News

Colonel David M. Benedek, MD-a psychiatrist-takes a brief look at the emotional fallout of war in veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and points you to the "The Clinical Manual for Management of PTSD."

Members of the military returning from combat operations have high rates of substance abuse. They also often exhibit a co-occurring triad of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and pain, which complicates the problems with substance abuse.

Most military families successfully adapt to a service member's deployments for military duties. Nevertheless, almost a decade of wartime stress associated with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has presented unprecedented challenges for military families.

This Special Report aims to address those symptoms and syndromes most commonly seen by clinicians who treat service members. The 5 articles of the Special Report cover the most challenging aspects of their care, and the authors hope to expand the reader’s understanding of the recent conflicts’ tragic consequences.

Which tool is helpful in screening for sexual addiction? Is the symptom severity in women treated for substance abuse generally equivalent to that of males? Structural abnormalities in which brain areas have been associated with substance abuse? These questions and more in this quiz.

During the past year, I have been involved as an expert witness for the defense in 14 SVP cases (tried in California, Washington, and Iowa). My role has been to clarify what is meant by the wording of the Paraphilia section in DSM-IV. And it certainly does badly need explaining.

Treatment resistance in bipolar disorder is clinically familiar but lacks a standard definition. Numerous evidence-based treatments exist for all phases of bipolar disorder, and these should be optimized and fully explored.

The United States has often been characterized as a nation of hypochondriacs. This is patently not true but TV bombardment by pharmaceutical advertisements stirs anxiety and illness fears in the many worried well in our midst.

There are bad deaths and there are good deaths. Sometimes we can do nothing to affect which of these outcomes will occur, and other times there are variables that we can control.