not easy entertainment, but for psychiatrists who might welcome an encounter with a brilliant, uncompromising mind, The Tree of Life is enthralling.

“If you were a ship, where would you sail?” . . . “What is your favorite hockey team?” and “What will you do if you don’t get into medical school?”

A new Medicaid demonstration program slated to begin next year will pilot a solution to the problem of “psychiatric boarding,” which has plagued general hospitals for many years.

In theory, psychiatrists possess no special skills for determining capacity of a patient to accept or refuse medical care, yet a large percentage of a psychosomatic physician’s work nonetheless involves capacity evaluations.

Currently, there are 350,000 Americans who receive maintenance dialysis for renal failure, and this predominantly elderly population with multiple comorbidities is growing.

This article provides background information on the FGIDs for psychiatrists and a review of recent research on the biopsychosocial mechanisms that contribute to the illness experience.

Psychache (sīk-āk), a neologism coined by suicidologist Edwin Shneidman, is unbearable psychological pain-hurt, anguish, soreness, and aching.

“I’m so cold, so weary in my abandonment. Go and find my Mother, O Wind. Take me to the house I never knew.”

Biomarkers for mental disorders is a field whose time has come. Optimists will say within a few years, pessimists might say a decade or beyond.

When working with patients who are at high risk for relapse or misuse of prescription medications, careful documentation of the informed consent process is a helpful risk management tool.

Researchers have tried lots of different kinds of tests from EEGs to blood-based biomarkers. Now genetic tests are a very popular means of trying to understand different psychiatric disorders.