Technology & Psychiatry

Exploring technologies in psychiatry, including topics such as computing, security, and social media.

In our survey, we found videophones a surprisingly understudied and underutilized tool in spite of the fact that they are easy to use and do not require any technical support.

A report of dropoffs of elderly individuals at hospitals, elderly persons being reported for socially inappropriate behavior, and an increase in 911 calls concerning elderly relatives with dementia attacking family members and caregivers.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants rural hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) to take certain new steps to ensure that the private-office psychiatrists they connect to in big cities for telemedicine services are qualified for that purpose.

Pediatrician Sandy L. Chung on getting schooled in the business of medicine during her first year of practice.

Embracing part-time and work-at-home schedules to help fit the right medical practice employee pieces into place.

Like millions of Americans, I’ve joined Facebook. I really enjoy it because it conveniently lets me stay in touch with my friends. I don’t tell my patients that I have a Facebook profile, but many patients tell me about their Facebook activities during therapy. How should I respond if a patient to “friend” me?

Information transmission, such as blogs, RSS feeds, and podcasts, have emerged as common forms of communication. The exponential growth of medical knowledge and the increasingly rapid pace of scientific discovery have made it nearly impossible for the print medium to keep abreast of new developments.

Telemedicine-the use of electronic technologies to deliver medical care at a distance-continues to gain popularity and widespread use in all medical specialties, including psychiatry. However, many residents enter their training without any clinical experience in telemedicine in general or its applications in psychiatry.

Alarmed by the rising suicide rate among soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and “wanting to help,” Matthew “Matt” Houseal, MD, a psychiatrist with the Texas Panhandle Mental Health Mental Retardation Center (TPMHMR), reenlisted as an Army Reservist and volunteered to serve in Iraq.

Psychiatry is changing so rapidly that it seems impossible to predict 1 year ahead, let alone 10 years. In 1967, when my psychiatry training ended, the community psychiatry movement had just begun, DSM-II was in the works, and the biological revolution was still around the corner.

Compared with other ethnic groups, Asian Americans underuse mental health services, resulting in delayed treatment and higher attrition rates. A report by the surgeon general states that the underutilization is because of the shortage of bilingual services, the low percentage of health care insurance coverage, and the Asian American tradition of using mental health treatment only as a last resort.

Telepsychiatry often involves the working together of clinicians, patients, and organizations that are both geographically and culturally distinct. Thus, culturally appropriate care is an important component of telepsychiatry.

The need for better tools, as well as better use of existing tools, to measure treatment response in clinical trials was a principle focus of the 46th annual NIMH-sponsored NCDEU (New Clinical Drug Evaluation Unit) meeting, held June 12-15 in Boca Raton, Fla. Improved clinical research techniques are needed to better separate treatment effect from placebo response, to distinguish between active comparators, and to facilitate development of novel treatments, according to several presenters at the conference.

Telepsychiatry has been hailed as the future of psychiatry. Proponents have claimed that it can reduce costs and allow access to difficult-to-reach patients. What are the promises and pitfalls of this new technology?

Given that passion, opinion, opportunism and inertia have shaped much of managed care's evolution, there is an increasing need for the systematic gathering and rational application of facts. Outcome evaluations and insights into what facilitates and what impedes efficient and effective care are now avidly sought, not only for improving care delivery and treatment effectiveness but also for regulatory functions and commercial promotion.

In more than two dozen programs throughout the United States, telepsychiatry is ushering in a new way of bringing mental health services to thousands of individuals who, in the past, may have gone without. More often than not, however, they are pilot projects or grant-supported endeavors, meaning that these prototypes of the psychiatrist's office of the future have yet to prove themselves in the medical marketplace.