April 11th 2024
Take a look back at our recent coverage relating to our April content theme.
Obtaining Medical Research Grants
November 1st 1999The fiscal year (FY) 1999 budget for National Institutes of Health funding totals more than $15 billion. This figure reflects an increase of 15% over the FY 1998 budget and is $320 million less than President Clinton's requested budget for FY 2000 (Varmus, 1999). The Foundation Center reports the funding from U.S. grant-making foundations in 1998 as $15.4 billion from independent foundations, $2.37 billion from corporate foundations and $1.48 billion from community foundations (Foundation Center, 1999). Additional funds are available from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has a $3.95 billion budget request for FY 2000, up almost 6% from FY 1999 (NSF, 1999). With all of this available funding, how can medical clinicians and researchers increase their chances of obtaining a medical grant?
Read More
A Patient With Panic Disorder Abetted by a Dependent Personality
November 1st 1999By the time I interviewed Robyn in the emergency room, her panic attack had all but passed. But this 21-year-old woman was still shaken and tearful. This was her first panic attack, and she did not know what hit her. She thought she was having a heart attack. She had a tight feeling in her chest, she was hyperventilating. Her fingers and feet were numb and tingling. She experienced what she called a "closing in feeling." Robyn thought she was going to die.
Read More
Neurobehavioral Consequences of Sleep Dysfunction
October 1st 1999As chief of the division of sleep and chronobiology in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, David F. Dinges, Ph.D., focuses on ways sleep and the endogenous circadian pacemaker interact to control wakefulness and waking neurobehavioral functions such as physiological alertness, attention, cognitive performance, fatigue, mood, neuroendocrine profiles, immune responses and health. In an interview with Psychiatric Times, Dinges discussed neurobehavioral consequences of sleep loss, factors that impair sleeping, the pervasiveness of sleepiness and new ways to manage sleepiness.
Read More
Interventions Aim To Prevent Depression in High-Risk Children
September 1st 1999Children whose parents have been diagnosed with affective disorders are far more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness-especially affective disorder-than their peers whose parents do not have mood disorders (Beardslee, 1998; Burge and Hammen, 1991; Downey and Coyne, 1990).
Read More
More than 430 psychiatrists, research donors and others gathered in late October for the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD)'s awards dinner in New York City. The black-tie fundraising event was held in conjunction with the organization's 10th annual scientific symposium at which 15 selected NARSAD grantees presented their ongoing research over two days of sessions devoted to basic science, schizophrenia and depression.
Read More
Olanzapine Versus Risperidone Rematch
August 1st 1999One day after Eli Lilly and Company researchers reported finding olanzapine (Zyprexa) superior to risperidone (Risperdal) on some measures in a 28-week comparative study presented to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) meeting in 1996, Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc. issued a press statement critical of the methodology and results of the study. Janssen then announced it would undertake its own comparative trial. The results of this trial's initial eight-week acute treatment phase were presented at the European College of Neuro-psychopharmacology meeting held Oct. 31, 1998, through Nov. 4, 1998, in Paris. They indicate risperidone has an advantage for positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, and for anxiety/depression in patients with schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder.
Read More
How AA and Psychotherapy Can Work Together
July 1st 1999Until the last half of this century, there were few if any treatments that seemed consistently effective in responding to the clinical needs of individuals who were abusing or dependent upon alcohol. As a result, support or self-help groups emerged. Alcoholics Anonymous is an extraordinary example of these groups.
Read More
AMA Eliminates Department of Mental Health Abrupt Firing of Director Raises Questions, Concerns
May 1st 1999Only one month after the American Medical Association unveiled a major reorganization of its science and technology departments-one that included the dismantling of its department of mental health-the former director, psychiatrist Larry Goldman, M.D., was fired after he criticized the changes.
Read More
ACNP Focuses on Recent Treatment Advances
May 1st 1999Recent advances in the treatment of mental and addictive disorders, along with research findings in basic neuroscience, molecular genetics and molecular biology that contribute to the understanding of such disorders, were discussed at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology's 37th annual meeting in Puerto Rico. The following are brief reports from selected presentations.
Read More
Promising Medications for Axis I Disorders
May 1st 1999More than 80 medications are in development to treat mental illnesses, including 18 for depression, 15 for schizophrenia and 16 for anxiety disorders, according to the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (1998). Which ones will most likely come to market in the United States?
Read More
Schuckit Addresses State-of-the-Art Addiction Treatments
April 1st 1999Marc Schuckit, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, examined recent developments in the treatments for alcohol and drug dependence, and examined important changes in DSM-IV's classification of substance use disorder at the 11th Annual U.S. Psychiatric & Mental Health Congress.
Read More
Living Stories: Spiritual Awakenings in Recovery
April 1st 1999DeAndra's story: I came into the rooms and realized after a while that I had the attitudes and behaviors of an addict way before I ever picked up a drug. I remember growing up and being at my family's parties, [where] my aunts and uncles would give me and my brothers beer. There are pictures in our photo albums of us, all under 6 or 7, with cans of beer in our hands. At an early age I learned to manipulate to get what I wanted.
Read More
Commentary Alcoholism and Free Will
April 1st 1999Psychiatrists, like the rest of America, continue to have trouble with alcoholic and other addicted patients. We are comfortable when patients want to get better, tell us the truth and come to treatment of their own free will, but alcoholics often don't fit this profile. We respond angrily when patients manipulate us. We are surprised when their sincere desire for help evaporates after we suggest a plan that will bring about real change.
Read More
Behavioral Couples Therapy for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
April 1st 1999Nearly 25 years ago, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism hailed couple and family therapy as "one of the most outstanding current advances in the area of psychotherapy of alcoholism" and called for controlled studies to test these promising methods. Currently behavioral couples therapy (BCT) is the family therapy method with the strongest research support for its effectiveness in substance abuse.
Read More
Chavez Warns of Declining Mental Health Resources
February 1st 1999Warning of declining resources for mental health, Nelba Chavez, Ph.D., administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), said mental health must become a top priority in public policy, health care services and coverage, training of health care professionals and community education.
Read More
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse to Include Mental Health Data
December 1st 1998The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), the primary source of statistical information on Americans' use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, will be expanded in upcoming years to include substantial information on mental illness and state-level data on drug abuse, according to Nelba Chavez, Ph.D., administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Read More
The Value of Measuring Health Care Quality
December 1st 1998Consider the following scenario: You are contacted by the major health plan with which you contract and are told that your average length of inpatient stay is longer than their standard. You believe this is because your patients are more severely ill than average. How do you respond?
Read More
Dietary Fatty Acids Essential for Mental Health
December 1st 1998Insufficient intake of essential fatty acids (EFAs) may contribute to the pathogenesis of mental diseases, while their supplementation may relieve some symptoms, according to researchers who attended the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Workshop on Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids and Psychiatric Disorders held in Bethesda, Md., in September 1998.
Read More
Clinical Trials Indicate Value of Herbal Medicines
December 1st 1998This is the second of two articles regarding herbal medicines as discussed at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Toronto. Potential benefits and risks of kava, St. John's wort and hoasca were considered at the recent American Psychiatric Association's symposium on herbal medicine.
Read More
A New Screening Measure for Detecting 'Hidden' Domestic Violence
November 1st 1998Organ donation from brain-dead patients has become a psychiatric issue in Japanese transplant medicine. Brain death is recognized as human death only in the context of organ transplantation in Japan. Since many Japanese physicians deny that brain death constitutes the death of an individual, there is no solid, general consensus in Japan about what constitutes brain death.
Read More
A New Screening Measure for Detecting 'Hidden' Domestic Violence
November 1st 1998Only in recent years has the widening scope of domestic violence achieved such national prominence. Highly publicized cases like the Nicole Brown Simpson murder have brought the issue of domestic violence to worldwide attention. Overall rates of violence against women, including both lethal and nonlethal violence, are much higher.
Read More
10-Point Clock Test Screens for Cognitive Impairment in Clinic and Hospital Settings
October 12th 1998The obvious sometimes bears repeating: Sick people have trouble thinking. They may be suffering from a delirium, a dementia or a more subtle disturbance of cognition caused by fever, drugs, infection, inflammation, trauma, hypoxemia, metabolic derangement, hypotension, tumor, intracranial pathology, pain and so forth.
Read More
Atypical antipsychotic treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD) and augmentation therapy with olanzapine (Zyprexa) or estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) for patients with mood disorders were among the research questions addressed at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Toronto. Following are some brief reports of selected presentations.
Read More
Caring for the Physician in Couples Therapy
September 1st 1998Day in and day out, psychiatrists-especially those involved with couples therapy-counsel and treat patients experiencing relationship problems with their spouses or partners. But what about the psychiatrist having a similar problem in his or her own life? Who does a doctor turn to for guidance and insight regarding such intimate matters?
Read More
Dramatic Alcohol Treatment Results Seen with Naltrexone
September 1st 1998Results of a multicenter, open-label observational trial of DuPont Merck's REVIA (naltrexone) demonstrated that patients were able to decrease their alcohol consumption from 57 to four drinks per week when the medication was part of an overall treatment program.
Read More