Podcasts

What is the relationship between common illnesses and depression? And why is the relationship so strong? What can clinicians do now to manage both the medical illness and the depression?

Our brains can be trained to function better as we age, and it doesn't take the Fountain of Youth to get there. In this podcast, geriatric psychiatrist Helen Lavretsky prescribes strategies to challenge our brains. She notes: "The more we challenge our brain, the more new nerve pathways and circuits we form."

You are invited to spend the next few minutes listening to what Dr Steven Moffic has to say about how the environment may be affecting your patients and what impact ecologically-related syndromes might have on psychiatry.

What are the latest findings on acute and chronic effects of alcohol on the human brain?

Advances in basic molecular research of alcoholism await translation into important new clinical insights.

Can methylfolate play a role in the adjunctive treatment of patients with major depression? In this podcast, Rakesh Jain, MD, offers insights.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, incarcerated psychiatric patients at Bellevue Hospital had to be evacuated. Because the hospital was flooded and without power, those inpatients had to be moved without the help of elevators, electronic or phone communication, or even running water.

I place a stethoscope in my ears and listen to the heart when I’ve run out of things to say.

"A hundred people dancing so hard they’ve thrown off their shoes . . ."

-for SusanneWe kneeled on the bookstore floortwo students scanning the bodiesof new books, checking outeach other's Principlesof Internal Medicine.Scores of textbooks laterwe're a pair of pagers and missed dinners,companions in sleep-deprived nights.We suffered the long delaybefore our only child while we ranto slashed wrists and ODs,sprinted from half-read journalto school play to board meeting.In conversation long as summer lightwe talked patients and drugs,recited the simple prayers of dying,learned how we both took medicineas a life-long lover.One hushed June evening in mid-lifescented rose and thick with fire-flies,the phone steals her.I sit with my half-filled glass

Your patient walks in with signs of traumatic injury, or intellectual or developmental disability. What special considerations are necessary in assessing and treating this patient?

Pharmacological and nonpharmacological strategies to treat and manage comorbid schizophrenia and addiction concern psychiatrists who are learning strategies to help improve functional outcomes.

There has been substantial interest lately on the early stages of schizophrenia and the effects of untreated psychosis. Clinical trials have focused on medications for first episode, assessments of adverse effects, and “care paths” for the early/prodromal stage of psychosis.

New treatment options for mood disorders are under investigation, including the novel class of glutamatergic drugs.

There are many rapidly effective treatments for mania in bipolar disorder. However, there are relatively few options for bipolar depression, and none that are rapidly effective-even though bipolar depression constitutes between 20% to 50% of all depressive disorders.

Within recent medical times psychologic investigations have reawakened interest in the psychological settings in which illness develops. Reports in the literature have singled out loss as a precipitating factor in a variety of disorders . . . including ulcerative colitis.    –Arthur H. Schmale Jr, MDIt was a time when men wore fedorasbanded on the crown, each band with a feathertucked into a bow, and inside,sweat bands carved from calf skins

What is sleep normally and what are the primary factors that regulate sleep? Understanding that the primary factors that regulate the sleep wake cycle are homeostatic and circadian will help clinicians assess sleep problems in patients.

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa-or a combination of the two-share body image distortions and are associated with a great deal of other comorbid symptoms.

By the year 2050, it is estimated that the number of people with Alzheimer disease and other forms of dementia will explode to 36 million in the US and over 160 million worldwide, over 3 times the current rate.

What is necessary in order to make a psychiatric disability determination? For one thing, treating clinicians should be aware of how the domains that are important for the consideration of impairment differ from the domains that are important to consider diagnostically.

Not surprisingly, children often “clam up” when they’re brought to the doctor. Their reluctance may be no cause for concern-or it could indicate an underlying issue.

A poetry reading by psychiatrist Richard Berlin, MD.

One of the special aspects of practicing in a small community is seeing patients living their lives outside the office.

As a consultation liaison psychiatrist, one of his assignments was to work on a renal dialysis unit to determine whether or not a patient was competent to opt out of treatment.

His pager calls. Code Blue. And for no reason at all, he lifts the window and blows a little life back into the world.

As the 3 most common online activities include internet search, e-mail, and searching for health care information, physicians are obligated to put reliable health care information in the path of the patient.

We lower a plastic tray on his ribs, as if food can stop the dying: cold potato scooped like a snowball, canned spinach. More in this reading by Richard Berlin, MD.

Our identity as physicians is the foundation for our careers as psychiatrists and the first step in our transition from layperson to doctor takes place in the anatomy lab.

Listen to Richard Berlin, MD, recite one of his poems.