News

BasicNeeds is a program in developing countries that works with individuals with mental illness or epilepsy, their families, and their communities to establish accessible treatment programs, satisfy basic needs, and reduce social marginalization and stigma.

Defining "stress" and how it is expressed and managed in both psychiatrists and patients is a difficult proposition. This Special Report focuses on stress and the middle ground between the impulse to say there is no such thing as “stress” and the tendency to describe many explicit addressable issues under the monolithic term "stress."

Psychiatrists, primary care physicians, neurologists, nurse practitioners, psychiatric nurses, and other mental health care professionals. Continuing medical education credit is available for most specialties. To determine if this article meets the continuing education requirements for your specialty, please contact your state licensing board.

Because hoarding occurs in a substantial portion of patients with neurodegenerative disorders, neurologists are likely to encounter patients with this problem. Until recently, they had little to offer their patients or the patients' caregivers. Compulsive hoarding can cause severe impairment and presents intriguing psychopathology, yet it has received little systematic study, and no effective treatment is currently on the market.

Sound Bites

Pain relief provided by a greater occipital nerve (GON) block for migraine occurs more rapidly than previously reported-within 5 minutes of injection-according to researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. In 25 patients with unilateral episodic or transformed migraine, headache

Mental Notes

About half of the US population doesn't understand their doctors' instructions, according to health literacy advocates within the AMA and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). Is it any wonder why clinicians are frustrated with patients' lack of compliance with therapy and lack of follow-through filling prescriptions and presenting for diagnostic tests-not to mention litigation issues that may arise, in part, from physician-patient miscommunication?

Signals

Patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) often have Lewy body pathology (LBP). Although the exact significance of LBP is unknown, LBP appears to be more common in persons with familial AD related to gene mutations of presenilin 1 (PSEN1), presenilin 2 (PSEN2), and amyloid precursor protein. To examine the genetics of LBP, the team from Puget Sound HCS, led by James B. Leverenz, MD, associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, reviewed 25 familial AD cases that included 9 known PSEN1 mutations and 14 familial AD cases that included a single PSEN2 mutation. The brain stem, limbic cortex, and neocortex were examined for LBP.