Jails have a much higher percentage of homeless mentally ill than does the general community, and those with psychiatric disorders (eg, schizophrenia) must often fend for themselves. Here are some solutions.

Working With Law Enforcement to Provide Health Care for the Acute Mentally Ill

Currently, 1 in 15 youths undergoing psychiatric evaluation in the emergency department is restrained. This article covers diagnostic and therapeutic interventions that can reduce fear and put the young patient on a path to recovery.

The Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Emergency: A Public Health Challenge

It is important to recognize and document the abilities and deficits of a patient in order to determine capacity.

Consent in Psychiatric Emergencies: What Clinicians Need to Know

Acute intoxication is the most likely culprit for an increased risk of violence or agitation, but personality, psychosis, and cognitive problems can all play a role. A skilled clinician can glean a great deal of information in a short period of time.

Interviewing in the Emergency Setting

Addiction and mental health treatment has fallen increasingly into the justice system for underserved and indigent patients. How do we bring state-of-the art treatment to this population in desperate need?

Medication-Assisted Treatment and Drug Courts

Looking out at a flat gray sea, I try to imagine the chasms in the ocean’s floor where lava laced with strontium pours... 

A Psychiatrist’s Diet

For PTSD in psychiatrists and other mental health care providers to be addressed, a major shift in medical culture and thinking is needed. 

When the Psychiatrist Has PTSD

Although college students are in many ways similar to any patient in their age group, their environment and stressors differ in significant ways. The authors identify issues to consider in assessing and managing suicidality in this population.

Managing the Suicidal College Student: Advice for Community Providers

Protecting patient information is an essential part of maintaining patient trust.

How to Protect Patient Information

This article reviews DSM-5 changes to symptom criteria for bipolar disorder. The primary focus is on the diagnosis and treatment of mania and hypomania.

An Update on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder, Part 1: Mania

A report on Medicaid and Medicare fraud, excessive waste, and frivolous expenditures-all at the expense of those who suffer from psychiatric illness.

Fraud, Waste, and Excess Profits

What is behind the glaring lack of controls over prescription drug costs, even for everyday medications?

Where’s the Outrage?

If serotonin was once American psychiatry’s “high school crush,” the field now appears wedded to a more mature model of biological and psychosocial understanding.

Serotonin: How Psychiatry Got Over Its “High School Crush”

There has probably never been a worse place and worse time to have a severe mental illness than now in the United States. How did we get into this mess? 

Vol 32 No 11