Addiction & Substance Use

Here we list important points to keep in mind when assessing and treating patients who self harm.

During their time in Ayacucho, these visiting psychiatrists learned that American psychiatric training has wide-reaching cultural value.

Psychiatrists cannot, with impunity, disregard an important domain of man’s personality makeup. He ought to remain a searcher of the soul at large.

Three twin studies published between 1977 and 1995, which provided the main body of knowledge on heritability of autism, showed a concordance rate of 72% for a total of 36 monozygotic pairs and a concordance rate of 0% for 30 dizygotic pairs.

In this article the topic addressed are the primary reasons for the American public’s disenchantment with psychiatry; how the profession ought to address these issues; and how we need to replace the DSM’s categorical system with one that is clinically useful for both clinicians and patients.

Dogs, indeed, may be man’s (and woman’s) best therapist at certain times and in certain situations, with important implications for mental health.

Effective, early intervention and appropriate support for and treatment of the caregivers of these vulnerable children will improve short-term outcomes and also may provide positive lifelong benefits.

Knowing from the start how a personality is organized, especially as theorized by Karen Horney-appreciating the primary and repressed moves of the patient, inner dictates, claims, idealized image, and intrapsychic defensive maneuvers-makes the help we offer most likely to succeed.

Although the adverse-effect profile of older, conventional (typical) antipsychotics has discouraged many clinicians from using them, they remain widely used in elderly patients with dementia.

Studies of mammalian species suggest that they possess awareness of self and even more subtle “human” qualities associated with empathy and social joy.

The first half of the 20th century saw 2 world wars, indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilians, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the Holocaust-all of which created intense trauma for soldiers and civilians.Yet it was not until the American intervention in a post-colonial civil war in Southeast Asia that the psychiatric community in the 1970s formally described what we now call PTSD.

Charles Dickens might well say of American psychiatry, “These are the best of times and the worst of times.”

Suicide continues to be the third leading cause of death in youths aged 10 and older. Several new studies shed further light on suicidal behavior in children and adolescents.

Schizophrenia is often characterized by lack of insight, treatment nonadherence, and poor prognosis. However, research suggests that patients with schizophrenia benefit immensely from learning about their illness.

Project GREAT efforts in psychoeducation are geared toward educating providers about recovery so that they can, in turn, transform their own practices to be in concert with the recovery model.

In this guest blog, Dr Deirdre D'Orazio responds to a recent commentary by Dr Allen Frances on conducting evaluations of potential sexually violent predators.

Dr Angell and others may be right to claim that we should be concerned about the current practice of psychiatry. But the simple fact that mental illnesses seem to be common is not one of them.

Special Report chairs discuss patient education and provide a brief overview of materials that provide an opportunity for patients to help themselves.

While research suggests that cannabis use can induce an acute psychotic state, there is controversy about whether it may precipitate psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. These authors offer an update on this important issue and provide clinically useful recommendations.

Through patient self-management, mental health clinicians can transfer the focus from managing symptoms to allowing patients to live well in the context of their mental illness and medical comorbidities.

The designer of the DSM-5 Field Trials has just written a telling commentary in the American Journal of Psychiatry. She makes what I consider to be 2 basic errors that reveal the fundamental worthlessness of these Field Trials and their inability to provide any information that will be useful for DSM-5 decision making.

For this psychiatrist, group therapy has proved to be an extraordinarily effective treatment for a range of mental disorders.

How often do insomnia and anxiety disorders coexist? And how best to treat patients with comorbid insomnia and anxiety? Answers here..

Critics of DSM-5 argue that the expansion of diagnostic criteria may increase the number of “mentally ill” individuals and/or pathologize “normal” behavior, and lead to the possibility that thousands-if not millions-of new patients will be exposed to medications which may cause more harm than good.

I believe it is incumbent on psychiatrists, as leaders in the mental health field, to help our patients and the general public distinguish the psychiatric fantasy from the psychiatric reality.