After reading these articles, you should be able to…

In the aftermath of a tragic event carried out by an individual with a psychiatric history, descriptions of the perpetrator as being in some way “off” or “quiet” have almost become cliché. And those clichés, when we inevitably compare them to our own patients, make many of us nervous.

Dealing with potentially violent patients is daunting, but we can play an effective role in assessing and reducing violence risk. In this article I’ll discuss some practical techniques to help you accomplish this in everyday practice.

The legal system can provide much-needed help to psychiatry patients and their families. Forensic psychiatrist Annette Hanson, MD, expertly explains legal options such as mental health courts and guardianship.

We have an abundance of medications to treat depression, but “treatment resistance” remains all too common. Accordingly, there has been a rise in the number of “augmentation” or “adjunctive” medications to address this population.

After reading these articles, you should be able to…

With its goals of relieving suffering and improving patients’ quality of life, psychiatry plays a central role in palliative care. In fact, psychiatry was one of the 10 specialty boards involved in the creation of the new subspecialty of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM), approved by the American Board of Medical Specialties in 2006.

Psychotherapy provided near the end of a patient’s life focuses on existential themes. While the term “existential” conjures up questions like “why am I here?” and issues about meaninglessness, death, and our limited lifespan, existential therapy is about much more: an awareness of oneself, one’s freedom to make choices, and one’s capacity to remove obstacles to “authentic existence.”

Dr. William Breitbart describes how psychiatric palliative care expands the focus beyond pain and physical symptom control to include psychiatric, psychosocial, existential, and spiritual aspects of the end of life.

Although it remains one of our oldest and most effective drugs, lithium has become less popular for the treatment of bipolar disorder in the last two decades.