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Our continuation of a survey on the accuracy of a recent article “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy” that seems to reduce the practice of psychiatry to a 15-minute med check.

In the interest of giving readers of Psychiatric Times a glimpse into this rich past, from time to time, H-Madness would like to share some examples of lesser known, yet enlightening, primary sources from the history of mental health.

Aside from its reckless proposals for dangerous new diagnoses, the most characteristic thing about DSM-5 has been its remarkably poor planning and its consistently missed deadlines.

The NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project raises many questions about DSM-5 and future DSMs.

The thing to remember that there is not a pill for every worry or life problem and that pills can sometimes make things worse.

Whenever a suicide happens in the New Asylums, a palpable, muted dread descends over the institution. It stays there in full force for weeks and months afterwards, sometimes longer. After that, it is added as another sedimentary layer to the strata and culture of the particular institution. Before things get too deeply buried, it is important to excavate.

ECT is making something of a comeback because it remains a paragon of efficacy amidst other relatively disappointing treatments.

II would have to wait until the next day, when K’s internal flames of resistance had died down, to learn why he had burned so fiercely. When we finally sat across from one another, his embers still glowed, and I learned that the source of his combustion had been the classic lose-lose scenario.

There is wide agreement that memory loss associated with ECT is short-term, usually temporary, and rarely has a major impact, “although it shouldn’t be taken lightly,” according to Ross.

For those of us who treat seriously emotionally disturbed children, We’ve Got Issues is a welcome change from the invectives of those who believe that the use psychotropic medication is virtually criminal.

One of the most remarkable discoveries in the field of life span alteration occurred in the past century and has to do with caloric restriction.

Richard Berlin, M.D.: “There is something about the condensed pressure of poetry that feels very natural to me.”

Had the National Rifle Association had its way and Bill 432 had been voted into law in Florida, physicians would have been prohibited from asking their patients whether they have access to firearms.

In cases of shared care, 90862 is often the only reimbursable CPT code available to the psychiatrist.

Which neuroimaging technologies uses the motion of water molecules to investigate the microstructure and organization of white matter tracts in the brain? Which pharmacogenetic approaches might be used as a predictor of antipsychotic drug response? These questions and more in this quiz.

Digital technology is a valuable tool, but if it dazzles us with its speed and control, there is the risk that we may forget the old way of connecting.

How closely did a recent New York Times article depict psychiatric practices across the country?

The most important question is whether the new diagnostic criteria are an improvement. . . . I am highly skeptical that they are.

As experts in neurobiology, we can conduct and critically evaluate research to identify the short- and long-term risks and benefits of neuroenhancers for patients without recognized clinical indications.

On April 1, a secret source let me in on a special addition to the new “Obamacare” healthcare reform law, which just had its 1-year anniversary. It will be released by the new Convocation speaker at the upcoming annual American Psychiatric Association (APA) meeting in May.

The Alliance for Human Research Protection is attempting to draft me as an unwilling soldier in its dangerous campaign to discredit psychiatry and to discourage psychiatric patients from staying in treatment and taking medication.

The health reform legislation is likely to affect all mental health professionals throughout their lives, both as consumers and as practitioners of health care services.

Mixed depression is defined as a major depressive episode (MDE) with concurrent manic or hypomanic symptoms that are insufficient in number for a patient to meet the criteria for mixed hypomania.

Dr Weissman discusses psychiatric residency recruitment by looking at the forces that affect a student’s selection of a psychiatric career rather than at what the influences have been during the past 5 years.

Mixed states constitute a wondrously variegated universe of psychopathology. These states are characterized by the intrusion of features characteristic of depression into states of hypomania or mania and the converse. Mixed states assume a myriad of forms that as a family may be among the most commonly encountered states of affective illness.

I’d like to respond to Dr Cacciatore’s concerns and comments, as well as to some points raised by other readers. I also want to acknowledge the deep pain of those who have lost loved ones, and who have written in to this Web site.

Writers of diagnostic criteria should consider their work and all its implications. What about adding a new disorder? What might that do to epidemiological capture? Depending on the characteristics of the diagnostic criteria set, many possibilities exist.