Addiction & Substance Use

The editors of Pediatric Neuropsychiatry must have drawn on their experiences and the feedback they received on their first book, Textbook of Pediatric Neuropsychiatry (American Psychiatric Press, 1998), for this text.

Effective treatment of drug abuse and addiction in the criminal justice system saves the community money and reduces crime, the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reported in a recently released booklet, Principles of Drug Abuse Treatment for Criminal Justice Populations.

The increase in youth violence and aggression in the past 50 years has been called an "epidemic." This epidemic has had a tremendous impact on society. From an economic and public health perspective, primary prevention of youth violence is obviously desirable.

Typically, delirium worsens at night ("sundowning"), with lucid intervals often present in the morning. It is important to realize that delirium may appear before any abnormal laboratory values are detected and may persist after the resolution of these abnormalities.

If done properly, the assessment of alcohol and substance use disorders in the emergency department (ED) or psychiatric emergency service can be the first step toward recovery.

The degree to which season changes affect mood, energy, sleep, appetite, food preference, or desire to socialize with others has been called "seasonality." Identification of a seasonal pattern can only be made if both the patient and physician actively look for it.

In a presentation given at the midyear meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, Andres Kanner, MD cited studies from the literature showing that the rates of depression, anxiety, psychosis, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are significantly higher among persons with epilepsy than among the general population

Most physicians make at least some use of the placebo effect to enhance treatments, whether they realize it or not. This article examines the extent of the placebo effect in patients with psychiatric illness, and reviews what is known about how placebos work.

Alcohol is the drug of choice for adolescents, with cigarettes and marijuana being second and third. Contrary to widespread belief, alcohol dependence is most common in 18- to 20-year-olds, with progressively decreasing rates of alcohol dependence in older age groups.

Depressive disorders and symptoms are common in cancer patients (up to 58% have depressive symptoms and up to 38% have major depression), worsen over the course of cancer treatment, persist long after cancer therapy, recur with the recurrence of cancer, and significantly impact quality of life.

The longitudinal course of bipolar disorder (BD) is characterized by a low rate of recovery, a high rate of recurrence, and poor interepisodic functioning. There is a need to invoke a chronic disease management model (CDMM) when treating individuals with BD.

Complaints of persistent memory loss in otherwise well-functioning individuals after recovery from a psychiatric illness through electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are best viewed as a conversion reaction or a somatoform disorder. The Camelford experience is a model for the complaints of ECT's profound personal memory losses.

Sleep disorders are very common and are often underrecognized and underreported in children. If left untreated, these disorders can cause serious developmental and physiologic problems.

As Americans' use of personal electronic devices increases, so too, do the controversies surrounding these now seemingly indispensable tools.

Dolls and other toys, such as teddy bears, can alleviate agitation, reduce withdrawal, help overcome communication challenges, and generally improve the quality of life of patients with Alzheimer disease (AD).

Ampakines, agents that have been shown to enhance memory, appear to trigger endogenous brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a natural mechanism in the brain that could restore neuronal viability and synaptic plasticity through increased trophic support.

An unfavorable prognosis may be in store for patients who report severely disrupted sleep patterns accompanied by rapid eye movement (REM).

Your patient has pain and numbness that extends from the shoulder to the hand. You suspect a herniated cervical disk, but the MRI scan comes back normal. What else could the culprit be?

The Terri Schiavo story that was widely publicized in early 2005 was one in which clinical issues were at best misunderstood and at worst overshadowed by political posturing and media sensationalism.

Stress Neurobiology and Corticotropin-Releasing Factor

While some mental health services for adolescents allow self-referral, many require parental involvement. There is increasing evidence that working with the family and the child is important if only to increase compliance with medication and to tackle any comorbid difficulties.

Infant, or developmental, psychiatry is a subspecialty of child and adolescent psychiatry that focuses on the promotion of mental health in infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families through the consultation, assessment, and treatment of clinical problems.

Current treatments for autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are useful in some cases, but have little enduring impact. This had lead to many parents seeking nonconventional treatments that often border on quackery.

Noninvasive brain imaging methods are providing unprecedented views of the structural and functional development and aging of an individual's brain or state of brain pathology. These exciting new may provide novel information relevant to the enhancement of clinical practice.

Several forums at the May 2006 American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) addressed the issue of the gap between the number of investigational addiction treatment drugs and the few actually available on the market.