What happens when a chemically dependent patient is in urgent need of timely medical and/or surgical interventions? According to one psychiatrist, logic and humility are two core principles essential to providing these patients with the care they deserve.
Given the recent anthrax scares, it is important for psychiatrists to be on the alert. However, this should be balanced with the realization that life must continue as normal as possible.
There is currently great controversy over the issue of obsessive-compulsive behaviors in schizophrenia. Are patients who display these behaviors suffering from a separate subtype of schizophrenia?
The introduction of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) into psychiatric nosology has brought about a great deal of insight as well as controversy. Have complex clinical manifestations of PTSD created a need for further clarification of the disorder?
In the glossary of our book The Culture-Bound Syndromes, Charles C. Hughes, Ph.D., listed almost 200 folk illnesses that have, at one time or another, been considered culture-bound syndromes (Simons and Hughes, 1986). Many have wonderfully exotic and evocative names: Arctic hysteria, amok, brain fag, windigo.
Several case examples of how psychiatrists can be a valuable asset in a workplace environment are given. What are the similarities and differences between this situation and clinical practice?
What is abandonment? Who is responsible? Where is the line drawn between no liability to treat and abandonment? Read how psychiatrists can protect themselves from the legal ramifications of abandonment.
When treating alcohol-dependent patients, clinicians may be well advised to integrate disulfiram into the treatment plan. Who are good candidates, and who are not? How can you enlist the aid of family members and friends to ensure compliance?
The threat of a bioterrorist attack is very real and should be of real concern to those in the health care field. While federal government budgets have been requested to address the mental health aftermath of such attacks, they have been repeatedly denied. Psychiatrists will be needed to help treat panic and hysteria among populationsthose who are affected, those who are not but believe they are and those who are left to pick up the pieces.
Since adolescent patients often retreat into fantasy worlds of their own making, they can be difficult to treat. Psychotherapists can create a common fantasy world for successful group therapy with the use of popular fiction books, television series and movies.
After the recent decade of the brain and in the present era of evidence-based practice, psychoanalytic treatment of personality disorder is being challenged.
Carveout programs for behavioral health care are becoming more common. Who do they benefit3/4the patient, the doctor or the insurance company?
Psychiatrists can play a vital role in determining whether or not a patient will be a good candidate for an organ transplant. Using a case vignette, Dr. Garton explains how she helps a transplant team make the best possible decision.
In this overview of research into the biopsychosocial changes caused by traumatic events, Dr. Novac discusses psychopathology, brain development and the effect a traumatic event can have on the victim's family-even long after the event occurred.
Methods for detecting possible abuse and how to help victims (even if they are unable to help themselves or leave their abuser).
Most studies have found clear gender differences in the prevalence of depressive disorders. Typically, studies report that women have a prevalence rate for depression up to twice that of men (Bebbington, 1996; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987).
Psychiatrist Bennet B. Braun, who claims his career was destroyed when his APA liability insurance provider settled a malpractice suit against his wishes, has now sued the APA, holding them liable for his losses.
Dementia produces significant dependency and contributes to costly long-term care; depression contributes to high rates of suicide; and both contribute to lower quality of life and higher disability among older patients. Therefore, researchers are eager to find new ways of preventing and treating these conditions. Studies currently underway include evaluating the role of health specialists in treating depressed patients, looking at bereavement and its effects on patients, and the role of estrogen, vitamin E, NSAIDs and COX-2 inhibitors in preventing and treating Alzheimer's disease.
In addition to reports on psychotherapeutic agents now available and anticipated in the United States, the presentations at the 22nd annual Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum (CINP) Congress, held from July 8 to 13, in Brussels, provided a unique view of varied investigational compounds and approaches outside our country.
In a stunning move made to avoid a trial, an October 1997 settlement totaling $10.75 million ended one of the most controversial and widely publicized lawsuits ever brought against a psychiatrist by a former patient who later retracted memories of recovered abuse. Patty Burgus and other family members had sued Bennett G. Braun, M.D., an internationally renowned expert in the field of dissociative identity disorder, and the prestigious Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, among others. The suit claimed that bizarre recollections of satanic ritual abuse and other trauma, which were recovered during the course of psychiatric treatment, were false and the result of negligent care over a six-year period.
The recovered memory debate has been the most acrimonious, vicious and hurtful internal controversy in the history of modern psychiatry. From its very beginning in the late 1980s, it has been more an "ad hominem" war, appealing to feelings and prejudices, rather than a matter of reasoned professional disagreement.
The debate over the accuracy of memories of childhood sex abuse that are recovered decades later, usually during the course of therapy, has led to the polarization of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. There are those who claim that -recovered memories are, in the main, accurate, and there are others who believe that most, if not all, recovered memories are false.
By 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.
Children 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).
Present-day psychiatry has fallen into crisis because of the severe limitations of its conception of the person and, as a result, its conception of the patient. It objectifies the patient in a number of ways. Because of this reductionism, psychiatry fails to distinguish between healthy and pathological features of human life. It fails to consider adequately the psychological and social factors that cause and maintain each patient's problems.
