After years of working with troubled individuals claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, Harvard University Professor John Mack published a book. What made Mack and the book so controversial was the fact that he had come to accept that his patients’ stories were an accurate description of real events.
For this psychiatrist, learning a section of the Talmud known as Megillah brought to light an important exchange that has implications in therapy and psychopharmacology, regardless of theoretical stance.
Everyone, in their own way, wants what's best for people with mental health challenges, but risks and benefits are interpreted through a personal lens.
Although 2 weeks of protected touring is hardly enough time to get a sense of Morocco, there was a familiar parallel to cross-cultural psychiatry. Let the patient tell you what they are about culturally, respect that particular point of view, relate to them as they wish, and support that with study.
What can we do to fix our broken mental health system? Psychiatric Times posed this question to some of the leading experts in the field.
Whether these psychiatrists helped or hindered societal events probably depends on one's political perspective.
For those suffering from severe mental illness, this is the worst of times. Walk the streets of any city and you will find multitudes of the mentally ill left homeless to fend as best they can for themselves.
In the US, suicide is a leading cause of death, ranking third among youths aged 15 to 24. Rates of suicide attempts and death are highest among US Pacific Island indigenous youths. Emergency departments play a key role in suicide prevention, especially in this and other minority populations.
“Schizophrenia” is a name, not a disease. You are about to read the life story of a remarkable man who describes how he overcame poverty, orphanhood, and schizophrenia to become an author, an LCSW, a leader in the mental health advocacy movement, and an inspiration for many others.
With more and more baby boomers turning 65 every day, there will be an enormous increase in elderly patients needing psychiatric care over the next 20 years.
This article summarizes 5 cases from consultation services at several teaching hospitals. These challenging cases illustrate several points for the consultation/liaison psychiatrist to consider in caring for elderly hospitalized patients.
An in-depth look into the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia.
DSM-5 criteria for hoarding disorder necessitate that the hoarding behaviors cause clinically significant impairment in the patient’s ability to function.
Clinicians will likely encounter increasing numbers of older adults with late-life depression. Advances in our understanding of the neurobiology can help inform diagnosis and prognosis.
The main character of Guardians of the Galaxy directly connects to psychiatry and comments on continuing controversies about patient care and health care delivery systems.
An expert Q&A with Laurence Steinberg, PhD. His newest book offers insights into the malleable adolescent brain and provides guidance to parents hoping to better understand adolescents.
There is no clear boundary separating religious and political extremism from psychiatric illness. One man's cherished belief is another man's delusion. More in this commentary.
We in mental health care may be the last bastion of defense in the deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship. However, this role seems to be underplayed in the call for more integrated medicine of psychiatry with general medicine.
The privacy and security of our offices-the therapeutic bunkers within which our wounded patient-warriors hunker down against an unseen enemy-is the fundamental first barricade between private sufferings and the potential for public humiliation.
Whether by traditional means or via cyberspace, bullying and peer victimization put adolescents at increased risk for suicide, especially when comorbid psychopathology is present.
Some inflexible anti-psychiatrists are blind ideologues who see only the limits and harms of mental health treatment, not its necessity or any of its benefits. More in this commentary.
This CME outlines distinguishing features of PTSD, complex trauma, and the dissociative subtype of PTSD (DPTSD), with an explanation of the distinctive neurobiological subtype of DPTSD.
Some worry about the adverse psychological effects emerging from the Metropolitan Opera's production of "The Death of Klinghoffer."
Patients with severe depression are more likely to have symptom remission with a combination of cognitive therapy and antidepressant medication than those with less severe or more chronic illness.
The clinician's role is to “translate” symptoms of OCD and understand the dysfunctional circuits at play to decide on the most appropriate treatment for each patient.
Advances in psychiatric research, spanning the entire spectrum of biological, psychological, and social aspects of mental processes and functions, have transformed the field of psychiatry. More in this inaugural piece by Psychiatric Times' Editor in Chief.
In this video, Dr Andrew Solomon talks about how psychiatrists and psychologists can help depressed or traumatized patients foster resilience, without trivializing their pain.
The legal benefits of marriage are clear and well-known. But what are the psychological benefits?
In his blog for Mental Illness Awareness Week, NIMH Director Thomas Insel talks about the complexity of mental disorders and the need for scientists, clinicians, patients, and families to work together in searching for better treatment.
After a managed care company calls me to be “a prescriber,” I recall The Book of Dinosaurs my grandfather gave me the day I turned seven.