News

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.

With DSM-5, one more examination of bipolar diagnosis is warranted. After all, if a diagnosis is inaccurate, treatment efforts, however well-intentioned, may misfire.

Come next year, psychiatrists will start seeing patients who have purchased new individual and small-group health plans on the state exchanges mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) has a limited but definitive role in understanding and managing psychiatric conditions. When the presentation is unusual, a neurological workup that includes an EEG is essential.

The poorly conceived DSM-5 Somatic Symptom Disorder substitutes a false psychiatric certainty that misleadingly covers medical uncertainty about the appropriate diagnosis. It is better to admit what we don't know than cover it with meaningless labels.

Parents of children with ADHD frequently ask whether there are nonmedication treatments that are effective for managing their children’s symptoms of ADHD. A recent meta-analysis provides an answer to this clinically important question.

Has the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity had any real impact on your ability to provide care to patients, or are you experiencing the shells and mortars of paperwork and denials? And will the average patient ever really benefit from the laws, or were they just passed to make the country feel better about the state of psychiatric care in the US?

Over half of the population is exposed to at least one lifetime traumatic event, yet relatively few of those exposed have lasting psychiatric sequelae. As psychiatrists, we attend to the needs of those who suffer.

Psychiatrists need to understand how living in violent families and neighborhoods increases the likelihood of trauma and the psychiatric sequelae associated with it as well as how to respond in the aftermath.

When attempting to incorporate resilience-building strategies into practice, it is worthwhile to note that resilience is a dynamic concept in which successful coping may mean a mixture of major real-life successes in the context of continuing difficulties.

Engaging in mindfulness activities either individually or with patients who come to us for brief medication visits can have a profound influence on the therapeutic process.

Across our nation, mental health care funding and resources are either slashed to the bone or nonexistent. Yet, at the same time, there is a unique opportunity available right now for any and all who want to tackle reform.

We climbed concrete ramps from the subway’s underground world, up to the grandstand and my first vision of heaven...

Jane Orient, MD, comments: Many physicians are outraged, not only by the cost -- an expense which must be incurred to maintain certification, but also by the fear that MOC is being advanced as a requirement for hospital privileges, and perhaps even maintenance of licensure. More here. . .

As most mental health professionals know by now, psychiatry's D-Day is rapidly approaching. DSM-5 addresses diagnostic categories, but there has never been an official treatment manual to complement the diagnostic one.

The art of living is the ability to use life’s inevitable traumas in some constructive fashion. This occurs on an odyssey that the resilient take that could be termed “the Journey of the Traumatized Hero.”

Sometimes viewed as “legal cocaine,” the over-the-counter status of synthetic cathinones (aka bath salts) gives the illusion that they are safe. In fact, they are highly toxic.

While it is true that the intense grief of bereavement and major depressive disorder often share some features-for example, tearfulness, insomnia, low mood, and decreased appetite-there are many substantive differences.

A new clinical society has been founded to coordinate TMS practices and to connects physician and non-physician members from across the world.

If you are a psychiatrist who tends to look on the bright side, you may find the results of a new physician survey to be relatively good. Psychiatrists report the lowest level of professional burnout and the lowest level of burnout severity across various specialties. But just how good is relatively good?