Psychosomatics

Despite advances in clinical care for patients with cancer, distress and depression continue to haunt patients. These fast facts will help you better understand and care for patients with cancer.

Distress and depression are associated with adverse outcomes in patients with cancer, including reduced quality of life, longer rehabilitation time, poor adherence to treatment, and worse survival.

For the millions of patients whose pain is being treated with opioids, mind-body interventions are proving to be important considerations to ease suffering.

How do you determine whether pain is present and its severity as well as how it responds to treatment in patients who are cognitively impaired? Some answers to these questions.

How can clinicians determine the presence of pain in cognitively impaired patients? And how do you know the medication is working if your patient can’t tell you?

The mixed bag of emotions described here should be familiar to any clinician, especially to a psychiatrist.

Three studies highlight how important it is that when physicians prescribe opioids there can be significant and even potentially fatal consequences for the family members of those for whom they are being prescribed.

In this Special Report we offer articles that address the interplay of psychiatric and infectious disease.

Ongoing research has identified multiple infectious diseases that may play a role in the development of neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly in people predisposed to genetic and environmental factors.

Nearly all antibiotic agents have been associated with CNS effects. Although uncommon, these events can be severe.

Judgements and settlements are starting in Oklahoma against various pharmaceutical companies for their alleged roles in that state’s opioid crisis. Who would be the beneficiaries of these funds?

The association between psychiatric disorders, most notably depression and anxiety, and pain is well established. However, mental health professionals, and especially psychiatrists, are still often excluded from treating patients with pain.

Medical professionals don’t want to prescribe too many pain killers, which may contribute to the epidemic of opioid misuse, yet they don’t want patients to needlessly suffer.

Test your knowledge on traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and their resultant effects on cognitive function and mental health.

While some psychiatrists may doubt the connection between climate disruption and psychiatric disorders, the evidence is growing stronger every day.

Although it is still widely believed that the management of chronic pain usually requires medications or physical interventions, a growing body of research has demonstrated the efficacy of psychological therapeutic modalities.

Research published more than 25 years ago was already reporting problems with opioid analgesics.

A review of systemic medications for dermatologic diseases describes a wide range of adverse events, which range from mild and reversible to permanent and potentially fatal.

Take this quiz on one of the most controversial diagnoses in pain management.

Which gene is not associated with risk for the development of TD? What is the prevalence of TD in patients with schizophrenia treated with antipsychotics? Those questions and more in this quiz.

Because over half of persons with HIV infection have a lifetime history of depression or bipolar disorder, psychiatrists are uniquely positioned to provide both preventive and therapeutic interventions to vulnerable patients.

Could right-to-die laws result in people requesting death, even in the face of of potentially treatable health problems?

A report on substance abuse and HIV research around the world.

Whether marijuana use should be legalized is a subject worthy for debate. It is unfair, however, for patients who have real health problems to be misled into believing that there is a magical cure.

Renal failure is not an uncommon disorder either in the general public or in patients with psychiatric disorders, but accompanying depression, anxiety, and loss must be attended to during such an illness.

Psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory, autoimmune skin disorder, is associated with both genetic and environmental factors. It has important treatment implications for patients who have psychiatric disorders.

There are probably few health care professionals who are unaware of the concerns about the apparent overprescription of opioids. However, we have had only limited information on how good a job physicians may actually be doing in prescribing these medications.

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

Migraine, particularly chronic migraine, as well as other chronic headaches, have high rates of comorbidity with mood and anxiety disorders.