Psychotherapy

We need to join forces with our natural allies: the patients we treat and their families, as well as government, community, and business leaders, to make addressing the impact of violence and abuse one of our highest public health priorities.

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.

“Schizophrenia” is a name, not a disease. You are about to read the life story of a remarkable man who describes how he overcame poverty, orphanhood, and schizophrenia to become an author, an LCSW, a leader in the mental health advocacy movement, and an inspiration for many others.

Clinicians will likely encounter increasing numbers of older adults with late-life depression. Advances in our understanding of the neurobiology can help inform diagnosis and prognosis.

Advances in psychiatric research, spanning the entire spectrum of biological, psychological, and social aspects of mental processes and functions, have transformed the field of psychiatry. More in this inaugural piece by Psychiatric Times' Editor in Chief.

Why do patients with eating disorders resist treatment? How can the clinician address resistance?

A significant number of patients have some degree of personality pathology that can interfere with treatment, whether they receive medication or some form of psychotherapy. But how can clinicians develop a strong therapeutic alliance with patients who have personality disorders? An expert explains.

This exchange follows what began with Dr Richard Noll’s article, “Speak, Memory” and the “repressed recovered memory/multiple personality disorder” iatrogenic epidemic of the late 1980s and 1990s.

Painting and writing are ways in which this clinician expresses herself and relaxes after a hard day's work with patients.

What is your first impression of this image and why?

In psychiatry, we do not complete physical exams; much of our diagnosis is born out of our observations, interviews, and conversations. Other medical fields, particularly surgery, require manual, technical, and motor skills. In this manner, psychiatry is unique. More in this commentary.

To some extent, humiliation is part and parcel of the human experience. Some make the case that minor experiences can be psychologically beneficial. The important challenge for mental health professionals to help patients understand and reduce humiliation.

In addition to the approval of novel medications for alcohol use disorders, the past several years have been marked by an emphasis on development, standardization, and dissemination of new behavioral therapies, including computer-based interventions.

How the Repressed-Recovered Memory–Multiple Personality Disorder iatrogenic epidemic-surely one of the most tragic chapters in the history of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy-ended, and how psychotherapy patients came to be protected by informed consent.

A discussion of computerized cognitive training programs with the most independent supportive research that demonstrates a previously unrecognized degree of neuroplasticity, or cognitive flexibility, in the brain.

What's your first impression of this Rorschach-type image? Is there a place for Rorschach measures in assessing psychotic functioning?

We do not have to set time aside to do something that helps validate our experience, while simultaneously coping with it. The lesson expressed in this psychiatry resident's poem.

Why do so many die as a consequence of addiction? Sadly-and in some cases disastrously-affected individuals are never offered alternative approaches after one option fails. More in this commentary.

Many psychotherapies attempt to enhance patients’ problem-solving capacities, interpretation of images, and regulation of affective states. What areas in the brain play a role in these functions?

What is your first impression of this ink blot?

In the process of both psychotherapy and sculpture, this psychiatrist discovered there is potential for an exciting and rewarding life. Here, a representative piece from his collection.

When a full-time writer's husband was diagnosed with cancer, she found writing poetry helped her cope. She guessed that others would, like her, find their experiences with cancer best expressed through poetry. So began The Cancer Poetry Project.

In the 1980s, thousands of patients insisted they were recovering childhood memories of physical and sexual abuse during Satanic cult rituals. Here: a look back at the moral panic.

Notwithstanding sparse treatment data, recent efforts are beginning to provide clinicians with some clear treatment guidelines for medically unstable adolescents with anorexia nervosa.

Child-parent psychotherapy has been shown to be an effective treatment in helping caregivers and their children when they have experienced significant life trauma, often domestic violence. More in this podcast.