News

At the recent annual APA meeting, Dr Abraham Halpern was posthumously honored for the second annual Humanitarian Award by the American Association for Social Psychiatry. He was honored for his contributions to ethics, forensics, and advocacy of social issues.

Despite the prevalent perception that cognitive decline in the aged population is inevitable, researchers with Northwestern University's SuperAging Project are finding that "excellent memory capacity in late life is a biological possibility."

To understand the psychodynamics of the dissociative fugue, Dr Michael Sperber analyzes some of the characters in a collection of interrelated vignettes set in small town America.

What may be a way to increase the effectiveness of right unilateral electrode placement without increasing cognitive adverse effects?

Impulse control disorders are common psychiatric conditions in which affected individuals typically report significant impairment in social and occupational functioning, and may incur legal and financial difficulties as well.

Sexual compulsivity and sexual addiction predominantly afflict men. Clinicians need to have a higher index of suspicion for sexual impulsivity in some patients.

Combat veterans who have suffered a moral injury in the past may be predisposed to a recurrence of the painful memories associated with previous trauma after exposure to similar traumatic events with moral overtones.

Because of new imaging techniques and advances in our understanding of neurophysiology, neurological and psychiatric disorders are increasingly being recognized as disorders of circuit functions in the brain. Using techniques such as DBS, neurosurgeons are able to pinpoint malfunctioning circuits and to recalibrate them.

Are there differences in the neuroimaging of persons who just gamble and those who pathologically gamble?

"Psychiatric diagnosis is certainly imperfect -- but so is much of diagnosis throughout medicine. And whatever the current limitations, psychiatric diagnosis is useful and essential. There are no 'paradigm shifts possible til we learn a lot more. To imply otherwise is misleading and confusing to patients."

In the run-up to publication of DSM-5, there was much discussion of the extent to which the pharmaceutical industry-“Big Pharma”-stood to profit from the revisions.

The human brain needs to be nourished. To function properly, it requires omega-3 fatty acids, folate, fiber, choline, iron, zinc, and vitamins B12, D, and E among other nutrients.

A panel of experts at the APA Annual Meeting discussed how changes in DSM-5 may affect clinical practice. Highlights here.

A clinician’s notes and clinical records should document and defend treatment decisions, and are the best defense in court. Here: 3 key things every patient record should include.

The presence of a psychiatric diagnosis does not necessarily indicate lack of decisional capacity.

Education and discussion will be the most powerful ways to mitigate the risks of DSM-5. The more people know about psychiatric diagnosis, the more safe, accurate, and useful it will be.

Thinking about suicidal behavior as a diagnosable problem will help bridge the gap in how psychiatrists think about suicidality and how it is perceived by patients and their families.

Certain aspects of depression result from maladaptive stress-induced changes in reward circuits of the brain.

This psychiatrist has learned to ask if his Hmong patients have also consulted a shaman to help with their depressive symptoms and with their PTSD.

Which of the following complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies may have beneficial effects on symptoms of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer disease (AD)?

The Department of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center is seeking a faculty member in its Substance Abuse Services at the rank of Assistant Professor or Associate Professor to conduct clinical care and teaching in the field of addiction medicine. The position will be based at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a major affiliate hospital which serves as a training site for medical students, residents and an ACGME credited fellowship in addiction psychiatry. There are opportunities to join ongoing funded programs or to develop new research or academic initiatives.

Two problems persist in the treatment of severe mental illness that constitute a barrier to effective patient-centered care: excessive reliance on a limited number of antipsychotic medications at the expense of other effective treatments, and the underutilization of other evidence-based treatment options.

Quick . . . name a class of prescription medications that, by most evidence, appears to be overprescribed and abused and the use of which has resulted in an increasing number of emergency department visits. If you said "opioids," you would be right.

The British Psychological Society has issued a press release that rivals the silliness of DSM-5 and the National Institute of Mental Health.

How often are you confronted with an ethical dilemma in your clinical practice? How comfortable-and how prepared-are you to deal with these issues? Those are just a few of the questions posed in the Psychiatric Times Ethics Survey-a survey that turned out to be the largest ever of its kind.

Being a Therapist features intimate portraits of psychotherapists in their own work spaces. An excerpt of his interview with Otto Kernberg, MD, follows.

The flat out rejection of DSM-5 by National Institute of Mental Health is a sad moment for mental health--and an unsafe one for our patients. The APA and NIMH are both letting us down, failing to be safe custodians for the mental health needs of our country.