The liveliest debate in psychiatry today is where to draw the line between mental disorder and mental health. So much rides on the decision-who gets treated and how, who pays for it, whether a criminal is deemed mad or bad, whether someone gets damages in tort cases, who qualifies for disability payments and eligibility for extra school services, whether someone can adopt a child-and there's a whole lot more.
In our time, it seems that the number of psychiatrists who believe in a God are increasing, parallel with the decreasing influence of Freud’s ideas.
When critics of psychiatric diagnosis insist that terms like “schizophrenia” or “bipolar disorder” are inherently stigmatizing, they are unwittingly perpetuating the very prejudice they wish to end. It is time to shine a bright light on this self-fulfilling prophecy.
What Skype does not offer is a means of communication clearly suitable for clinical services-especially in mental health and psychiatry.
Medication side effects of weight gain and increased appetite, together with non-adherence often found in persons with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other serious mental illnesses, have challenged clinicians in the past.
Patients with borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder (or both) can feel entitled to special treatment and often seek only approving forms of attention from those who treat them.
Mental illness is a risk factor for HIV infection. It brings a number of behavioral correlates that put patients at risk for getting infected. As HIV infection worsens, it begins to affect the brain, and cyclical relationship between the disease and mental illness begins.
While the diagnostic categories of DSM-III and DSM-IV (and soon DSM-5) have provided the basis for much useful research, little has been written about how much of DSM-and how much “evidence-based medicine”-is built on a foundation of fantasy.
Outpatient psychiatry is a critical experience in becoming an independent psychiatrist.
The day began on a high note. As I sat and talked with an elderly patient sitting in her wheelchair, quiet, not remembering much, she suddenly broke out in song.
Changes will mean patients will only be covered for psychiatrists’ services that include medical evaluation and management; CPT coding will not allow for coverage of psychotherapy as a separate and equal category for payment.
Adjustment disorder is one of the few psychiatric diagnoses for which the etiology, symptoms, and course, rather than symptoms alone, are central to making the diagnosis. Both emotional and behavioral disturbances are present and include low mood, tearfulness, anxiety, self-harm, withdrawal, anger, and irritability.
Frame analysis can not only help us to discern the roots of such standoffs but also to conceptualize specific ways of addressing the conflicts in therapeutic language with the patient, with the goal of forging an integrated approach to treatment.
Psychological symptoms of depression in patients with diabetes are more specific to depression than their somatic counterparts.
Historically, there has been conflict between psychiatry and religion.
The humanities are a variety of academic disciplines that focus on the human condition with analytic and sometimes speculative methods. This is in contrast to the empirical methods of the natural sciences.
Preliminary evidence shows that dialectical behavior therapy may be beneficial in treating patients with bipolar disorder.
This article summarizes the reasons for switching an antipsychotic and explains when it becomes necessary to switch, as well as how the switch is best accomplished.
But old colleagues said . . . the holocaust made him an atheist with a poet’s heart, . . . a Jew who loved to stand and chant David’s psalms
Overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder is an increasing concern, particularly since a widely cited study that indicates a problem with overdiagnosis as well as with the much less publicized parallel finding of 30% underdiagnosis.
A recently published NIH study of 112 children suggested that some children might possibly outgrow autism.
Schizophrenia has long been considered a neurodevelopmental disorder in which onset of diagnostic symptoms in late adolescence or adulthood is the end result of a decades-long interaction between genes and environment that begins in the womb.
The 3% to 5% of kids who are particularly gifted are also at special risk for being tagged with an inappropriate diagnosis of mental disorder. Caution is necessary when diagnosing.
The federal government must realize that decades of allowing mental health care to go begging leaves a very weak chance of detecting or treating those who need help.
Less common but still important syndromes connected with Alzheimer disease include traumatic brain injury, infectious and inflammatory disorders, alcohol-induced dementia.
Cognitive decline feels as though a little man is inside the elderly patient's head, with darkness all around him. To the front, some light seeps in through the eyes. Sounds come from a distance, muted, like in a heavy fog.
In addition to having an excellent safety profile, ECT is widely acknowledged to be the most effective acute antidepressant treatment.
Bringing the arts and humanities to psychiatry requires bringing these areas of study into our education, our research and our practice models.