Cultural Psychiatry

The funding of mental illness services in the US is more thought-disordered than any of the thought-disordered patients it is meant to serve.

I had planned to make this month’s column about the best 10 advances in psychiatry during 2014. While some things changed for the better for our patients and their families-and our profession-I’ve been having a hard time with my list.

How do we catch up with other developed countries to create a compassionate, cost-effective mental health system? Psychiatric Times posed this question to some of the leading experts in the field.

In this commentary, the author states, “We must get back to treating the whole person, not just his brain circuits. The brain is involved in all we do and what we are, but it is also itself influenced by our psychology and social context.” Care to weigh in?

This article provides a practical framework that can guide consultation-liaison psychiatrists through solving problems of capacity and informed consent.

The case for training residents to conduct evaluations of impairments in patients with chronic mental health issues.

This volume is written from an emerging edge of basic science and will reward a clinical readership.

Psychiatrists should be playing a key role in end-of-life decisions as well as, not coincidentally, in pain management.

There are probably many social, economic, and familial forces at work in generating the trend toward public incivility, and it would be silly to blame the Internet for the riot in Keene.

After years of working with troubled individuals claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, Harvard University Professor John Mack published a book. What made Mack and the book so controversial was the fact that he had come to accept that his patients’ stories were an accurate description of real events.

For this psychiatrist, learning a section of the Talmud known as Megillah brought to light an important exchange that has implications in therapy and psychopharmacology, regardless of theoretical stance.

Everyone, in their own way, wants what's best for people with mental health challenges, but risks and benefits are interpreted through a personal lens.

Although 2 weeks of protected touring is hardly enough time to get a sense of Morocco, there was a familiar parallel to cross-cultural psychiatry. Let the patient tell you what they are about culturally, respect that particular point of view, relate to them as they wish, and support that with study.

What can we do to fix our broken mental health system? Psychiatric Times posed this question to some of the leading experts in the field.

Whether these psychiatrists helped or hindered societal events probably depends on one's political perspective.

In the US, suicide is a leading cause of death, ranking third among youths aged 15 to 24. Rates of suicide attempts and death are highest among US Pacific Island indigenous youths. Emergency departments play a key role in suicide prevention, especially in this and other minority populations.

The main character of Guardians of the Galaxy directly connects to psychiatry and comments on continuing controversies about patient care and health care delivery systems.

We in mental health care may be the last bastion of defense in the deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship. However, this role seems to be underplayed in the call for more integrated medicine of psychiatry with general medicine.

Some inflexible anti-psychiatrists are blind ideologues who see only the limits and harms of mental health treatment, not its necessity or any of its benefits. More in this commentary.

In this video, Dr Andrew Solomon talks about how psychiatrists and psychologists can help depressed or traumatized patients foster resilience, without trivializing their pain.

The legal benefits of marriage are clear and well-known. But what are the psychological benefits?

Clown faces and masks are obvious disguises, but we also disguise ourselves in everyday and therapeutic life, and often therapy has to work through these disguises to get to the core.

Leaders (and really that is all of us in one way or another) have the challenge of understanding and responding to future risk.

The manner in which a clinician enters the room and approaches and engages with an intercultural patient and family can either set off or relieve “culture shock.”

If you're up for a little ancient humor, you'll love this original translation of an ancient Babylonian text in which a physician is jilted on a fee, then is further embarrassed in his efforts to collect it.