What is the future of psychiatric assessment and treatment of mood disorders? The articles in this Special Report explore some important aspects and issues.

Introduction: The Conventional Wisdom About Mood Disorders

Here: the history of psychotic depression for the Study of the Pharmacotherapy of Psychotic Depression (STOP-PD), a summary its epidemiology, significance, diagnostic complexity, and treatment, as well as case vignettes. 

Psychotic Depression: Underrecognized, Undertreated-and Dangerous

This article reviews the most recent (after 2010) published guidelines on bipolar depression.

A Critical Consideration of the Most Recent Guidelines for Bipolar Depression

Most, if not all, antidepressants can cause bothersome adverse effects. These are described here along with strategies to help patients cope.

Managing the Adverse Effects of Antidepressants

This book is the first scholarly work that attempts to fill the enormous gap in the conventional armamentarium used to treat PTSD. 

Rhythms of Recovery: Trauma, Nature, and the Body

The limited effectiveness of current approaches provide compelling arguments for effective conventional and complementary interventions aimed at preventing PTSD and treating chronic PTSD. Specifics here. 

A Review of Select CAM Modalities for the Prevention and Treatment of PTSD

Cranial electrotherapy devices, soon to be only home-use device approved to treat depression, can be an essential adjunctive treatment to standard modalities of care for soldiers and veterans, says this psychiatrist.

The Rise of Cranial Electrotherapy

Innovative approaches that advance our understanding of the mechanisms that confer risk for psychiatric illness in youths is the focus.

New Findings Related to Childhood-Onset Psychopathology

Is there something in young blood that holds the key to preventing or reversing cognitive decline and/or dementia associated with aging? The answer to that question is the subject of intense recent research. Details here.

Blood Revival: Young Mice Reverse Aging in the Old

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.

Issues in Psychodynamic Psychiatry

When I learned my first scale at 45 I knew I would never rip loose and free like the pros who started as teenagers, when time didn’t matter and practicing was just another form of play.

Practicing My Scales

A variety of commonly used psychiatric medications increase the risk of heatstroke, leaving psychiatric patients in jails and prisons at risk.

Heatstroke and Psychiatric Patients

Severe alcohol dependence and frequent relapses in this patient prompts his son to produce a durable power of attorney for health care. He demands that the physicians declare his father to lack decision-making capacity. More in this ethics case report.

Case Report: Drinking, Decisional Capacity, and Death

Amidst the anguish and heartbreak felt by the victims’ families, there are always two haunting questions: What motivates someone to kill strangers wholesale in a seemingly senseless way? And what, if anything, can we do to stop these tragedies from recurring?

The Mind of the Mass Murderer

If you’ve never surfed the web for sites that critically examine psychiatry, I highly recommend it-though it’s not for the faint of heart. 

Positivism, Humanism and the Case for Psychiatric Diagnosis

More than 50 years have passed since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published, and almost 40 years since the movie was released, but the issues seem as relevant today as they were back then. If you haven’t seen the film or have forgotten what you saw, see it again as soon as you can. Here's why.

We Are Still Flying Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 

When psychosocial treatments are delivered with high quality and fidelity, outcomes improve. That is the parity all of us should be fighting for. More in this commentary by NIMH Director Thomas Insel, MD.

The Paradox of Parity

In Angst: Origins of Anxiety and Depression, Dr Jeffrey Kahn offers an alternative perspective on the evolution of common mental health disorders by considering the adaptive nature of symptoms that modern clinicians deem pathological.

Vol 31 No 7