psychiatry
ddobbs | November 25, 2008More wheels coming off the bus.
Research Center Tied to Drug Company - NYTimes.com:
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: November 24, 2008
When a Congressional investigation revealed in June that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a world-renowned child psychiatrist, had earned far more money from drug makers than he had reported to his university, he said that his interests were "solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study."
But e-mail messages and internal documents from Johnson & Johnson made public in a court filing reveal that Dr. Biederman pushed the company to…
j7uy5 | November 25, 2008This is from an interesting open-access article in Annals of
General Psychiatry. It describes two studies,
relating to two different catastrophic events. The authors
examine the differences in how various risk factors may contribute to
the development of PTSD in persons of each gender.
href="http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/7/1/24/abstract">Risk
factors predict post-traumatic stress disorder differently in men and
women
Dorte M. Christiansen,Ask Elklit
Annals of General Psychiatry 2008, 7:24
doi:10.1186/1744-859X-7-24
18 November 2008
Background
About twice…
j7uy5 | November 3, 2008
This is an image of a human brain. It is constructed using an
imaging method known as diffusion spectrum imaging.
The technique has been discussed at
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/07/hi_res_brain_topology_map.php">Neurophilosophy
and
href="http://anthropology.net/2008/07/01/diffusion-spectrum-imaging-used-to-map-the-structural-core-of-human-cerebral-cortex/">Anthropology.net;
both posts were based upon a paper in
href="http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060159">PLOS
Biology.
The image above is…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2008The Archives of General Psychiatry has an
open-access article about bipolar disorder in childhood (
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/65/10/1125">Child
Bipolar I Disorder). I started to write
about that. But then, as often happens, I stumbled upon
something else.
The LA Times has a consumer-oriented
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-bipolar11-2008oct11,0,5539685.story">article
about the journal article. It is one of those OK-level news
articles. One glaring error: the author cites the "Archives
of General Psychology," which is the…
j7uy5 | October 6, 2008This is a peculiar article:
href="http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/7/1/16/abstract">Costs
and effects of paliperidone extended release compared with alternative
oral antipsychotic agents in patients with schizophrenia in Greece: A
cost effectiveness study. It's a
open-access article in the Annals of General Psychiatry, dated 28
August, 2008. (Annals of General Psychiatry 2008, 7:16
doi:10.1186/1744-859X-7-16)
Background To compare the costs
and effects of paliperidone extended release (ER), a new pharmaceutical
treatment for the management of schizophrenia, with the…
j7uy5 | September 23, 2008Ever since the inception of the Global and Perpetual War on Terror,
there has been concern about the role of professionals with training in
psychology and psychiatry in the design, conduct, and interpretation of
torture programs.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) banned such participation in
May 2006. The American Medical Association (AMA) followed a
few weeks later.
These associations do not have any regulatory authority.
Nonetheless, their proclamations and highly influential.
Oddly, the American Psychological Association [the other APA,
call it AP'A, (p-prime)] did not follow…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2008The economic crisis is reported to be responsible for a recent increase
in calls for mental health services:
href="http://delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/BUSINESS/809200314">Economy
worries driving more people to seek help
By ROB WATERS and DAVID OLMOS
September 20, 2008
A tidal wave of anxiety is washing over America, from
Wall Street's concrete canyons to the lettuce fields of California,
propelled by the mortgage industry collapse, high gas prices, tight
credit and rising unemployment.
Operators of telephone help lines, insurers, hospital administrators…
j7uy5 | September 14, 2008One important concept in psychotherapy studies is the concept of
href="http://www.indiana.edu/%7Efamlygrf/units/ambiguous.html">ambiguous
loss. This is a loss that is, in some
way, less than definitive. If you are at the hospital
visiting an ill beloved family member, and see the death, it is
perfectly clear that a specific loved one has in fact died.
If you are mature enough to grasp the permanence of the loss,
is it unambiguous.
Many losses, however, are ambiguous. Examples include
infertility, when the loss is a loss of opportunity, as opposed to the
loss of a specific person; a…
neurophilosophy | September 11, 2008Hallucinations are often associated with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or with LSD and related drugs. Hearing voices is a characteristic symptom which is reported by about 70% of schizophrenic patients, as well as by some 15% of patients with mood disorders such as depression; and those under the influence of LSD often experience extreme spatial distortions and surreal visions.
Most common are auditory and visual hallucinations, but the other senses can also produce mirages. Temporal lobe epilepsy or brain injury can lead to phantosmia, or olfactory hallucinations, during…
j7uy5 | September 3, 2008
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_brain_stimulation"
rel="tag">Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) currently
is under investigation for treatment of sever, treatment-resistant
depression (TRD). It is not really news. I
href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2005/03/implantable-devices-for-major.html">wrote
about it in 2005. The background information in the
earlier post still is pertinent, so I won't…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2008There have been many collections and compendia of artistic works by
persons with psychiatric illness. They are interesting.
In fact, it was a chance encounter with such a book that
first got me interested in psychology.
Thre is a story there, which I won't tell here, other than to say that
it is a good argument for supporting public libraries. Bored
teenagers in a new town are better off in a library than in other
places they might end up.
Anyway, now I encounter the art-psychiatry connection again, but with a
twist. Rather that art produced by the patient, it is art
produced by a…
j7uy5 | August 5, 2008I chose three articles from this month's edition of Archives
of General Psychiatry, upon which to comment. For
those not familiar with it, Arch Gen Psychiatry is
an AMA journal, like JAMA, but for psychiatrists. It's an
influential journal.
1.
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/65/8/870">Selecting
Among Second-Step Antidepressant Medication Monotherapies.
This is their one open-access article, so I will mention it
first. A little background: We've known for a long time that
all antidepressants work for some people, but nothing works for
everyone. A lot of effort…
j7uy5 | July 29, 2008This is a nice little case report from the European Journal
of Psychiatry. The translation is a little rough,
but the information is good.
href="http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0213-61632007000400006&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en">
href="http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0213-61632007000400006&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en">Neuroleptic
malignant syndrome: Possible relationship between Neuroleptic Treatment
And Smoking Cessation
Mª José MartÃn Vázquez PhD MPsych*, Teresa Jimeno
Beltrán MD**
Eur. J.…
grrlscientist | July 18, 2008tags: bipolar disorder, manic depression, mental illness, psychiatry, suicide, audioblog
Image: Myself43.
A friend sent me this interesting link to an audio piece that recently appeared in the NYTimes about bipolar disorder. This piece may help those with the disorder to feel less alone and help those who love someone with the disorder to get a better understanding of what it is like to live with it. It's not very long, and it's well worth listening to.
j7uy5 | July 15, 2008
href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/restless_legs/restless_legs.htm">Restless
Legs Syndrome has been more in the public eye lately.
I understand this is because of aggressive direct-to-consumer
advertising. I'm not much of a consumer, so I haven't seen
the ads, but people tell me about them.
Whatever you think of DTC advertising, RLS is real, and it is a
significant problem for some people.
Years ago, it was discovered that RLS can be alleviated for some people
with carbidopa/levodopa. But that was an off-patent medicine.
When patented medicines [Requip (ropinirole) and…
j7uy5 | July 10, 2008This post is not about mental health parity. Although it is a
very important topic, there is no reason for me to write about it.
If you are interesting in the topic, just go read the (open
access) Perspectives column in the current NEJM:
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/2/113">Shuffling
toward Parity -- Bringing Mental Health Care under the Umbrella.
The column is short enough that there would not be any point in trying
to distill it any further. But I do want to make a couple of points, including a
mild-to-moderate quibble with one of the points mentioned:…
j7uy5 | July 9, 2008Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital
reported, in the
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=t768481832%7Etab=issueslist">Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, on a case of a person
with delusional beliefs regarding climate change.
There is no openly-accessible abstract, (the link to the paywall page
is
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Econtent=a791365692%7Edb=all%7Eorder=page">here)
so we have to make do with
href="http://www.anorak.co.uk/global-warming/185486.html">a
news report:
We describe…
j7uy5 | June 23, 2008Sometimes I see news about upcoming drugs, and hope that it
works out. Sometimes, I don't see the point.
Rarely, I actively hope that it does not
work out.
Staccato® alprazolam is one that I hope does not work out.
It's a form of
href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a684001.html">alprazolam
(Xanax®)
that goes in an inhaler. It is heated by a little electrical
circuit, vaporized, then inhaled. The idea it to give it a
faster onset of action.
Why?
First, a little background. Alprazolam is a member of the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
neurophilosophy | June 19, 2008
In 1965, Senator Robert Kennedy visited several "institutions for the mentally retarded" in New York State. His descriptions of the conditions he found there, which were published widely in the media, shocked the American public and angered those in charge of the institutions.
Later that year, Dr. Burton Blatt visited five such institutions in the eastern states, with his photographer friend Fred Kaplan, who, armed with a hidden camera attached to his belt, took hundreds of photographs of their "darkest corridors and vestibules". The result was a remarkable document called Christmas In…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008
This week's issue of Time has a cover story called America's Medicated Army, about the increasing use of antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs among U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The article quotes figures from a recent report by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team, according to which, 12% of troops in Iraq, and 18% of those in Afghanistan, have been prescribed these medications (that is, approximately 20,000 of the total number of troops deployed).
A study of British troops published last year showed that the longer troops are deployed, the more likely they are to suffer…