April 6th 2024
From a groundbreaking FDA approval to the hidden toll of COVID-19, here are highlights from the week in Psychiatric Times.
Clinical Consultations™: Considerations for Customizing Care Plans for Patients with Parkinson Disease Psychosis
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Advances In™ Schizophrenia: Expanding the Therapeutic Landscape
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Expert Illustrations & Commentaries™: Visualizing New Therapeutic Targets in Schizophrenia
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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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Medical Crossfire®: Understanding the Advances in Bipolar Disease Treatment—A Comprehensive Look at Treatment Selection Strategies
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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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'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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Real Psychiatry 2025
January 2025 - Exact Date TBA
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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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I have a neuromuscular disorder. This problem presented itself at birth, and I took much longer than other children to crawl, walk, and reach other physical developmental milestones. My sister is also affected, and although we have had extensive workups twice, the diagnosis is unclear. I had physical therapy up until my early teens, at which point I could do everything I needed to do in day-to-day life.
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Eli Lilly and Company pleaded guilty on January 30 to one misdemeanor violation of misbranding Zyprexa (olanzapine) by promoting it for dementia. However, a question raised by bloggers and others remains: did the drug benefit the elderly despite the fact it was not approved by the FDA for such purposes?
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“What Do You Mean, I Don’t Have Schizophrenia?”
February 2nd 2009My first job after residency involved working at a large Veterans Affairs hospital in an outpatient dual diagnosis treatment program that focused on the comorbidity of schizophrenia and cocaine dependence. Having recently completed a chief resident position at the same hospital’s inpatient unit that focused on schizophrenia without substance abuse, I was struck by how “unschizophrenic” my new patients were. They were organized and social. Their psychotic symptoms were usually limited to claims of “hearing voices,” for which insight was intact and pharmacotherapy was readily requested.
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Understanding and Managing Adolescent Disruptive Behavior
February 1st 2009The words attributed to Socrates resonate with the perspectives of many contemporary parents and clinicians.1 The endurance of the concern suggests something fundamental about the psychopathology of deviant, disruptive behavior of youth. Yet clinicians struggle to understand its origins, to help parents control their children, and to help the children control themselves. Clinically, this manifests in failed pharmacological treatments, incompleted courses of individual therapy, problems in engaging families in treatment, and controversies over which therapy is most effective.
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Because numerous diseases- infectious, endocrinological, metabolic, and neurological, as well as connective-tissue disease-can induce psychiatric and/or behavioral symptoms, clinicians need to distinguish these neuropsychiatric masquerades from primary psychiatric disorders, warned José Maldonado, MD, the director of Stanford University’s Psychosomatic Medicine Service.
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FDA Dictates Suicide Ideation Warning for Antiepileptics Used for Bipolar Disorder
February 1st 2009The FDA is forcing manufacturers of all antiepileptic drugs to include new warnings of possible suicide ideation in the prescribing information and also to prepare a new Medication Guide to be distributed by pharmacies to consumers. In addition, the companies will have to produce a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for each drug, which the FDA only requires for drugs with possible adverse effects it considers especially dangerous.
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Eli Lilly Settles Zyprexa Suit for $1.42 Billion
February 1st 2009In a resolution that has been expected since October 2008, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly pled guilty to a criminal charge and has agreed to pay $1.42 billion in a settlement for what federal prosecutors called the illegal promotion of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa (olanzapine). The drug was found to increase the risk of severe adverse effects, including sudden cardiac death, heart failure, and life-threatening infections, in certain populations.
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Enhancing Suicide Risk Assessment Through Evidence-Based Psychiatry
January 2nd 2009Suicide risk assessment is a core competency that all psychiatrists must have.1 A competent suicide assessment identifies modifiable and treatable protective factors that inform patient treatment and safety management.2 Psychiatrists, unlike other medical specialists, do not often experience patient deaths, except by suicide. Patient suicide is an occupational hazard. A clinical axiom holds that there are 2 kinds of psychiatrists: those who have had patients commit suicide-and those who will.
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Insanity Defense Evaluations - Basic Procedure and Best Practices
December 2nd 2008The insanity defense represents a prominent symbol of the relationship between law and psychiatry. Despite the fact that it is infrequently raised and seldom successful, the insanity defense is the subject of intense legal and public scrutiny.
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Update on Pharmacotherapy for ADHD
December 1st 2008Youths aged 6 to 16 years with any subtype of ADHD participated in the study. Comorbid bipolar disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, psychotic illness, anxiety disorders, and tic disorders were exclusionary criteria. Patients with other comorbid psychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder, were allowed to participate if ADHD was the primary diagnosis.
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Antipsychotics in Children: Experts Report Mixed Results
December 1st 2008Studies of antipsychotics in child prenpresented at the 48th Annual New Clinical Drugs Evaluation Unit (NCDEU) Meeting, conducted by the NIMH in Phoenix, May 27-30, provide some data where there have been relatively little on the increasing use of these agents.
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Nations Convene to Create Bipolar Consensus Statement
November 1st 2008Participants from around the globe recently came together to create an international consensus statement on bipolar disorder that was presented at the 21st Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP).
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Underdiagnosing and Overdiagnosing Psychiatric Comorbidities
October 1st 2008Diagnostic assessment of psychiatric disorders and their comorbidities is a challenge for many clinicians. In emergency settings, there is no time to conduct lengthy interviews, and collateralinformation is often unavailable.
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Doing Psychiatry Wrong Author Responds to Critique
September 2nd 2008In his review of my book, Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession (Psychiatric Times, June 2008, page 57), S.N. Ghaemi, MD, MPH, citing George Orwell, writes that I “seek to justify an opinion” rather than “seek the truth.” He claims that my “errors are numerous and fundamental.”
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Blood Tests for Bipolar I Disorder: Quite a Future Indeed
September 1st 2008In this column, I will discuss new progress on this Internet-boosted line of inquiry. I will begin with a few basics about differential gene expression and microarrays and will then move on to something that researchers are calling “convergent functional genomics.” As you shall see, the clever use of online databases both confirmed and extended the work done at the bench.
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The Age of Conflicts-of Interest
August 2nd 2008In our own time, many so-called conflicts of interest (COI) boil down to temptation, as James DuBois,3 professor and department chair of health care ethics at Saint Louis University, notes in his excellent chapter on this subject. A physician-researcher is tempted to slant the results of his or her study in order to maintain funding from a medical technology company.
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From Prevention to Preemption: A Paradigm Shift in Psychiatry
August 2nd 2008Universal prevention has been a focus of psychiatric research for the past 4 decades. Using a public health approach, research has shown that mitigating major risk factors, such as poverty and early life stress, and promoting protective factors can improve behavioral outcomes.
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Conflicts Grow Over Conflicts-of-Interest Policies and Practices
August 2nd 2008Debates over conflicts of interest (COIs) in medical research and practice are intensifying with recent proposals to ban industry funding of medical education, to better “manage” industry-physician relationships, and to mandate public disclosure of industry payments to physicians and medical institutions. Caught in the cross fire are prominent psychiatrists accused of underreporting payments received from pharmaceutical companies.
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Polypharmacy to Optimize Depression Outcomes
August 2nd 2008Polypharmacy is used increasingly in the treatment of depression.1 Although it can be beneficial-and at times may even be unavoidable-it can also be overused, resulting in drug-drug interactions, accumulation of adverse effects, reduced treatment adherence, and unnecessary increases in the cost of health care.2 This article describes current trends in psychiatric polypharmacy in the treatment of depression along with ways to use polypharmacy to optimize treatment outcomes.
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