Trauma And Violence

This week's news stories: intimate partner violence, gun control and mental illness, eating disorders, and more.

The news media has always been in the business of searching for "the right sort of madness" to capture the public's imagination.

Gun owners and non-gun-owners alike support gun control policies that account for mental illness, according to a study published in a recent issue of NEJM.

Perceived relationship power helps to explain the association between intimate partner violence and mental health issues.

Newtown’s loss has finally forced us to look more deeply at violence and the treatment of mental health within our society.

If we, as a people, continue to sacrifice genuine security for a false sense of freedom, we shall find ourselves in a nation neither secure nor free.

"You turn on the television, and violence is there. You go to a movie, and violence is there."

With the recent tragedy in Colorado and the high likelihood that questions about psychiatry will be inextricably tied into it, guidance for practicing psychiatrists can be gleaned from this coincidence.

The shooting in Colorado is obviously a tragedy for the victims and their families which will never be forgotten by those close to anyone touched by this event. It will cause painful grieving among the families and friends of those who lost their lives.

Psychiatry has no way to predict mass murder and no way to prevent it. There is no indication that psychiatry can change the statistics of violence or the proclivity of the violent.

Apathy is our enemy. Pain, paradoxically, is our ally because it is one of the most powerful fuels we have to impel us to a different and better tomorrow.

Propranolol therapy at a relatively low dose can cause anger and rage behaviors to subside in some patients. This case describes a man with Down syndrome who, after an accident, sustained minor brain trauma. Subsequently, he regressed to a rage state he had experienced when he was younger.

Few circumstances confront the psychiatrist with more complex, painful, and potentially problematic clinical dilemmas and challenges than the treatment of the incest victim. Here are some factors that may lead to memory of a trauma becoming inaccessible or withheld by a patient.

The Holocaust is well known and has been well researched. The purpose of this study was to evaluate persons 65 years after the Holocaust who remained in Poland and discovered the “secret” of their Jewish ancestry, despite not being raised as Jews.

Several studies have been undertaken to test the efficacy of drugs in the management of aggression and hostility in patients with schizophrenia and other mood disorders.

Agitation can be displayed in patients as loud, disruptive, hostile, sarcastic, threatening, hyperactive, and/or combative. Here are tips on managing agitated patients.

The first half of the 20th century saw 2 world wars, indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilians, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the Holocaust-all of which created intense trauma for soldiers and civilians.Yet it was not until the American intervention in a post-colonial civil war in Southeast Asia that the psychiatric community in the 1970s formally described what we now call PTSD.

The grief that the Shoah brought to its victims would make its reappearance even at happy times long afterwards.

A history of trauma is most uniquely related to which psychiatric disorder? Which medical comorbidities are associated with an increased risk of suicide in older adults? These questions and more.

When counseling trauma victims and patients with PTSD, do you ask them to retell the trauma or do you think this prolongs it?

Here, John Femia, a former police officer and senior investigator, describes his experience as a first responder to scenes of violence and stalking. He offers a profile of those who stalk others; describes different types of stalkers; and focuses in on cyberstalking-all with the mental health clinician in mind.

Randi K. Bregman, LMSW, is the Executive Director of Vera House, Inc. (http://www.verahouse.org/). In this video, she talks about the impact of trauma and violence as defining forces in the lives of those who have been abused.

This article, based on a comprehensive review by Weathers and associates, provides a selective and brief summary of trauma and PTSD assessments in adults.

Rape is always a heinous, ugly, violent, and cruel crime. But the violence and cruelty that are part of all rapes should not be confused with the specifically motivated violence and cruelty that distinguish sexual sadism...

In the second in his series of podcasts, Dr Phillip Resnick answers questions psychiatrists often ask about assessing the risk of violence.