Why does the top-selling psychiatric textbook base its recommendations on the lowest grade of medical evidence? Psychiatric practice is often mislead by expert opinion, practice trends, and neurotransmitter theories. In the case of paroxetine (Paxil), venlafaxine (Effexor), and mirtazapine (Remeron), this misinformation has created some popular myths that don't hold...

School refusal is a common problem, affecting up to 5% of schoolchildren. This episode takes a look at the limited research on the subject and goes over work done by experts at the Yale Child Center to put together some useful advice on how to address this problem in your...

William S. Meyer is a clinical social worker and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who holds faculty positions at Duke in the Departments of Psychiatry and Ob/Gyn. He has spent 20 years working with postpartum depression at the Duke Medical Center. In this interview, he discusses the role of psychotherapy, community, family, and...

Metformin is the top antidote for antipsychotic weight gain, but is it good for patient's health or just their looks? We explore how to use it, delve into its fabled anti-aging effects, and end with a new discovery that may help people lose weight while they sleep.Publication Date: 8/12/19Runtime: 19 minutes,...

Join Josh Feder, MD, and Mara Goverman, LICW, for a special episode focused on child psychiatry, suicidality, and the popular Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. The show stirred controversy when it portrayed the bullying and suicide of a teenager. Although the program increased awareness of these issues, some clinicians argued that...

Folate, folic acid, l-methylfolate, Deplin, folinic acid… How do we choose among the many forms of this vitamin? All have proved useful as add-on therapies in depression, but they differ in important ways. Some may work in bipolar disorder, and there’s even one that might get in the way of...

More highlights from the American Psychiatric Association's 2019 meeting in the final installment of this two-part series. Expert interviews with Manpreet Singh on childhood mood disorders and Nikhil Rao on novel medications for sleep. Learn what to do when children get worse on antidepressants, and how to use clonidine...

20 years ago, Danny Carlat signed up to speak for the pharmaceutical industry. Through closed-door meetings and lavish "faculty development programs," he learned how to present their product's data in the most convincing way. The only problem was that he couldn't convince himself, and his industry handlers started to worry...

A new study suggests that lithium might work better in geriatric depression, but prescribing it safely in older patients takes skill. To start with, they require different blood levels. In this episode you'll learn how to manage lithium's risks in the elderly, as well as some newly discovered medical benefits that it carries...

In 1985 a Soviet psychiatrist began giving his patients ketamine in hopes to cure their alcoholism. The experiment backfired, but the results tell us something about how ketamine might treat depression. Long buried behind the Iron Curtain, this episode uncovers that early research and traces it back to modern PET-scans,...