Comorbidity

Patients with anxiety disorders who self-medicate with alcohol or drugs may be increasing their risk for developing incident substance use disorders, according to a study presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s recent annual meeting.

I would recommend it for medical students who have been thrust into the role of primary decision maker for their patients, and clinicians who would appreciate a pocket supervisor to help them make treatment decisions.

Anyone working in the mental health field will recognize that in patients with extreme irritability, explosive behavior, or quick mood changes, bipolar disorder (BD) is often unquestionably diagnosed.

The evidence-based approach to bipolar depression symptoms includes treatment with lithium, conventional unimodal antidepressants, lamotrigine, or divalproex.

The NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project raises many questions about DSM-5 and future DSMs.

Mixed states constitute a wondrously variegated universe of psychopathology. These states are characterized by the intrusion of features characteristic of depression into states of hypomania or mania and the converse. Mixed states assume a myriad of forms that as a family may be among the most commonly encountered states of affective illness.

Writers of diagnostic criteria should consider their work and all its implications. What about adding a new disorder? What might that do to epidemiological capture? Depending on the characteristics of the diagnostic criteria set, many possibilities exist.

Dr McIntyre discusses bipolar disorder and several studies in medical comorbidity in general and more specifically neurological comorbidity.

The treatment of incest victims is often painful and difficult. With patience, the vast majority of those who have experienced incest can experience considerable improvement and enjoy an enhanced quality of life without succumbing to repeated victimization.

Do patients with the personality trait alexithymia have trouble understanding the written language? What percentage of patients with dementia have at least one psychiatric comorbidity? These and more in this quiz.

The doctor’s role is to go beyond the obvious and to detect subtle determinants. Good diagnosticians have been trained to look beneath the loud symptom and consider underlying factors.

The mental health implications of disasters on individuals and communities are enormous. Psychiatrists play a key role in helping to mitigate and lessen the traumatic burden and in fostering resiliency efforts.

For some patients with MDD, there are indeed “remembered gifts” that are appreciated on recovery from their depression. But this is not to say that MDD itself is “adaptive” during the course of the patient’s illness.

Which medications have typically been used as first-line treatment for acute mania? Is comorbidity the rule or the exception in patients with bipolar disorder? These questions and more in this week's quiz.

Autism is demanding increased attention by professional and lay audiences; prevalence seems to be increasing. There are differing opinions about whether the increase is due to greater recognition and reporting, diagnostic expansion and substitution, or increasing acceptability.

Clearly, we all share the goals of respecting-not “medicalizing”-ordinary grief; as well as recognizing and treating clinically significant depression. We differ with Dr Frances in how to achieve these goals, while remaining faithful to the best available scientific data.

Do you know the comorbidity rates for OCD in the schizophrenia population? Does early onset schizophrenia have any effect on disease severity? These questions and more from this week's quiz.

Patients on average spent between 1 and 8 hours per day preoccupied with negative thoughts about their perceived [mal]odor.

The goal of palliative care is to prevent and relieve suffering and to improve quality of life for people facing a serious, complex illness.

Houston, we have a problem. There is a critical shortage of psychiatrists. And the problem is not in Houston alone-it includes the entire state of Texas, and every other state in the union (Mid-town Manhattan, Boston’s Beacon Hill, and Sacramento Street in San Francisco might be exceptions).

As early as the 1970s, researchers and practitioners became increasingly aware of the necessity for services that would address the varied needs and treatment implications for consumers with the co-occurring disorders of substance abuse and mental illness. High percentages of consumers in substance abuse treatment centers were identified with mental illness disorders, and consumers admitted to psychiatric facilities often were identified as having additional substance use disorders.

When I was an undergraduate studying molecular biology in the early 1990s when the Human Genome Project had just begun, my required coursework included several lectures on the ethical implications of sequencing, understanding, and ultimately being able to manipulate the “code of life.”

As a psychiatrist who has lymphoma, I have developed a deep understanding of the ways in which our training can help us help patients who find themselves forced to deal with the complicated emotional aspects that accompany various forms of cancer. I hope these insights will be useful to psychiatrists as they wrestle with the problems that plague their patients who are coping with cancer.

In addition to their use in the management of epilepsy, anticonvulsants are indicated for management of bipolar disorder, mania, neuralgia, migraine, and neuropathic pain.

The recently posted draft of DSM5 makes a seemingly small suggestion that would profoundly affect how grief is handled by psychiatry.