Psychiatry

News Archive

9/23/2008	Winter Blues or Something More Serious?Winter depression expert Michael Terman discusses seasonal affective disorder.
9/18/2008	Wall Street Free Fall Leads to Mental Health ConcernsDr. John Markowitz of Columbia and the NYS Psychiatric Institute says being worried is normal.
9/18/2008	Crisis on Wall Street Affecting Employees' Mental HealthDr. John Markowitz of Columbia and NYS Psychiatric Institute says being worried is a normal response.
9/15/2008	Depressed Mothers Can Raise Risk in Children, Biological or NotDepressed mothers can increase the risk of depression in their children, even if they are adopted.
9/15/2008	Children and Adolescents with Schizophrenia Fare No Better with Newer AntipsychoticsCo-author Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D., led the earlier CATIE trial at UNC, a landmark study that compared antipsychotic medications in adults. Lieberman is now at Columbia University Medical Center.
9/12/2008	Columbia University’’s Mental Health Check-ups for Youth Initiative"Massachusetts took an important step last week of interest to all states and all those looking to prevent death and disability due to adolescent mental illness," said Laurie Flynn of...Columbia University...
9/9/2008	Older Fathers and Bipolar Disease; Expert Commentary by Alan Brown"National registries are very important because you’re less likely to get bias and you can generalize findings across a whole country,” said Dr. Alan Brown
9/9/2008	Dr. Philip Muskin Discusses Commonly Recurring DreamsEver had the dream about showing up to class or work naked? Chances are, you have.
9/3/2008	New Study Shows Elevated Rate of Teen Suicide "We’’ve seen this increase as soon as these warnings started, and it is what we were most worried about," said Kelly Posner, a researcher in Columbia University’’s ...
9/3/2008	Winter Blues Linked to Brain Chemistry [Dr. Terman] said research had shown that symptoms of winter depression had been reduced by brief exposure to light around dawn.
9/2/2008	Columbia Psychiatry Grand Rounds Now Only a Click AwayGrand Rounds presentations at Columbia University Department of Psychiatry/New York State Psychiatric Institute can now be viewed online.
9/2/2008	Bipolar Disorder and Older Fathers: Harold Pincus Children born to older fathers face a greater chance of developing bipolar disorder, according to one of the largest studies linking mental illness with advanced paternal age.
9/2/2008	When It Comes to Mental Health, New York Sets the StandardA recent article in the North Carolina paper News Observer recognized the New York State Psychiatric Institute (PI)and Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry for its leadership in mental health care.
8/26/2008	NARSAD Symposium: Columbia/NYS Psychiatric Institute Hosts National Campaign Researchers, families and consumers of mental health services will next meet at Columbia and the NYS Psychiatric Institute where experts are braced to shape a new era of scientific discovery ...
8/25/2008	When religion and healthcare collide by Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicineEarlier this week, the California Supreme Court ruled against two physicians who allegedly denied -- based on their religious opposition -- a legal medical treatment to a patient based on her sexual orientation.
8/21/2008	When Recession (Economic) Increases DepressionClinical psychologist Dr. Eun Jung Suh, of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says her patients, both rich and poor, are talking more and more about the recession.
8/21/2008	"Working for Balance": Workplace Flexibility The toll of excessive stress on the body has been well documented, including stomach problems, high blood pressure and headaches. ...C.U. psychiatrist Harold Pincus says the psychological effects can be ...
8/19/2008	Autism Focus of Public Hearing; Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Provides Expert TestimonyIn response to widespread concern about the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders, Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Chairman and Director of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the NYS Psychiatric ...
8/18/2008	Behind the FDA’s ’’black box’’ warnings : Expert Commentary by CUMC’s Mark OlfsonThe study of black box effects found that from the time the warning was ordered until the end of 2005, antidepressant use by youths fell about 10% a year.
8/15/2008	Finding healthy support in the online world: ...CUMC expert Brian FallonThe Internet, and the flood of information it brings, can also pose a danger to hypochondriacs, said Dr. Brian Fallon, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. Fallon, who studies "cyberchondria," said the Internet inflames anxieties because "you can type in a symptom and get 100 different possible diagnoses." "Patients who are predisposed to have a lot of anxiety will latch on to the worst possible scenario, even if that scenario is extraordinarily remote, and start to believe they have that illness," Fallon said.
8/15/2008	Happiness can ripen with age, [Columbia University] study findsIf the Rolling Stones couldn’’t get no satisfaction in their youth, new research suggests they might have a better shot now that they qualify for the seniors’’ discount. A study published in the latest edition of the Journal of Positive Psychology investigates the origins of life satisfaction across adulthood and finds the secret to happiness evolves as we age, while the things that dissatisfy us most remain constant. "It’’s encouraging, especially when you think about older Canadians," says lead author Karen Siedlecki, a post-doctoral research fellow in Columbia University’’s cognitive neuroscience division. "Successful aging is a lot of the time defined in terms of cognitive or physical functioning, and it’’s usually inevitable that those things will decline. But this shows that the really key components of successful aging may be how happy you are and how satisfied you are with your life, and these factors don’’t tend to decline with age."
8/15/2008	Lyme Disease and How to Treat It: CUMC Expert Brian Fallon’’s research cited Until he fell ill with excruciating muscle pain, migraine headaches and extreme fatigue in 1992, Richard Sylver had never heard of Lyme disease. Knowledge of the deer tick-borne disease and the possibility that it was causing his life-altering illness evaded him for six years, while he went from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong...Brian Fallon, a researcher at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital [sic] in New York City, has done neuroimaging studies of the brains of those who have Lyme disease …
8/14/2008	Home in Chicago, Obama can be regular guy, sort of: Story quotes Dr. Jeffrey LiebermanDr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University in New York, agrees it's essential for people, like Obama, in highly visible and stressful situations to keep up some old routines. "Many people would — and he seems to be one of them — find that they get some kind of solace or opportunity for decompression and relaxation" by maintaining some normal, everyday activities, Lieberman said.
8/13/2008	[Electroconvulsive Therapy or ECT] makes a quiet comeback: Columbia U. research citedIn 2001, Columbia University researchers found that without follow-up medications, depression returned in 84 percent of ECT patients within six months. Researchers like Dr. Sarah Lisanby, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, are working to find new, less traumatic therapies that rival ECT’s efficacy for relieving depression. But part of Lisanby’s research is also devoted to uncovering how ECT works. “Solving the mystery of how ECT works is going to be important for advancements in the field of psychiatry, because ECT has unparalleled efficacy,” Lisanby says.
8/12/2008	Adolescents’’ TV Watching Is Linked to Violent BehaviorAdolescents who watch more than one hour of television a day are more likely to commit aggressive and violent acts as adults, according to a 17-year study reported today in the journal Science. ... Columbia University and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, found that 5.7% of those who reported watching less than one hour of TV a day as adolescents committed aggressive acts against others in subsequent years--either by their own admission, a parent’’s report or legal records. That figure rose to 22.5% of those who watched TV for one to three hours a day and to 28.8% of those who watched more than three hours daily. The size of the effect was surprising, said lead author Jeffrey Johnson, assistant clinical professor of psychology in Columbia University’’s psychiatry department.
8/12/2008	Athletes need psychologists too: ...psychiatrist Allan LansSports psychiatrist Allan Lans, now professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, was working at the Smithers Institute (now the Addiction Institute of New York) in the mid-1980s when the Mets sought him out to be the team’’s staff psychiatrist. Then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth, alarmed by revelations of players’’ substance abuse - mostly reports of cocaine use by a handful of stars - had decreed that every team establish a program to deal with the problem.
8/12/2008	Unrelenting Grief May Be Sign of...: Story quotes CUMC Expert Katherine ShearAfter Janice Van Wagner’s mother died of breast cancer two years ago, her sense of loss was overwhelming. "I was devastated," said Van Wagner, 34, of Los Angeles. "I felt like a piece of me had gone missing. It was like I was split in two." While most people grieve when someone close to them dies, the emotional intensity tends to recede with time. But for some, like Van Wagner, their pain persists, sometimes for months or even years, often making it impossible to resume a normal life. "This shows that there’’s actually a difference in the brains of people who have the syndrome compared to the ones who don’’t," said Katherine Shear, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. "Some people are still confused by the fact that it does resemble regular grief."
7/31/2008	The Long Goodbye Dr Richard Mayeux, co-director of the Taub Institute [at Columbia University Medical Center], discovered more than 10 years ago that elderly members of New York’’s Dominican community were three times as likely to suffer from Alzheimer’’s as other ethnic groups. He wanted to find out the genetic reason why. So he set up his study, which has become one of the largest in the world.
7/31/2008	Research First: How Antidepressants and Cocaine Interact In a first, scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University Medical Center have described the specifics of how brain cells process antidepressant drugs, cocaine and amphetamines.
7/23/2008	VIAGRA: The drug eases some sexual problems for women taking anti-depressantsViagra is well established for treating male impotence. A new study slated to appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests the drug can also relieve some sexual difficulties in women caused by antidepressant use... “This study doesn’t come completely out of the blue,” says John Markowitz, a psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute [/Columbia University Medical Center] in Manhattan. The findings reflect a clinical concern that doctors have with these anti-depressants. Sexual dysfunction “is probably the Achilles heel of SRIs,” Markowitz says. Although Viagra isn’t approved specifically to be prescribed for women, he says,“ doctors have been doing it for a long time. This provides some evidence to back up what I suspect is a widespread practice.”
7/22/2008	Can Schizophrenia Be Cured Before It Starts?...By taking schizophrenia prevention to the community, McFarlane is charting a bold new course. Research during the late 1980s began showing that the sooner after a psychotic break patients were treated, the better they did. Symptoms were fewer and less intense. Often the symptoms could be controlled with a lower dose of medication than that used to treat full-blown psychosis. Patients also had less evidence of the loss of brain tissue, a key characteristic of the disease. “This really captured the field’s imagination,” says Jeffrey Lieberman, who chairs the department of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and directs the New York State Psychiatric Institute. “Until then, we figured there wasn’t any real rush to treat. As long as patients weren’t hurting themselves or others, it wouldn’t matter if we treated them now or later. But when we recognized that treatments had to be fast, this created an urgency to find people with psychotic illness and to get them on medication quickly.”
7/15/2008	US News & World Report Best Hospitals: PsychiatryNew York Presbyerian Hospital of Columbia and Cornell is ranked 3rd in Psychiatry, according to a US News & World Report survey. The U.S. News & World Report’’s Best Hospitals rankings cover 170 hospitals in 16 adult specialties. 50 children’’s hospitals are covered, using a new and enhanced methodology, in general pediatrics and 6 pediatric specialties. The unranked hospitals in this specialty are listed in alphabetical order after the ranked hospitals.
7/14/2008	RIGHTS: ’’Gay Acceptance Related to Income’’ The European Union’’s Fundamental Rights Agency, meanwhile, recently found that 11 of the EU’’s 27 countries "appear hostile" to the recognition of gay marriages. Just three EU countries -- Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain -- provide homosexuals with the right to wed... Theo Sandfort, a science professor at New York’’s Columbia University, said it is "reassuring to know that worldwide acceptance of homosexuality is increasing," judging by the results of various opinion polls that have been undertaken since the early 1980s.
7/14/2008	Psychiatric Group Faces Scrutiny Over Drug Industry Ties It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster...“I think we may be coming to a point where hospitals and medical schools have to get serious about sanctioning,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, director of the division of psychiatry, medicine and the law at Columbia. “You can suspend doctors’ privileges, or suspend their right to treat patients; both have a huge impact on income and career. But if you’re serious about these disclosure policies, you have to be willing to back them up.”
7/10/2008	More potent weed puts today’’s kids at greater risk for health and social problemsThe report is titled "Teen Marijuana Use Worsens Depression: An Analysis of Recent Data Shows ’’Self-Medicating’’ Could Actually Make Things Worse." Depressed teens are more than twice as likely as others to abuse or become dependent on marijuana, the report said. At a news conference accompanying the release of the report, Dr. Larry Greenhill, president-elect of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, said, "The benign quality of marijuana, which has been an assumption since the ’’60s, is now seriously questioned by researchers, scientists and doctors." "Locally, you can predict that marijuana is No. 1 and alcohol is No. 2 among the adolescent population (that uses drugs)," he reported.
7/9/2008	Study Shows Sexual Satisfaction at 70 ImprovingAs media attention focuses on issues like teenage pregnancy and rates of sexual activity among the young, a new Swedish study reinforces what many professionals in the area have long suspected -- sexual activity and satisfaction are on the rise among the elderly. … "There is no question that people in their 70s today are like people in their 60s from the last decade," said Judith Kuriansky, a clinical psychologist, sex therapist and faculty member at Columbia University Teachers College [and CUMC’s Department of Psychiatry]. "People are staying younger older, as they work out, look better, feel better, and therefore they are physically as well as psychologically more interested as well as more capable of being sexual."
7/9/2008	Drugs’’ Links To Suicide Risk Draw ConcernFederal regulators are about to expand the number of drug warnings for suicide risk, escalating worries for consumers and fueling a debate about whether the Food and Drug Administration is overreacting, or properly alerting the public of risks it ignored for too long... Columbia University Medical Center has developed a framework for looking for suicidality side effects during clinical trials, and it is being used by several companies, says Dr. Laughren. Kelly Posner, a clinical researcher, worked with the FDA to help create Columbia’’s suicide-risk-assessment scale to standardize information and questions about suicidality.
7/7/2008	Electromagnetic Treatments for Depression Seek to Improve on ECT There's a new wave of research into targeted electromagnetic treatments for resistant depression, all aiming to relegate traditional electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to obsolescence. A series of preclinical studies and case reports published from 2000 to 2006 supported the idea, but the only one involving more than one patient found that it was also less effective than ECT. Led by Sarah Lisanby, M.D., of Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Inst.] here, a colleague of ECT researcher Harold Sackeim, M.D., the case-matched study of 20 patients found that both treatments produced significant reductions in depression scores, but residual symptoms were more pronounced in those receiving the magnetic therapy (mean Hamilton score 6 for ECT versus 14 for magnetic seizure therapy, P<0.05). The results were published in 2006 in Anesthesia and Analgesia.
7/7/2008	10-year battle with pain highlights Lyme disease debateFor more than 10 years, Mandy Hughes drifted in an out of what she calls the horrible, debilitating pain of Lyme disease."It literally feels like you got into a severe accident, like you were hit by a Mack truck and you were allowed no medical attention," she says. After being bitten by a tick at 19, Hughes broke out in hives and suffered fever and chills so severe that she had to be hospitalized. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease and was sent home with two weeks’’ worth of the antibiotic tetracycline. She seemed to be cured. But over the years, the Lyme symptoms flared back -- crippling joint pain, muscle spasms, headaches and facial paralysis. She visited 15 doctors, yet they were unable to arrive at a diagnosis. Several thought she had multiple sclerosis... "The disability associated with Lyme disease is worse than the disability that you might see with someone after a heart attack," said Brian Fallon, director of the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
7/2/2008	Inside The Mind of A Suicidal Jumper; Jumping Is More Convienent in City Centers Than Other Methods European model Ruslana Korshunova, 20, and 44-year-old New York attending physician Douglas Meyer had little in common until the very moment they each decided to take their own lives. Both Korshunova and Meyer jumped out of Manhattan high-rises within days of each other this week, the model plummeting from her ninth-floor apartment and the doctor from a window at the city hospital where he worked... And while jumping is considered to be one of the more lethal ways of committing suicide like guns, there is not a large margin of error in suicide attempts by these means -- Madelyn Gould, a clinical psychologist and a suicide expert, told ABCNEWS.com that jumping from buildings is often chosen by suicidal people simply as a matter of convenience. "In New York City, jumping is certainly more common than in other places because we have high buildings," said Gould. "Usually the method is chosen because it’’s accessible."
7/2/2008	Long Trip: Magic Mushrooms’’ Transcendent Effect Lingers People who took magic mushrooms were still feeling the love more than a year later, and one might say they were on cloud nine about it, scientists report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Afterward, about two thirds of the [study] group reported having a "full mystical experience," characterized by a feeling of "oneness" with the universe. Herbert Kleber, who directs the division of substance abuse at Columbia University, also notes that it is difficult to assess the mushroom’’s impact without detailed information on how individual lives were changed. But the findings do seem to support reports of recreational users and what LSD guru and 1960s counterculture icon Timothy Leary made famous in his psychedelic lab at Harvard University.
7/1/2008	Fathering Autism A Scientist Wrestles With the Realities of His Daughter's Illness It was also true that science does not have an objective way to pinpoint autism in young children. There is no laboratory test for the disorder and, although it clearly has a strong genetic component (having one child with autism confers a 90 percent risk of being autistic on an identical twin), diagnosis involves a subjective evaluation of a constellation of symptoms that do not always stand out until children are older. There is also a great deal of variation among autistic children. The broad signs of the disorder are a lack of social connectedness, communication problems and repetitive, obsessive behaviors, but those umbrellas encompass a wide range of problems. Rachel, for example, is much more verbal than other autistic children but is severely impaired in other domains. "It is not one disorder; it is at least several, and there are probably hundreds," acknowledged Andrew Gerber, a Columbia University [and NYS Psychiatric Institute] autism expert. "There are autisms-- there is an autism spectrum disorder."
6/27/2008	Neurologist honoured with a CBE New York-based neurologist Oliver Sacks, who has written about treating patients suffering from autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia, has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to medicine. He has lived in New York since 1965 and was last year appointed professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Centre. Dr Sacks, a cousin of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, was formerly clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the New York University School of Medicine.
6/27/2008	Alkermes Initiates Phase 3 Clinical Study of VIVITROL®..."Opioid dependence is a serious disease affecting millions of people yet there are few approved medications available for these patients and no approved long-acting antagonist therapies," stated Dr. Herbert Kleber, Professor of Psychiatry, Director, Division on Substance Abuse, Columbia University. "Naltrexone, the active ingredient in VIVITROL, has been shown to effectively block the effects of opiates but patients have difficulty complying with a daily medication regimen. Therefore, I am pleased to see the development of new therapeutic options, such as VIVITROL, which could provide an important approach to long-term recovery and potentially help reduce the risk of relapse."
6/27/2008	Scientists Receive NARSAD’s Prestigious 2008 Young Investigator AwardThirteen New York State Psychiatric Institute scientists have been selected by NARSAD, the world’’s leading charity dedicated to mental health research, to each receive a 2008 Young Investigator Award. NARSAD is the world’s leading donor-supported organization dedicated to funding research and psychiatric disorders. The New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) scientists — including investigators affiliated with Columbia University and the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, Inc./NYSPI — are 13 of 220 early-career scientists in the United States and 11 other countries who will receive funds this year from NARSAD to advance their research on mental illnesses.
6/25/2008	Teen Girls’ Pregnancy PactRUSS MITCHELL, anchor: Now to a disturbing story out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. There’’s been a dramatic increase in teenage pregnancies there, and authorities think they know why. Some say the high school girls planned it as part of a secret pact. Mr. CHRISTOPHER FARMER (Superintendent, Gloucester Public Schools): Pregnancy was a desired outcome…Motherhood gives them status. MICHELLE MILLER, reporter: Status in Gloucester is hard to come by. The once-thriving fishing community has seen jobs drift overseas. Economic depression has left many teens trying to fill the void. Dr. ELISABETH GUTHRIE (Pediatric Psychiatrist, Columbia University Medical Center): It sort of gives you the impression of being an adult, an independent. It may give you an opportunity for unconditional love and attention from the baby, and also that you give to the baby.
6/25/2008	Summer season can be dangerous, deadly for teenagersWith school ending, students ease into the lazy-hazy rhythms of summer. But it's also a time of heightened danger that can end in the glaring lights of hospital emergency rooms - or worse. Among teenagers, "there tends to be more alcohol, more drugs, more circumstances of risk-taking and risk factors around graduation time," said Laurie Flynn, national director at the Columbia University TeenScreen program, a voluntary mental health program.
6/18/2008	South Africa 2008: HIV/AIDS infection among the world’’s highest After years of political battles over AIDS in South Africa, fuelled by President Thabo Mbeki’’s flirtation with the ideas of dissident scientists who dispute a link between HIV and AIDS, the government did finally last year approve a national strategy that met the approval of the world’’s experts. It set stiff targets for reducing the HIV infection rate. But with some government officials still dragging their feet, and given the scale of the crisis, private sector initiatives are playing a critical role in combating the spread of HIV. 12 South Africans spent two months at Columbia University, sponsored by the AIDS fund of MAC, the US cosmetics group, as part of its "Leadership Initiative" programme. MAC AIDS fund is preparing to recruit a second round of South African "fellows" for training jointly organised by Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, in grass roots organisation, fund-raising and HIV-prevention.
6/17/2008	A Father’’s Tough LoveA coalition of scholars and psychoanalysts are publishing a book this fall called "The Dead Father: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry," based in part on the premise that society has suffered as dads have become more maternal and less authoritarian. "The whole culture needs the father back," says Lila Kalinich, a Columbia University psychiatrist who served as senior editor for the book. "Fathers substantiate law and order. Fathers can create a sense of womanliness in daughters and bring the male children into manhood."
6/17/2008	Using Personalized Brain Music to Combat Migraines With a plastic cap strapped to her head, Jennifer Fox closed her eyes as Dr. Galina Mindlin used EEG equipment to record her key brain wave patterns. The goal: to eliminate Fox's migraine headaches. … The 25-year-old has suffered from migraines since middle school and has tried several medications. But many of them actually made her headaches worse. So she recently decided to try an alternative approach called brain music therapy, which sounds like piano music and has an 80-85 percent success rate, Mindlin said. Mindlin, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City, has been providing this type of treatment for three years.
6/12/2008	Self magazine’’s Tula Karras’’ misdiagnosed Lyme diseaseThis morning on TODAY’’S HEALTH, Lyme disease. If you ever spend any time outside, you need to watch out for Lyme disease because it’’s been reported in all 50 states. NBC’’s chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman is here with one young woman’’s long struggle with this disease. Dr. NANCY SNYDERMAN reporting: This is a struggle that everyone should pay attention because it points to the fact that Lyme disease, while treatable, can be left undiagnosed, and when that happens, it can leave people with lifelong debilitating conditions. For Tula Karras, that’’s how it all started, flu-like symptoms, including fever, chills and swollen glands. But unlike so many others, Tula’’s symptoms did not go away. She had been tested for Lyme disease in 1996, but the result came back negative. … Dr. BRIAN FALLON (Columbia University Medical Center New York-Presbyterian): False negatives occur roughly 20 to 30 percent of the time if you have neurologic Lyme disease. And that’’s actually a very high percentage of time to have a falsely negative test.
6/10/2008	They’d Give Their Right Leg On the scale of bizarre ailments, body-integrity identity disorder, or BIID, a rare diagnosis characterized by a relentless desire to amputate healthy limbs, surely ranks near the top. In the past decade, small BIID communities have coalesced on the Web, where they lobby for surgery as a safe and legal option... Dr. Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, has been trying to gain insight into the disorder and the question of how to treat it. In 2004, he conducted a study of 52 people who identified as amputee-wannabes. He found that they were far from psychotic. "You almost have to see it to believe it," First says.
6/10/2008	Depression Signs and Treatments; Post-diagnosis, many options existPsychiatrist Maria Oquendo discusses the different forms of depression as well as non-pharmaceutical therapies such as magnetic waves, surgery, and psychoanalysis.
6/10/2008	Father With Undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder Murders Children "The occurrence of aggression and violence is not as common as one might fear. And, in fact, homicide is relatively unusual in bipolar disorder," said Dr. Maria Oquendo, a psychiatrist at Columbia University’’s School of Medicine (sic) who specializes in the disorder. She says bipolar patients are much more likely to harm themselves than others. Oquendo cautions, [however], that there are times when a parent suffering from bipolar disorder, feels hopeless and suicidal, and their children could be at risk.
6/9/2008	With Precautions, Psychiatrists Need Not Shun off-Label PrescribingThe essential elements of informed consent are diagnosis, the nature and purpose of the proposed treatment, risks and benefits of the treatment, and alternatives to proposed treatment and their risks and benefits, according to Paul Appelbaum, M.D., the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law and director of the Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics at Columbia University. Physicians’’ responsibility is to give patients appropriate information so that patients can make their own decision.
6/9/2008	Schizophrenics battle stigma, myths in addition to disease The movie industry has encouraged a stereotype of schizophrenics as bizarre, violent psychotics in classic films such as Psycho, says Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University. But the more recent A Beautiful Mind showed that people battling schizophrenia could be brilliant, Lieberman adds. And a new memoir by USC law professor Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold, suggests how far smart, determined schizophrenics can go, if they are treated.
6/5/2008	Scientists: Artificial Food Dyes May Harm ChildrenThey’’re a common ingredient in the foods we eat, but now some scientists are sounding the alarm that artificial dyes are bad for children, blaming hyperactive, tantrum behavior on common chemicals in our food. … "Artificial food dyes are harming our children," explains Dr. David Schab of Columbia University Medical Center.
6/3/2008	Neurologist, gospel choir explore music’’s healing powerNoted neurologist Oliver Sacks has found common ground with the pastor of Harlem’’s famed Abyssinian Baptist Church: Both men believe in the healing power of music. Sacks, the best-selling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, will share the church stage Saturday with the famed gospel choir as part of the inaugural World Science Festival, a five-day celebration of science taking place in New York this week. SCIENCE FAIR: Blogging from the World Science Festival. A Baptist church is an unusual venue for Sacks, a professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center who was brought up Jewish but is not a religious believer.
6/3/2008	Marijuana May Shrink Parts of the BrainOne expert agrees that heavy marijuana use can have negative effects on the brain. "These findings are not surprising," said Dr. Adam Bisaga, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and an addiction psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute. "Chronic use of large amounts of any substance that is affecting neural transmission will most likely invoke adaptive changes and lead to the reorganization of neural networks, and possibly affect brain structures."
5/29/2008	The Ultimate CureThe neurotech industry is engaged in a $2 trillion race to fix your brain. Many players will fail, but the payoff will be huge for those who succeed... A larger debate is percolating over what would happen if a pill could turn most people into brainiacs. “I don’t believe in cognitive enhancement for people who are well,” says memory expert and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, a professor at Columbia University. “These should be pharma products for sick people.” N.I.H. neuroscientist Jordan Grafman agrees: “If you manipulate the brain, it can change who we are.”
5/27/2008	New And Improved Drugs? No Thanks, Pharma Cos Are Being ToldNew York psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman has heard Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) sales pitch for the new anti-schizophrenia drug Invega, but he's not too impressed... "I don't think they have a strong case to make," says Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University's medical school. "It's basically a me-too drug, and the company hasn't done the studies that would be required to really distinguish it."
5/23/2008	DEPRESSION: Out of the ShadowsMYRNA WEISSMAN: Well, we know depression runs in families. And we know that the children of depressed parents have high rates of depression. And one new finding is that if you treated the mother to remission, the children who had symptoms got better.
5/22/2008	Senator Kennedy’s Diagnosis Rattles Us AllMost of us don’t know Senator Edward M. Kennedy personally. But news that the longtime senator has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor has hit many people particularly hard.… Dr. Robert Klitzman, a New York psychiatrist [and associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center] who lost his own sister in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, says that celebrities and public figures play a surprisingly important role in our lives. “If my mother were to get sick or anyone in my circle who I know, it’s a loss for me and I grieve,’’ Dr. Klitzman said. “So celebrities sort of have a quasi-role in our social circle. We share them in common. We all know Ted Kennedy.’’
5/21/2008	Looking Inside Kids’’ Minds Can Open the Future The National Institutes of Mental Health says that 2 million American children are diagnosed with ADHD, though there are questions around the accuracy of an ADHD diagnosis. Dr. Bradley Peterson, director of the Pediatric Neuropsychiatry Research program at [the] Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, said the technology is not there yet. … "No test can tell you that this child has ADHD and that one doesn’’t," Peterson said. "At least at present day. Hopefully, in the next year or coming years, we might have that, but we don’’t yet."
5/20/2008	Doctors Appeal to Patients To Lobby for Tort Law ChangeWith her malpractice insurance costs soaring, Dr. Margaret Lewin is turning to an unusual source for help: her patients. The internist is distributing fliers to everyone who enters her East Side office, detailing her struggle to pay $25,000 a year in premiums in the hopes that they will lobby their legislators for changes to the tort laws... Among their strategies for outreach are starting letter-writing campaigns, setting up Web sites, and, in the case of one physician advocacy group, airing public service announcements on medical liability in doctors’ waiting rooms … Still, some say physicians who communicate their grievances risk alienating their patients. “Patients might easily feel coerced,” an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center,[and the NYS Psychiatric Institute] Dr. Robert Klitzman, said. “Doctors should not vent about how awful the system is for the sake of venting.” Still, if certain changes affect a patient, such as a doctor dropping an insurance company, he said, the patient has a right to know.
5/19/2008	Letters Can’t We Find a Better Way to Help Our Soldiers? To the Editor: You note the plight of soldiers who return home from Iraq with unseen scars: only half of those exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression have sought treatment. This poor rate is very disturbing, given that the war veterans incurred these painful conditions serving our country. Sadly, this pattern reflects the national trend in the general population: data indicate that only one-third to one-half of Americans with a diagnosable mental disorder receive any mental health services.
5/14/2008	New genetic changes found in schizophreniaU.S. and Canadian researchers say they have discovered a previously unknown genetic abnormality in an animal model of schizophrenia... Individuals with those deletions "are at high risk of developing schizophrenia," said Dr. Maria Karayiorgou of Columbia, one of the study’’s authors. "By digging further into this chromosome, we have been able to see at the gene expression level that abnormalities in microRNAs can be linked to the behavioral and cognitive deficits associated with the disease," she added.
5/13/2008	Magnetic Brain BoostShort on sleep? Besides the bags under your eyes, you may have difficulty remembering names, phone numbers, and other stuff you store in short-term memory. Brain researchers at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute can’’t do much for tired-looking faces, but they’’re now exploring a method for refreshing your sleep-deprived brain.
5/12/2008	A Mental Health and Public Safety Primer The session featured much talk about the often differing interests of students and administrators when it comes to mental health cases. Paul S. Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said it’s his impression that student suicides that occur on campus tend to be forever linked to the university in the public consciousness, whereas deaths that take place while the student is home on break don’t carry that connection. Colleges are inherently fearful of liability, he said, which helps explain why their policies often favor keeping troubled students away from campus.
5/12/2008	Teen Marijuana Use Linked to Later Illness; Self-Medication, Especially for Depression...Teenagers who smoke marijuana put themselves at risk for future mental illness and higher rates of depression, according to a report to be released today by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Although fewer teens overall are smoking marijuana, the report said, there is growing concern that those who do, particularly those who view the drug as a way to cope with depression, do not understand its consequences... Added Larry Greenhill, president-elect of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry [and child psychtrist at Columbia University Medical Center, NYS Psychiatric Institute]: "What’’s new in this report is that it documents how serious the impact is of what was thought to be a mild recreational" drug.
5/12/2008	Vaccine case draws attention to autismWhen The Augusta Chronicle began following the Mann quadruplets in October, there was little attention being paid to autism outside of the advocacy community and some researchers. That all changed in March when it became public that attorneys for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conceded late last year that 9-year-old Hannah Poling, of Athens, Ga., had "features of autism spectrum disorder" caused in part by a series of vaccinations she received in 2000. The girl has a rare mitochondrial disorder and her condition was aggravated by the shots, the government contended in a court filing. The department, however, was quick to point out that it was not an admission that vaccines cause autism, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a teleconference to emphasize that all of the science points to no link between the two... That some cases might be caused by a multitude of factors working together is probably true, said Andrew Gerber, a research fellow and autism researcher with the New York Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University. "These complex illnesses like autism that are many different types of illness clearly have a myriad of factors. That part of the theory I would not want to lose," Dr. Gerber said.
5/12/2008	Memory: Forgetting Is the New Normal "Memory decline occurs in everyone."...Now it turns out that the same appears to be true for humans. In a paper published last spring, a team led by Gage, Small and Richard Sloan, a psychologist at Columbia University, revealed that after pounding the treadmill four times a week for an hour for 12 weeks, a group of previously inactive men and women, ages 21 to 45, showed substantial increases in cerebral blood volume (CBV)--a proxy for neurogenesis because where there are more cells, there are more blood vessels.
5/2/2008	More doctors recommending dose of God for their patients You might think a hospital sounds like an odd place to launch a spiritual quest. But for some patients, that’’s precisely where they find religion. In fact, some doctors even rely on divine intervention to assist them in the healing process. In interviews with 50 doctors, [Dr. Robert Klitzman, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York] learned that many are oblivious to patients’’ spiritual needs until they become patients themselves.
4/30/2008	Kids Face Risks Taking AntidepressantsParents need warnings that popular adult antidepressants may sometimes spur suicide when taken by children and teenagers, government advisers said Monday after hearing emotional testimony from families who lost loved ones. … FDA officials fear warnings before the issue is settled could dissuade patients from potentially helpful treatment. Depression occurs in up to 10 percent of youth, and 1,883 10- to 19-year-olds killed themselves in 2001. Some 1.8 million teenagers attempted suicide that year, a quarter of them requiring medical attention, said Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia University.
4/29/2008	Drug Addiction: A Click Away? Today more people are ordering narcotics on the Internet. Many online pharmaceutical sites are legal, meaning they require a signed prescription from a physician and proof of a legitimate medical problem. But a growing number are not. In 2007, a Columbia University report counted 187 Web sites actively selling painkillers like oxycontin online. Eighty-four percent did not require a prescription and none of the sites asked if the buyer was a child.
4/24/2008	Does the Earth’’s magnetic field cause suicides? Psychiatrists have noticed a correlation between geomagnetic activity and suicide rates. Geomagnetic storms – periods of high geomagnetic activity caused by large solar flares – have also been linked to clinical depression. What may be the cause of the link, if there is one, remains unknown. …"The most plausible explanation for the association between geomagnetic activity and depression and suicide is that geomagnetic storms can desynchronise circadian rhythms and melatonin production," says Kelly Posner, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in the US. The pineal gland, which regulates circadian rhythm and melatonin production, is sensitive to magnetic fields. "The circadian regulatory system depends upon repeated environmental cues to [synchronise] internal clocks,",/i> says Posner.
4/24/2008	New Chief of the Division of Child Psychiatry Named Bradley Peterson, MD, has been named Chief of the Division of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) effective May 1, 2008. He will replace world-renowned child psychiatrist David Shaffer, FRCP, (London) who led the Division for 30 years.
4/24/2008	OPEN MINDAnd in Blind Faith his recently published St. Martin’s press study of what he describes as an “unholy alliance of religion and medicine” my guest today introduces us with sometime shocking chapter and verse to what he describes as “the brave new world of religion and health, where science, medicine, faith and ethics exist together in a potentially explosive mixture”. Richard P. Sloan is professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University [Medical Center].
4/11/2008	Columbia University Begins Search For Causes Of Autism ... Columbia University researchers are involved in a multi-site consortium to gather and bank DNA samples from 2,000 autism patients and their families over the next three years.
4/11/2008	Two Columbia University Medical Center & New York State Psychiatric Institute Psychiatrists Receive ... Awards from NARSADThe National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD), a charity dedicated to mental health research, has announced that it has selected two Columbia University Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute researchers for its prestigious Distinguished Investigator Award: J. John Mann, M.D. and Ezra Susser, M.D., Dr.P.H.
4/9/2008	Depression and Alzheimer’’s Risk Linked Depression appears to more than double the risk of developing Alzheimer’’s disease, Dutch researchers report. [But] experts continue to debate whether such a connection really exists. "There are quite a few papers about the association between depression and Alzheimer’’s, with conflicting results," said Yaakov Stern, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Columbia University [Medical Center] in New York City. "No one really knows if there is a connection between depression and Alzheimer’’s."
4/9/2008	Predicting and Preventing Campus ViolenceHarvard University’s first president was an English cleric who reportedly attacked his assistant with a stick ‘big enough to kill a horse,’ Ann Franke, the founder of Wise Results and a consultant on campus risk management issues nationally, related Friday during a conference on ‘Violence on Campus: Prediction, Prevention and Response.’ … Still, speakers weren’t fans anyway of such automatic policies, which, without consideration of individual circumstances, remove students from their support systems and send the wrong message — discouraging students from seeking help from authority figures or, even, their friends, said Paul Appelbaum, a professor and director of the Division of Psychiatry, Law and Ethics at Columbia.
4/3/2008	NIU, Virginia Tech shootings have impact on college admissionsIf it were legal to "out" students, they would be less apt to get mental help in earlier grade levels, said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, an expert on psychiatry, law and ethics at Columbia University, which is holding its first conference on campus violence this week. "Many students who have psychiatric histories thrive and excel in college, while others who experience problems have no such history," he noted. A smarter strategy: Provide adequate mental health services and insurance coverage for students and implement outreach programs that encourage them to use the services, he said.
4/3/2008	Sense of belonging a key to suicide prevention"I don’’t think people should panic that this is an epidemic," Dr. David Kahn, who is vice chair for clinical affairs at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and on staff at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, told Reuters Health. In fact, Kahn noted in an interview, young people in college are actually less likely to kill themselves than their peers who aren’’t attending college.
4/2/2008	Better-Educated Smokers More Likely to Try Quitting in Response to AdsBetter-educated smokers are more likely to respond to TV ads that promote quitting smoking, while the effect of secondhand smoke messages is similar across educational levels, according to a new Wisconsin study. Lirio Covey, Ph.D., is the director of the Smoking Cessation Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute [and a member] of the psychiatry department at Columbia University Medical Center. She says the study signals the need to devote more public health attention and resources to understanding the continuing allure of smoking for persons of lower SES and the barriers to their efforts not only to begin to make attempts to stop smoking, but also to succeed when they embark on those attempts.
4/2/2008	What drives parents to kill?Whatever drove a 41-year-old Rockville man to apparently kill his three young children in an Inner Harbor hotel last weekend might never be fully understood. Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said some men who kill their offspring do so in a continuing pattern of child abuse. "In a particular instance, it just goes too far. This is not to say it’’s true in every case, but that’’s the typical father who kills a child," he said. "The psychotic father who kills a child is a much less frequent phenomenon than the psychotic mother who kills a child."
3/24/2008	Prayer, Faith and DoctorsReligion isn’t often talked about in medicine, but should it be? I asked New York psychiatrist Dr. Robert Klitzman,,/b> author of “When Doctors Become Patients,” to tell us about his experiences with patients, prayer and faith. — Tara Parker-Pope
3/24/2008	College: A time of mental illness?Midterms and basketball may mark spring as a time of college madness, but mental illness can be a serious threat for some students, a U.S. psychiatrist warns. Dr. David Kahn of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center says college age is often when mental illness becomes a problem.
3/21/2008	Teen Suicides Shatter Nantucket SerenityMadelyn Gould, a professor in child psychiatry and public health at Columbia University and expert on suicide clusters, said the island suicides may meet the term’’s scientific definition particularly if authorities rule Soverino’’s death a suicide. "Having three young people kill themselves within a year in a community of this size really points to it being a suicide cluster,",/i> she said.
3/21/2008	Survey: Jobs, Money Top Stressors In AmericaWhile spending may be down, American's stress levels are up according to the "Stress in America" survey in 2007. In 2006, only 59 percent of respondents called work and money a stressor. Stress is a normal part of life, but chronic stress can be problematic, doctors said. "When this occurs, people become more susceptible to illness," said Columbia University Medical Center Chair of Psychiatry Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman. "They get sicker easier and they also may experience consequences in other organ systems and the brain."
3/21/2008	The Truth About Antidepressants According to Ronald R. Fieve, MD, psychopharmacologist and professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, its not unusual for an antidepressant to take two to six weeks to have an effect on a patient’’s mood. "People must realize that we’’ve come a long way in reducing the side effects of antidepressants since first prescribing the tricyclics," Fieve says. "And while drug companies have reduced medication side effects with the newer [antidepressants], there’’s still not much improvement with onset of action or efficacy."
3/17/2008	No Need To Panic Over Naturally Occurring Memory LossEver blanked on someone's name, misplaced your car keys or paced a parking lot desperately hunting for your car? Or raced into a room and forgot why you headed there in the first place, then panicked because you thought you were "losing it?" As we age, common problems develop…According to Dr. Yaakov Stern, head researcher on memory and aging at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, "It may not be the ability to store memories but the ability to retrieve them that is affected with aging."
3/16/2008	OP/ED: Cover Mental Illness Too By Jeffrey A. Lieberman The cause of mental health parity — equal insurance coverage for mental health care — is far too important to wait for the results of this November’’s elections. Americans simply can’’t afford to wait for many of these needed reforms…. More than 26 percent of adults in this country — nearly 58 million people — annually suffer from a diagnosable serious mental disorder…Lieberman is the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and psychiatrist in chief at Columbia University Medical Center/NewYork Presbyterian Hospital.
3/10/2008	The Hottest Research of 2006-07 The 10 hot reports featuring Columbia University’s Jeffrey A. Lieberman center on schizophrenia and its treatment; Lieberman discussed his highly cited research in a recent interview (Science Watch, 18[5]: 3-4, September/October 2007). And Harvard epidemiologist JoAnn Manson also contributed to 10 Hot Papers, on topics that include hormone-replacement therapy and women’s health, risk factors for diabetes, and diet supplementation in the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer.
3/4/2008	Antibiotics Questioned in Care at Life’s End A yearlong study is raising questions about the widespread use of antibiotics in nursing homes to treat infections in patients with terminal dementia — a treatment that the authors suggest is of dubious value to the patients and may be dangerous in the long run. Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia who has published widely on medical ethics and the law, questioned the conclusions. “The apparent suggestion that we should not be treating persons with dementia when they develop infections rests on a normative judgment — that does not flow from these data — that their lives are worth less than the unknown degree of risk of contributing to antibiotic resistance,” Dr. Appelbaum wrote in an e-mail message.
3/3/2008	Starving Themselves, Cocktail in Hand About 25 to 33 percent of bulimics also struggle with alcohol or drugs, according to a study published last year in the journal Biological Psychiatry. Between 20 and 25 percent of anorexics have substance abuse problems, the study found. Suzette M. Evans, a professor of clinical neuroscience at Columbia, recently began a study of the connection between bulimia and substance abuse, a field she said has been neglected. “People are finally beginning to realize that food can function in the same way as drugs and alcohol,” Dr. Evans said.
3/3/2008	Stop Your Sobbing—NowTo those for whom complaining itself is a kind of religion, and who believe that efforts to sweep away negative thoughts with bracelets and 30-day programs are shallow and irritating, consider this: psychologists recommend similar tricks to their patients who need a walk on the bright side. "In cognitive behavioral therapy, there's a technique called 'thought stopping'," in which a therapist helps a patient replace a negative thought with a positive one, says Susan Vaughan, a psychiatrist at Columbia University. Even in a case of an injustice, "I would have you not complain because it won't actually help your mental health, it will make you feel worse, and people will react negatively to you."
3/3/2008	Pristiq Approval Gives Wyeth New ArmorBut some doctors are skeptical that Pristiq will offer patients any more benefit than Effexor. "I don't know if they're going to be substantially different," said Michael Liebowitz, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who participated in clinical trials of Pristiq. Patients who don't get any effect from Effexor at a low dose, but can't tolerate the side effects at a higher dose, may be one good group of candidates for Pristiq, he adds.
2/29/2008	Pleas for press curb over deathsMadelyn Gould, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, studies suicide clusters among young people. She concludes that exposure to others' deaths by suicide, and media coverage of self-harm, can increase the risks. Professor Gould has helped develop international media guidelines, emphasising that suicide is usually a result of a treatable illness. She has urged communities such as Bridgend to discuss the problem openly. The Welsh Assembly has announced a strategy modelled on Scotland's "Choose Life" campaign, which has reduced suicide numbers since its 2003 launch.
2/29/2008	Bristol-Myers drug cleared to treat pediatric bipolarSales of Abilify, the New York-based company’’s second-best seller, climbed 29 percent to $1.66 billion last year, helped by studies showing it caused less weight gain than competing treatments. The only other drug in the class known as atypical antipsychotics that is approved to treat bipolar disorder in children 10 and older is Johnson & Johnson’’s top-selling Risperdal, which won U.S. clearance for that use in August. Abilify offers a potential advantage over other atypical antipsychotics because ``it doesn’’t cause to the same degree weight gain and metabolic’’’’ disorders, said Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, in a telephone interview yesterday.
2/27/2008	Antidepressants Useless In Many Cases? A new British study suggests the drugs only help those who are severely depressed, and do little to help people suffering from mild depression, reports Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith. Columbia University researcher Kelly Posner says the new study doesn’’t address one of depression’’s WORST consequences: "Since we’’ve had antidepressants, the suicide rate has dropped, across the world, reversing a trend prior to their introduction." Posner says antidepressants have improved the lives of millions of people.
2/25/2008	Quitting Smoking More Difficult for Blacks, Hispanics: Study The scientists weren't able to determine an exact cause for the differences, according to study author, Lirio Covey, associate professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center. But there were some common factors among study participants, she added. "In order for successful smoking cessation to occur, treatment must be tailored to specific population groups based on better knowledge of these groups," Covey said in the news release.
2/25/2008	Bridgend suicides: a town tainted by deathCopycat suicides among teenagers have been studied widely in America. Dr David Shaffer, a professor of child psychiatry at Columbia University, said after one spate of suicides in New Jersey: "The news coverage of teenage suicides can portray the victims as martyrs of sorts. The more sentimentalised it is, the more legitimate - even heroic - it may seem to some teenagers." US studies have found that suicide rates increase after well-publicised cases, particularly among teenagers, regardless of the age of the victim. One study found that the suicide rate among teenagers went up by seven per cent in the month after any high-profile suicide. After Marilyn Monroe’’s death, the rise was 12 per cent.
2/20/2008	Suicide rating’ could be given to every new drug licensed in UK“All the players, the FDA, EMEA, representatives from the drug companies, will be at the meeting to discuss how to move forward,” Dr Posner, a research scientist based at Columbia University, New York, told The Times. “I’ve been getting requests from clinics and authorities in Europe asking how to implement the study. It’s really moved the field in that way. Hopefully this will be the first step to broadening the study across Europe.” Dr Posner and her team spent months creating a comprehensive questionnaire known as the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating, in which patients’ actions can be classified as either suicidal or nonsuicidal.
2/20/2008	Reports of Gunman’s Use of Antidepressant Renew Debate Over Side EffectsSteven P. Kazmierczak stopped taking Prozac before he shot to death five Northern Illinois University students and himself, his girlfriend said Sunday in a remark likely to fuel the debate over the risks and benefits of drug treatment for emotional problems. Psychiatrists said Monday that stopping an antidepressant could cause effects like lightheadedness, nausea and agitation as the brain adjusted. Among the most commonly prescribed drugs, Prozac is the least likely to cause withdrawal effects because it stays in the system longest, the doctors said. “A small dose of Prozac is what you might use to block withdrawal symptoms when you take a patient off one of the other drugs,” said Dr. Donald Klein, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Columbia who has consulted with drug companies.
2/20/2008	Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. That observation seems to match what Myrna M. Weissman, the chief of the department in Clinical-Genetic Epidemiology at New York State Psychiatric Institute [and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center], concluded was a susceptibility to depression among the affluent and healthy baby boom generation two decades ago, in a 1989 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
2/20/2008	Health care disconnectI’’ve decided to call a meeting of my personal medical staff, all of whom I have seen recently, but never in a group. When I’’ve got them together, I will ask the three key questions of this nation’’s — as well as my own — health crisis …In an excellent new book, When Doctors Become Patients, Dr. Robert Klitzman interviews 50 physicians with cancer, HIV and other conditions who typically have as hard a time as their patients do in dealing with illness and the doctor-patient relationship, though for different reasons. Klitzman, a Columbia University psychiatrist who became depressed after his sister was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, finds that most of his subjects seem to have become more empathetic to their patients, more willing to take a "we’’re all in this together" attitude toward treatment and make more of an effort to reduce patients’’ anxiety.
2/20/2008	Health care disconnectI've decided to call a meeting of my personal medical staff, all of whom I have seen recently, but never in a group. When I've got them together, I will ask the three key questions of this nation's — as well as my own — health crisis …In an excellent new book, When Doctors Become Patients, Dr. Robert Klitzman interviews 50 physicians with cancer, HIV and other conditions who typically have as hard a time as their patients do in dealing with illness and the doctor-patient relationship, though for different reasons. Klitzman, a Columbia University psychiatrist who became depressed after his sister was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, finds that most of his subjects seem to have become more empathetic to their patients, more willing to take a "we're all in this together" attitude toward treatment and make more of an effort to reduce patients' anxiety.
2/14/2008	Second Opinions, Through a Patient’s Eyes Second opinions have undoubtedly saved many lives and are likely to gain in importance with the growing public focus on medical errors. But they can be awkward for doctor and patient, and surprisingly little is known about them. Dr. Robert Klitzman is a psychiatrist at the Columbia University Medical Center and the author, most recently, of “When Doctors Become Patients.”
2/13/2008	LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Anxiety and Me As an O.C.D. researcher, I would like to highlight two points. First, while people with O.C.D. may experience obsessive fears in restaurants, this is usually just the tip of the iceberg. O.C.D. typically disrupts work, home and social functioning and produces great suffering. Second, although the writer benefited from medications and exposure therapy (our two best treatments), many O.C.D. patients achieve only partial relief. We are working to improve current treatments and to develop new ones based on an understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying O.C.D. With the help of patients who participate in research, we hope one day to have treatment strategies that will enable many more people with O.C.D. to lead productive and satisfying lives, which may of course include dining out. H. Blair Simpson, New York Dr. Simpson is director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic and the O.C.D. Research Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
2/11/2008	When Mixing Medications Can Be Deadly Actor Heath Ledger's death from a combination of prescription painkillers and sedatives underscores the potential dangers of mixing medicines at a time when medication use is rampant in the U.S. Consumers should always keep a complete list of medications and give them to each doctor they have. Tracking the name and number of the doctor who did the prescribing is important as well, because any conflicting information can be resolved by calling the prescribing physician from the other doctor's office, says Steven Roose, professor of clinical psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
2/11/2008	Making Sense of the Great Suicide Debate After a years-long debate about whether antidepressant drugs like Prozac and Paxil increase the risk of suicide in some people, the Food and Drug Administration in recent days reported that other drugs, including medications used to treat epilepsy, also appear to increase the remote risk of suicide. The agency has been evaluating suicide risk in a variety of medicines, and more such reports — and more headlines — are expected... In a paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association last year, the psychiatrists Dr. Donald Klein of Columbia University and Dr. Charles O’Brien of the University of Pennsylvania argued that the best way to study the risk of rare side effects was to establish large, linked databases of patients, including medical records and prescription histories. Such a system could be created in the United States in a short time, they wrote, but “the possibility has received almost no public discussion or legislative attention.”
2/6/2008	Lilly’’s Monthly Zyprexa Causes Sleepiness, FDA Says Eli Lilly & Co’’s once-a-month version of its top-selling antipsychotic medicine Zyprexa, while effective, has risks that include excessive sleepiness, U.S. regulators said. … ‘There’’s a huge demand,” said Jeffrey Lieberman, the chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York in a telephone interview. “Even though this is a long-acting form of an existing drug, it’’s a significant event for the simple reason that the biggest trouble with treating people with antipsychotics is adherence to treatment.”
2/6/2008	Addiction may be linked to hunger People whose mothers lived through a famine during their first trimester of pregnancy appear to have a greater risk of addiction, according to a new study, the first to examine that connection. Exposure to famine in the first trimester "not only affects what's going on at that time in the brain, but it has downstream effects," says Alan Brown, an associate professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University. Brown has co-written several studies about the link between exposure to the Dutch famine in the second and third trimester and major affective disorders, which include depression and bipolar disorder
2/6/2008	Brain Region That Can Be Stimulated To Reduce The Cognitive Deficits Of Sleep Deprivation Identified A Columbia University Medical Center research team has uncovered how stimulation of a particular brain region can help stave off the deficits in working memory, associated with an extended sleep deprivation. "We are excited about the possibilities of using brain stimulation to improve cognitive function," said Bruce Luber, Ph.D., lead author of the paper and an instructor in clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute "In this research, we were able to non-invasively manipulate a brain network identified by imaging to partially remediate the effects of sleep deprivation using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which has already shown promise in treating depression and other disorders," said Sarah H. Lisanby, M.D., senior author of the study and associate professor of clinical psychiatry and chief of the Brain Stimulation and Therapeutic Modulation Division, at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "These findings have important implications for better understanding the neural bases of cognitive decline in the elderly. And the rTMS used in this study may potentially be useful in exploring and treating cognitive deficits due to aging and neuropathology in general," said Yaakov Stern, Ph.D., a professor of clinical neuropsychology in neurology and psychiatry at the Taub Institute for the Research on Alzheimer’’s Disease and the Aging Brain and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Stern was principal investigator of the DARPA grant.
2/1/2008	People With Mental Illness Target of New Gun LawPaul Appelbaum, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and chair of APA’’s Council on Psychiatry and Law, said that a fully funded Virginia background check that looked for involuntary psychiatric care before the gun sales to the Tech shooter and the reporting of his outpatient care by state officials might have kept him from buying his weapons. "But he could have easily gotten them through other means," such as private sales and gun-show sales, which are unregulated by the background-check system, said Appelbaum, a former APA president.
2/1/2008	The latest news on treatment and diagnosisThough they may live in dread of it, most people will never develop it. "There’’s a 10 to 15 percent chance, if you live a normal life [span], you’’ll develop Alzheimer’’s disease," says Norman Relkin, associate professor of clinical neurology and neuroscience at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College. … Of course, until scientists find a treatment, early diagnosis may be more disturbing than enlightening. "The push for early diagnosis," says Columbia University’’s Yaakov Stern, "is predicated on the idea that we’’ll have something to do about [the disease] when we find it."
1/25/2008	Exercise to battle depressionIn a 2000 study, Duke University researchers pitted exercise against the popular antidepressant Zoloft. Exercise won. Patients with major depression found that brisk walking, stationary bike riding or jogging for 45 minutes a day, three days a week, lessened or removed symptoms and better prevented relapse. "Exercise helps people think more clearly, change focus from negative thoughts and feel better emotionally at virtually no cost," said Dr. Jonathan W. Stewart, co-director of depression studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University.
1/25/2008	Physicians Shouldn’t Be Involved in Executions By Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky case challenging current practices regarding lethal injection—the modality of death in almost all of the 38 states that allow capital punishment. The decision, expected by June, is likely to focus on the narrow question of the proper standard for assessing whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. However, as the case turns out, one of the most troubling aspects of lethal injection will remain at issue: the involvement of physicians in the process of execution.
1/24/2008	Pet Cat Parasite Linked to Schizophrenia Risk Stronger evidence between infection with Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan parasite carried by pet cats, and the subsequent onset of schizophrenia was reported by military physicians. In a case-control study, antibodies to T. gondii were associated with a 26% increase in the risk of schizophrenia, according to David Niebuhr, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and colleagues. One implication of the data is that the T. gondii infection may precede schizophrenia, said co-author Robert Yolken, M.D., of Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "With our current study, we were able to show that infection came first," he said. But the time course is not consistent, pointed out Alan Brown, M.D., of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia in an accompanying editorial, because "no increased risk of schizophrenia was observed for other intervals of time prior to diagnosis."
1/24/2008	FDA to Require Suicide Studies in Drug Trials After decades of inattention to the possible psychiatric side effects of experimental medicines, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring drug makers to study closely whether patients become suicidal during clinical trials. The seeds for the new federal effort were planted four years ago with the discovery that antidepressants may cause some children and teenagers to become suicidal. Top agency officials at first discounted the finding but commissioned researchers from Columbia University’’s department of psychiatry, led by Kelly Posner, to reanalyze the drugs’’ clinical trials. This work caused the drug agency and its experts to view the risk as real.
1/24/2008	Unravelling the suicide clusters The self-inflicted deaths of seven young people in a south Wales town within the last 12 months has led to speculation that police might be dealing with what experts term a suicide "cluster"... Cluster suicides are still little understood by the experts - but the first comprehensive study is now being led by American psychologist Professor Madelyn Gould of Columbia University. "What we are finding is that victims of cluster suicides are usually not best friends, but they know each other, or have heard of each other," says Professor Gould.
1/22/2008	Doctors use placebos but don’’t tell patients Nearly half of physicians use placebos in clinical care, and only 4% tell their patients the truth about it, according to a survey of Chicago academic physicians that was published this month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Only 8% of the 231 physicians surveyed used placebos more than 10 times during the last year, but experts were alarmed by doctors’’ self-reported, less-than-straightforward conversations with patients about placebos. The study is troubling because deceptive use of placebos is "inconsistent with what we now understand as the rights of patients to decide on treatment in a knowledgeable way and the duties of physicians to disclose to patients the treatments that they are providing," said Paul S. Appelbaum, MD, director of the division of psychiatry, law and ethics in the psychiatry department of Columbia University College of Surgeons.
1/22/2008	Health Watch: Combination Depression TreatmentsDr. McGrath ran a pilot study with 30 patients, giving them a combination of lexapro and wellbutrin, two well-known anti-depression drugs that work in different ways. "Not only did we get about twice as many people better on the combination, but the people who got better, got better much faster. Half of the people who recovered, recovered within the first two weeks of the study, which was unheard of in previous studies," Dr. McGrath said
1/18/2008	Antidepressant Studies Unpublished The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found. Dr. Donald F. Klein, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Columbia, said drug makers were not the only ones who can be reluctant to publish unconvincing results. Journals, and study authors, too, may drop studies that are underwhelming. “If it’s your private data, and you don’t like how it came out, well, we shouldn’t be surprised that some doctors don’t submit those studies,” he said.
1/15/2008	Annals of Filicide: An Alabama man is accused of killing his four young children. What causes parents to murder their young? In the annals of crime, this one appeared particularly horrific: Lam Luong, a 37-year-old shrimp fisherman, accused of throwing his four young children, two boys and two girls, all under the age of 3, off a bridge near Mobile, Ala. to their deaths. ... Dr. Paul Appelbaum is a professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and the author of "The Clinical Handbook of Psychiatry and the Law." He spoke to NEWSWEEK’’s Raina Kelley about why parents kill their kids and the motivational differences when mothers and fathers commit these types of crimes.
1/14/2008	Are You Getting Enough Light This Winter?Rain, gloom, days that just feel much shorter. It's just part of winter in the northeast and it may be making it harder for you to get up on gloomy mornings like today. Or maybe you're up and still have no energy, or you're simply feeling blue. "This is something that will last and not show an upswing until the middle of March, and won't be completely gone until May," says Dr. Michael Terman of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
1/9/2008