May 2nd 2024
How can psychiatric clinicians improve outcomes for this unique patient population?
The Expanding Role of Fluid Biomarkers in the Diagnosis and Management of Patients With Alzheimer Disease
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Clinical Consultations™: Considerations for Customizing Care Plans for Patients with Parkinson Disease Psychosis
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Expert Illustrations & Commentaries™: Visualizing New Therapeutic Targets in Schizophrenia
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Advances In™ Schizophrenia: Expanding the Therapeutic Landscape
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Southern California Psychiatry Conference
September 13-14, 2024
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Updates on New and Emerging Therapies to Improve Outcomes for Patients With Major Depressive Disorder
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5th Annual International Congress on the Future of Neurology®
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2023 Annual Psychiatric Times™ World CME Conference
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Clinical Consultations™: Managing Depressive Episodes in Patients with Bipolar Disorder Type II
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Patient, Provider, and Caregiver Connection™: Exploring Unmet Needs In Postpartum Depression – Making the Case for Early Detection and Novel Treatments
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Medical Crossfire®: Understanding the Advances in Bipolar Disease Treatment—A Comprehensive Look at Treatment Selection Strategies
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'REEL’ Time Patient Counseling: The Diagnostic and Treatment Journey for Patients With Bipolar Disorder Type II – From Primary to Specialty Care
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More Than ‘Blue’ After Birth: Managing Diagnosis and Treatment of Post-Partum Depression
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Patient, Provider & Caregiver Connection™: Reducing the Burden of Parkinson Disease Psychosis with Personalized Management Plans
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DSM5 "Addiction" Swallows Substance Abuse
March 31st 2010DSM-IV provides separate categories for Substance Abuse and Substance Dependence. The typical substance abuser is someone who gets into recurrent, but intermittent, trouble as a consequence of recreational binges. This is in contrast to the continuous and compulsive pattern of use that is typical of DSM-IV Substance Dependence.
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In a study of 3801 young adults that was just published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Australian researchers have concluded that early and prolonged use of marijuana is associated with psychosis-related outcomes in young adults. They found a “dose-response” relationship: the longer marijuana was used, the higher the risk was out eventual psychosis.
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An Alternative Approach To The Suicidal Patient: Crisis Intervention
March 18th 2010There are currently several disturbing phenomena in the field of suicidology: •Many papers are describing risk assessment and suggesting the need for high-risk patients to be hospitalized. •Emergency department (ED) staff are complaining about spending much of their time trying to find beds for patients. •Programs are claiming “crisis intervention” when, in fact, they only provide triage.
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DSM5 and Sexual Disorders - Just Say No
March 18th 2010A major general problem in the preparation of DSM5 is that the various Work Groups have been given far too little guidance and support. This explains why: 1)most of the criteria sets are written so obscurely and inconsistently; 2) the rationales for change vary so widely in depth and quality across Work Groups,and; 3) so many suggestions that should have no chance at all have made it this far without being tossed.
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Questions About Expanded Mental Health Parity Law
March 9th 2010Six months after the deadline for a final rule, 3 federal departments published an interim final rule that leaves a number of questions open about the application of the expanded mental health parity law passed by Congress in October 2008. But the penultimate version of the implementing regulations won mostly praise from psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals.
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“Paranoia Strikes Deep”*: MMR Vaccine and Autism
March 5th 2010On February 12, 2009, the US Court of Federal Claims issued a trio of long-awaited decisions in its Omnibus Autism Proceeding.1 The 3 were representative cases chosen from more than 5500 pending MMR/autism cases by the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee. Each presented the theory that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in combination with thimerosal, a mercury-based ingredient contained in some diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), diphtheria-tetanus–acellular pertussis (DTaP), hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) vaccines, causes autism. In nearly 700 combined pages that reviewed the scientific and epidemiological evidence, all 3 opinions determined that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated a link between these vaccines and autism.
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The Lost Birds of Wounded Knee
March 5th 2010I remember as a child gathering wild greens with my Cherokee grandmothers, 2 generations of them, and hearing the lilt of spoken Cherokee. I can still see myself listening quietly in the corner of the room while others came to visit my great-grandmother, a respected traditional healer. We were poor. There is no other way to say it. My mother carried water from a well in the middle of the field, and I remember before going outside to play in the snow that we wrapped bread sacks around our feet to keep them dry. But as a child, while life was hard and even harsh at times, it felt safe and constant.
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American Psychiatric Headquarters Seized by Giant English Teachers!
March 4th 2010Arlington, VA, March 2 (compiled from AP reports)-Officials at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) confirmed today that their national headquarters had been taken over by “very, very large English and literature teachers,” according to a spokesperson for APA President, Dr Alan Schatzberg. Schatzberg himself was unavailable for comment and was reported to be in seclusion “…brushing up his Shakespeare.”
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Treating Child and Adolescent Mental Illness: A Practical, All-in-One Guide
February 26th 2010Treating Child and Adolescent Mental Illness: A Practical, All-in-One Guide is just what its title promises: a clinically relevant, encompassing yet concise guide to child and adolescent mental health care. Dr Shatkin’s book serves as a useful primer for medical and mental health clinicians who do not specialize in the treatment of children and adolescents but who find themselves faced with the growing demand to provide mental health services to this sector. It is also a handy refresher for child and adolescent clinicians called on to treat disorders seen less often in their practices, as well as a reference for nonphysicians less familiar with psychopharmacological interventions.
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Offspring of Parents With Bipolar Disorder
February 8th 2010It is generally held that the offspring of parents with bipolar disorder (BD) are at risk for BD. The degree of risk is an important question for both clinicians and parents. A recent study of bipolar offspring by Birmaher and colleagues1 sheds light on this issue.
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Learning to Do Psychotherapy With Psychotic Patients: In Memory of Elvin Semrad, MD
February 5th 2010Dr Elvin Semrad was a much-loved psychiatrist and psychotherapy supervisor who had a profound influence on hundreds of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in the Boston area. One of his unique qualities was his ability to connect empathically with even the most psychotic patients. He supervised at Boston State Hospital and then for 4 decades at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) in Boston, where he conveyed his strong conviction that psychotic and other seriously men-tally ill patients could benefit from long-term psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy.
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Crime, the Hippocampus-and the Lingering Eye
February 5th 2010Let’s say you’re in a crowded bar when somebody suddenly shoots at a patron. You clearly see a man carrying a firearm, but all hell breaks loose as you and everybody else scramble for the exits. In the terrifying seconds following the crime, you lose track of who discharged the firearm: it could have been 1 of 3 suspects. Afterward, the police interview you, but it is hopeless. Even bringing in the suspects for a lineup isn’t going to help you recall. There will be no “Perry Mason” moments, when the perpetrator breaks down under the weight of guilt and confesses to the crime. How can the authorities make an arrest?
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CAUTION! Who Should Be the DSM-5 Diagnostician?
February 4th 2010“The proper use of these criteria requires specialized clinical training that provides both a body of knowledge and clinical skills.” How many of us psychiatrists recognize this statement? Or, is it like the fine print that we often gloss over in our everyday contracts and hope it doesn’t cause us trouble at some later time?
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Two Rooms a Physician Should Never Enter
January 27th 2010There are 2 rooms a physician should never enter, or even go near: the executioner’s chamber and the interrogator’s cell. I’m speaking figuratively, but I have very concrete circumstances in mind. Indeed, in recent years, psychiatrists have been drawn into controversies related to both these “rooms”-one involving the physician’s role in capital punishment cases; the other, in cases related to the interrogation of suspected terrorists.
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Haiti Earthquake: Mental Health Needs Are Emerging
January 20th 2010In the face of 200,000 or more dead and millions injured or homeless in Haiti following the January 12 earthquake, mental health and medical organizations, along with US government agencies, are offering aid both to those suffering and to those helping.
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Extending Mental Health Coverage: What the House and Senate Have in Mind
January 13th 2010There are very few, if any, direct mental health provisions in the congressional health care legislation that has passed the House and is now awaiting Senate approval. The Senate bill-the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590)-debated on the floor in December is similar in some respects to the Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962), which the House passed by an extremely thin, Democrat-heavy vote of 220-215 on November 7, 2009. Both bills appear to extend mental health parity to individual and group policies sold within new health insurance Exchanges. They would also expand Medicaid, begin funding medical home demonstrations, and ban insurance companies from denying policies based on an applicant’s preexisting condition.
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The Past, Present, and Future of Medical Marijuana in the United States
January 7th 2010On October 19, 2009, the Office of the Deputy US Attorney General issued a memorandum, “Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana.”1 The memo announced a federal policy to abstain from investigating or prosecuting “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The memo made clear, however, that it did not “legalize marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law.” Rather, it was “intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion.”
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Addictions Conference Assesses Treatments
December 30th 2009The empirical basis for the effectiveness of 12-step recovery and the psychotherapeutic benefits of opioid agonist maintenance were among the topics of several symposia with introspective views of time-tested treatments at the 40th Annual Medical-Scientific Conference of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) in New Orleans.
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Violence Risk Assessment in Everyday Psychiatric Practice
December 14th 2009Hy Bloom provided an expert psychiatric report in a multiple murder case in which the accused, who had schizophrenia and depression, had killed his wife and 2 children. Before the murders, the accused had been seeing a psychiatrist and family physician for treatment of the mental disorders.
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The Cellular and Molecular Substrates of Anorexia Nervosa, Part 2
December 7th 2009I think I am going to talk about the neurobiology of happiness in my next column. The reason has to do with the nature of our 2-month journey into the biology of eating disorders-a subject that, considering the dearth of explanatory data, is tough to write about. It’s also a bit depressing, considering how difficult it can be to treat. This is the second installment in a 2-part series that focuses on the neurobiology of restricting-type anorexia nervosa (AN).
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Obesity and Psychiatric Disorders
December 5th 2009Obesity has emerged as a significant threat to public health throughout the developed world. The World Health Organization defines overweight as a body mass index of 25.0 to 29.9 kg/m2 and obesity as a BMI of 30.0 kg/m2 or greater.1 Nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese according to these criteria.2 Numerous health problems, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and cancer, are associated with obesity. In addition, overweight and obese persons are more likely than their normal-weight peers to have a variety of psychiatric disorders.
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