Tourette’s syndrome is a disorder of both motor and vocal tics. If you see or hear both of these, you can make the diagnosis with confidence.

Sometimes complex motor tics and OCD compulsions can be difficult to differentiate, since both are related to urges to perform some type of activity or movement.

Studies of “treatment as usual” in outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry settings are hard to come by.

SSRIs are the mainstay of medication treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD), while cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is at least as effective. Oddly, combined SSRI and CBT treatment has not clearly outperformed each treatment alone in controlled trials. But a new study implies that MAOIs combined with CBT may be particularly effective.

Your patient has anxiety, and you’ve tried the usual medications. You’ve rotated through your favorite SSRIs and SNRIs, tried some of the benzodiazepines, and even given buspirone a whirl to no avail. It’s time to go off-label.

Most treatment guidelines recommend cognitive behavioral therapy as first-line psychotherapy for anxiety disorders. In this article, Dr. Glen Spielmans will give you a brief primer of CBT techniques for panic disorder, social phobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as review whether, for these conditions, CBT is indeed superior to other forms of therapy.

Everybody knows that chamomile tea is calming, or at least is supposed to be. But it had never been tested in a placebo controlled study, until now. A recent trial compared chamomile capsules to placebo in the treatment of 57 patients with mild to moderate generalized anxiety disorder.

While tremor is traditionally thought of as a neurological issue, the symptom pops up often in psychiatric practice, and some basic knowledge of its diagnosis and treatment comes in handy.

Cephalon’s selective GABA reuptake inhibitor, the antiepileptic drug tiagabine (Gabitril), was assessed for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder in adults in three large 10-week placebo-controlled studies.

The largest and most rigorous study to date on the treatment of bipolar depression was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, conducted as part of the NIMH-funded Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), enrolled a total of 366 subjects with either bipolar I or II disorder during a major depressive episode.