The use of antipsychotics during pregnancy has doubled over the past decade, and there have been ongoing concerns about the risk of congenital malformations. In the May issue of TCPR, we reviewed a pregnancy registry study showing no significant association between atypical antipsychotic use and major malformation.

The author, Dr. Massoumi, is an integrative holistic psychiatrist. She combines the conventional care of psychiatric medications and counseling with non-medication treatments, including supplements and electromagnetic devices, and have had good success. In this article, she reviews some of my practices and discuss various nutritional and herbal supplements that you might consider prescribing for your patients.

Dr. Massoumi is one of the most nationally prominent psychiatrists teaching about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments. In this Expert Q&A she discussses cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES), with a focus on Alpha-Stim.

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It’s no secret that SSRIs and SNRIs cause sexual dysfunction (SD) in a large proportion of patients who take them. The exact size of that proportion, though, is difficult to pinpoint with any reliability. Most of the large clinical trials of antidepressants ascertain side effects through spontaneous reports, and research subjects are understandably embarrassed about coming out and complaining about sexual problems.

As clinicians, we need to fully understand the importance of side effects for our patients. The most important problem in psychopharmacology is that patients stop taking their medication sooner or later. And what is the most frequent single reason for their stopping the medication? Side effects. In this interview, Dr. Rajnish Mago discusses important strategies for discussing side effects with patients.

Some smaller studies have shown that risperidone is useful as an adjunctive treatment for PTSD. But, in a larger-scale study with nearly 300 veterans, the medication used as an adjunct did not outperform placebo. To further explore the utility of atypical antipsychotics, researchers randomly assigned 80 VA patients with PTSD to monotherapy with placebo or quetiapine.