Notes From Prague: Is Polypharmacy Necessary in Psychiatry?
March 6th 2012Prof Möller provided several points for co-medication in psychiatric disorders; Prof Leucht explained that his concern is with doctors who have a "magic potion" of combined medications and use this as treatment across the board
Notes From Prague: Treating Schizophrenia Beyond Antipsychotic Drugs
March 6th 2012With several good presentations going on today at EPA 2012, the hardest part was deciding which to attend. The sessions started at 8 this morning, and I decided to go to the Treating Schizophrenia Beyond Antipsychotic Drugs: Cognitive and Metacognitive Interventions.
Severe Temper Outbursts in a 10-Year-Old Girl
March 6th 2012The responsibility for improvement was placed on psychiatrists: diagnostic skills had to be improved and patients and their families and caregivers as well as the general public needed to be better educated about the disorder and treatment options.
Ethics Quiz: When Dad Refuses Nursing Home Care
March 5th 2012Educated and successful individuals, Mr H's children seem able to understand that their father can no longer make his own decisions, but they continue to defer to him for medical and disposition decisions stating, “whatever he wants to do.”
Research Points to Shared Environmental Factors for Autism and ASD
March 2nd 2012Three twin studies published between 1977 and 1995, which provided the main body of knowledge on heritability of autism, showed a concordance rate of 72% for a total of 36 monozygotic pairs and a concordance rate of 0% for 30 dizygotic pairs.
How American Psychiatry Can Save Itself: Part 2
March 2nd 2012In this article the topic addressed are the primary reasons for the American public’s disenchantment with psychiatry; how the profession ought to address these issues; and how we need to replace the DSM’s categorical system with one that is clinically useful for both clinicians and patients.
Bupropion After Nonresponse or Partial Response to an SSRI or SNRI?
March 2nd 2012While SSRIs and SNRIs are valuable in the treatment of major depression, partial response or nonresponse occurs in many patients. Research has found that bupropion was the most frequently chosen agent for addition to an SSRI after inadequate response.
Condemning Torture and Abuse: A Call to Action
February 29th 2012The plain fact is that nothing that has been claimed in the name of defending our country can justify cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of another man or woman. Torture, in any form-light or heavy-is not a tool of interrogation or useful for gathering good intelligence.
Beyond Right and Wrong: Standards by Which to Measure the Past
February 23rd 2012In a recent college course, Dr Eghigian asked his students to discuss long-term patterns and trends in the history of the handling of mental illness. He was struck by a recurring tendency. Most students portrayed the history of mental health in one of two ways.
After Bereavement, Is It “Normal Grief” or Major Depression?
February 22nd 2012Much of the controversy on the relationship between grief and depression following recent bereavement has focused on whether the so-called “bereavement exclusion” in DSM-IV should be eliminated, as some have proposed, in the DSM-5.