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Suicide risk screening is especially challenging. Although data are not yet available to ascertain how COVID-19 will affect the suicide rate, the 3-tiered clinical pathway has been revised to accommodate mostly telehealth screening.

How can telepsychiatry improve quality and access to care as well as reduce physician burnout? Telepsychiatry pioneers joined Chris Aiken, MD to discuss tips and tricks in making it work for you.

Grandpa Murray, rags to riches, American big shot, the man who dreamt even bigger for his first grandson when he placed a doctor’s bag in my crib . . . the proudest man at my med school graduation.

Hopefully, the season will bring us a new sense of freedom, as we make progress in the fight against COVID and the possibility of returning to a more normal life.

Until a study demonstrates the non-inferiority of home-based telepsychiatry, the standard of care outside of a public health emergency requires patients to be seen face to face in an office, or with a nurse present at federally qualified health centers with a telepsychiatry set up.

Predicting suicide remains challenging at best. For each suicide there is often a complex web of life experiences, personality traits, psychiatric diagnoses, cultural beliefs, relationship issues, and acute stressors that ultimately converge on a person’s decision to take one’s life.

In the midst of this current head-spinning, mentally straining, emotionally draining, perplexing pandemic that is leaving many with a jaded, burned-out weariness, mental health and allied professionals can alleviate considerable pain.

The pandemic has brought about uneasy feelings that can exacerbate mental illness and cause further mental health issues. In its current state, our mental health system is not prepared to deal with what may become a global mental health pandemic, but there are ways to address it.

Frank A. Clark, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina School of Medicine – Greenville, SC, presents a timely slice of poetic history.