News

With the recent tragedy in Colorado and the high likelihood that questions about psychiatry will be inextricably tied into it, guidance for practicing psychiatrists can be gleaned from this coincidence.

"Internet Addiction" may soon spread like wildfire. All the elements favoring fad generation are in place . . . the profusion of alarming books; the breathless articles in magazines and newspapers; extensive TV exposure; ubiquitous blogs; the springing up of unproven treatment programs; the availability of millions of potential patients; and an exuberant trumpeting by newly minted "thought leading" researchers and clinicians. So far, DSM-5 has provided the only restraint.

This tale involves a “clever” inmate. He enjoyed the respectable rung of bank robber, but found he had suddenly descended to approximately the level of a sex offender. The reason for his slippage was the inmate code, which demands allegiance to other inmates under virtually all circumstances. “Ratting out” a fellow inmate may cost one his life, or at the very least, result in a decidedly anxious, paranoid existence.

Psychiatric Liability: A French Psychiatrist Sentenced After a Murder Committed by Her Patient Carol Jonas, MD, JD and Nidal Nabhan Abou, MD

Ongoing advances in functional brain imaging will permit studies on postulated roles of magnetic fields, biophotons, and macroscopic highly coherent quantum field effects on normal brain functioning and mental illness.

Clinicians tell patients that we will keep their information private and then turn around and put it into an electronic health record that can do just the opposite. . . . Putting confidential information into an electronic health record can be like putting it up on a billboard.