News Archive 10/8/2010 Gay Kids and Bullying’’s Deadly TollTeens "are very prone to take things to an extreme," [Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia Psychiatry] told ABC News. 10/8/2010 Bullying Can Follow Kids Into Adulthood says Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman ...it can be harder to shake off the negativity of the bullying experience, even in adulthood, said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, 10/1/2010 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Talks to PBS About Rutgers Student's SuicideJeffrey Lieberman, MD, Chairman of Columbia Psychiatry comments on the sometimes devastating consequences of cyber bullying. 9/30/2010 Student is Humiliated Online Then Commits Suicide Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman talks to ABC about the likely trauma the student experienced and why it prompted his suicide. 9/23/2010 Dr. Anne Marie Albano Talks About School Refusal...for some kids, the prospect of school produces a level of fear so intense that it is immobilizing, resulting in what’’s known as school-refusal behavior. 9/23/2010 Dr. Jimmy Choi Investigates Whether Games Keep Dementia at Bay...a combination of brain training, physical exercise and volunteer work will produce a more significant improvement than any program using computer games alone. 9/20/2010 Student Suicides Bring Bullying to Forefront What's not so clear is whether bullying also leads to the underlying problems or whether they set the stage for being bullied [said Dr. Madelyn Gould]. 9/15/2010 Columbia Psychiatry Expert Pens New Book w/College Students in Mind ...many college students find themselves facing stress or unhappiness they didn’’t expect, from sources that may be totally new -- and they may not realize just how normal that is. 9/14/2010 New Study Finds Infant Birth Weight Linked to Mental Illness RiskThis finding comes from a recent study conducted by Dr. Kathryn Abel and a team of researchers affiliated with...Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute... 9/4/2010 Dr. Yaakov Stern on NPR: Distressing News About DementiaWhen it comes to staving off dementia, new evidence suggests that the "use it or lose it" dictum holds true — at least for a while. 9/2/2010 Mark Olfson's Study of Antipsychotics Brought to Life in Child's OrdealAt 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’’s severe temper tantrums…. 9/2/2010 Gunman James Lee's Possible Diagnosis: Paranoid Schizophrenia "He clearly had paranoid delusions or perceptions, and he was clearly psychotic," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman of the gunman who took hostages at Discovery offices. 8/31/2010 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Talks to CBS About Chilean Miners' State of Mind Upbeat attitude will change as rescue efforts drag on. 8/26/2010 The Forgotten Patient: Dr. Barbara Stanley on Suicide Research Trials in at-risk patients would cost millions of dollars and could take years to perform; they might yield murky results--or worse... 8/18/2010 John/Joan - The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl Dr. Heino Meyer-Bahlburg of Columbia Psyciatry Gives Historical Perspective 8/16/2010 Medical Treatment Carries Possible Side Effect of Limiting Homosexuality There have been only a few hundred cases of prenatal dexamethasone treatment in the world. But the emerging data on those cases have captured researchers' and activists' attention. 8/16/2010 Why We Snap: Dr. Phillip Muskin Comments on Fed Up Flight Attendant“Thresholds vary from one person to the next, but everyone has a breaking point,” says Philip Muskin, MD, professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. 8/9/2010 Letters to the Editor: Excess Radiation from CT ScansYour article about CT brain perfusion scans was comprehensive and eye-opening. ... wrote Steven S. Simring of Columbia Psychiatry and the NYS Psychiatric Institute 7/28/2010 Female Condoms Pushed in DC to Fight HIV Using the female condom can be tricky, but studies suggest that promoting the female condom alongside the male condom increases overall use. 7/27/2010 In Family's Death, Trying to Fathom the Unfathomable "The statistics would suggest there was probably family discord, disorganization, chaos — strife between family members and within this boy,” said Bradley Peterson, of Columbia [Psychiatry]. 7/22/2010 The Disordered Brain - Charlie Rose Brain Series Episode Ten of the Charlie Rose Brain Series, a conversation about neurological disorders with... John Krakauer of Columbia University, and Eric Kandel of Columbia University. 7/22/2010 Educators, Police Work to End Child Suicide Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15- to 19-year-olds -- a statistic that was enough to prompt the Baltimore County Police Department to promote prevention. 7/21/2010 Dr. Anne Marie Albano Discusses Anxiety Disorder in Children and Adolescents There are certain types that are typical of certain ages and stages. Infants might fear sepration and strangers. As the child is moving towards 4 and 5 years of age, they start to fear small animals... 7/20/2010 Don’’t Miss Charlie Rose Brain Series w/Co-Host Eric Kandel TONIGHT Episode 10: The Disordered Brain will be broadcast Thursday, July 22 at 11PM (EST) on PBS. 7/16/2010 Leonard Lopate Show: Please Explain - Lyme DiseaseDr. Brian Fallon makes a guest appearance on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show on July 16 to discuss Lyme disease. 7/16/2010 New Study Shows Newborns Learning While They Sleep[Dr. William Fifer of Columbia Psychiatry is] trying to determine how much newborns absorb from their surroundings -- even though they sleep 90 percent of the time. 7/14/2010 Vitamin D, Exercise: Big Factors in Keeping Alzheimer's at Bay "That seems to be as good as anything" for preventing dementia, said Dr. Richard Mayeux, a Columbia University neurologist and conference leader. 7/14/2010 Eating to Live or Living to Eat?...researchers from Columbia University in New York showed pictures of cake, pies, french fries and other high-calorie foods to 10 obese women and 10 non-obese women and monitored their brain reactions on fMRI scans 7/13/2010 Can Artwork Influence Suicidal Thoughts?...having an image of someone with a gun to his head is problematic and could be inviting suicidal behavior, said Madelyn Gould, a psychiatrist at Columbia University. 7/1/2010 How Safe is Pregnancy After Menopause? "We didn’’t evolve to have kids in our 50s and 60’’s..." said Dr. Robert Klitzman of Columbia Psychiatry. 6/25/2010 Drs. Lieberman and Kandel on Charlie Rose Brain Series Episode Nine On Episode Nine of the Charlie Rose Brain Series, a discussion of mental illness... 6/25/2010 Should Joints Be In the Medicine Cabinet? Herbert Kleber of Columbia Psychiatry argues that marijuana is a very potent drug with many side-effects... "The joint you buy today may be half the potency or twice the potency of the one you buy tomorrow." 6/25/2010 Healthy Living From 13 to 18 - Newsweek"These teens get off track just at the point in time when most youngsters are developing the skills they need to be successful adults," says Laurie Flynn of Columbia University’’s TeenScreen program... 6/22/2010 Leonard Lopate Show: Ethical Implications of HIV/AIDS Dr. Robert Klitzman: How do we balance public health with individual civil liberties and rights? 6/18/2010 New Treatment May Help Patients with Tourettes Comfort is taking part in a study of TMS for Tourettes being conducted at Yale University and at the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia Psychiatry. 6/14/2010 Tonight: Charlie Rose Brain Series, with co-host Eric Kandel Episode 9: The Mentally Ill Brain will be broadcast Tuesday, June 22 at 11PM (EST) on PBS. 6/13/2010 Dr. Myrna Weissman Interviewed: In Midlife, Boomers Are Happy - and Suicidal Myrna Weissman, an epidemiologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, believes that the baby boom generation has a higher incidence of depression than previous ones. 6/9/2010 New Study: Helping the Brain’s Messengers Get From A to BIn what has been hailed as a breakthrough, Dr. Jonathan Javitch and colleagues have outlined the molecular mechanism of membrane transport. 6/8/2010 Psychologist Alice Medalia on Treating a Contract KillerRead Dr. Medalia’’s essay in New York Magazine’’s Best Doctors Issue: My Toughest Case 6/7/2010 Consumer Reports Talk to Dr. Michael First: Talk therapy a good investmentTalk therapy offers two advantages over medication: no drug side effects and tools you can use for the long term. 6/7/2010 Spate of Suicides Sparks Search for AnswersPsychological autopsies - post-suicide studies of family members and peers - reveal that young people are more likely to confide in their friends. 6/3/2010 Watch Dr. Robert Klitzman on the Science Channel Tonight, June 3This exclusive one-hour special further explores important ethical, scientific and societal questions surrounding announcemen of the creation of the first living, self-replicating synthetic cell. 6/1/2010 Binge Eating Recommended as a Psychiatric Diagnosis; Obesity is Not "It's been problematic because it doesn't fit a lot of people -- women on birth control, girls who haven't started menstruating and boys and men," saidDr. B. Timothy Walsh... 5/26/2010 Dr. Eric Kandel on Charlie Rose Brain Series Episode Eight Episode Eight of the Charlie Rose Brain Series was broadcast Wednesday night, May 26 at 11 p.m. (EST) on WNET THIRTEEN in New York. 5/24/2010 Dr. Robert Klitzman Comments on Implications of Craig Venter's Creation of Synthetic Organisms Robert Klitzman, a bioethicist at Columbia University, says Venter is a little like Benjamin Franklin going out into a storm with a kite and a key to channel electricity from lightning. 5/20/2010 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Joins Expert Panel on Fox and FriendsDr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Chairman of Columbia Psychiatry and Director of the NYS Psychiatric Institute provided expert commentary on combat-related trauma and evidence of post-partum depression in men. 5/18/2010 Dr. Brad Peterson Comments on Research Linking Pesticides to ADHD in ChildrenWhile the study couldn’’t prove that pesticides used in agriculture contribute to childhood learning problems, experts said the research is persuasive. 5/17/2010 Dr.Robert Klitzman Writes About Informed ConsentHow much detail should physicians and researchers provide to "inform" patients without overwhelming them? How informed is "informed enough?" 5/13/2010 Keep Guns Off College Campuses "...while recent violent crimes on campus are troubling, colleges are actually extraordinarily safe places with the majority of experts espousing that the relative lack of guns is precisely what makes them havens ..." 5/11/2010 Suicide Prevention: Hopeful Not Futile “Depressed people who attempt suicide are different from those who do not. They need treatment for depression, but they also need therapy tailored to help with their suicidal thoughts and behaviors." 5/11/2010 The Devil is in the Details On Mental Health Parity Law - Laurie Flynn comments"The interim final rules that provide guidance on the implementation of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 are a vital advance in health policy." 5/10/2010 Children of Mean, Psychologically Abusive Mothers Suffer Well Into Adulthood “Neglect and emotional abuse are every bit as damaging as sexual abuse,” said Columbia Psychiatry expert Dr. Philip Muskin. 5/5/2010 Drugs & Depression on Advance for Nurses I’’ve seen a lot of people with dysthymia, which is a chronic form of low-level depression, respond very positively to antidepressant medications," [Donna Vermes] said. 5/5/2010 Magnet Treatment for Depression Works for Some[Dr. Sarah] Lisanby and colleagues signed up 190 people who had failed to get relief from at least one antidepressant medication; many had tried several different treatments. 5/4/2010 Latest Study Shows TMS Effective for Medication-Resistant Depression“The remission rates are similar to those previously reported with TMS. Replication of that earlier finding provides further evidence that the effect is real.” 5/2/2010 PTSD Diagnosis A Moving Target"We don’’t have a laboratory test for PTSD," says Bruce Dohrenwend, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Columbia University... 4/30/2010 Rosalynn Carter, Former First Lady, Official Book Launch Event TODAYFormer First Lady, Rosalynn Carter will introduce her new book WITHIN OUR REACH: Ending the Mental Health Crisis, on Monday, May 3rd. 4/29/2010 St. Vincent's Tragic, Undeserved End - OpEd by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman The demise of St. Vincent's Hospital is either a sign of the times in this era of health-care reform or a tragic consequence of our dysfunctional health-care financing system. 4/26/2010 Do Women Hate Their Bodies More Than Men Do? Dr. Rachel Marsh in Newsweek"We know there is a familial component," Marsh says. "Daughters of bulimic mothers are more likely to develop bulimia than others..." 4/25/2010 Death Panels and Dignity, and You by Robert Klitzman To expose our vulnerabilities is not easy. The topic of dying makes us all uncomfortable. 4/22/2010 Study Finds Children of Suicide More Likely to Take Own LivesPoet John Berryman. Sylvia Plath’’s son, Nicholas Hughes. These are prominent examples of people who whose parents died by suicide when they were children and also took their own lives as adults. 4/21/2010 A Mother Grieves by Making a Film About Bulimia The film, called “Someday Melissa” and now in the editing stages, has become for Ms. Avrin salve, distraction and cause — a way to get the word out to other families grappling with eating disorders that they are not alone... 4/20/2010 Teen Bullying Can Be Red Flag for Depression "If you are vulnerable and being bullied, it can be the straw that breaks the camel’’s back," said Madelyn S. Gold... 4/20/2010 Sleeping (or Not) by the Wrong Clock: Michael Terman Blogs With light and melatonin therapies, we can shift the internal night into congruence with local time and the workday schedule... 4/13/2010 Gulf War Syndrome is Real, But Causes Unclear Dr. Ezra S. Susser of Columbia [Psychiatry] in New York City noted that symptoms observed among Gulf War veterans are "clearly deployment-related." 4/12/2010 Eating Disorder Label Leaves Many Untreated...roughly two-thirds of all people diagnosed with an eating disorder – fall into the hazy category known as "eating disorder, not otherwise specified"... 4/12/2010 Suicide risk no different between antidepressants"The new study includes a far wider range of antidepressants than were included in earlier studies," said psychiatrist Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University. 4/11/2010 Will the Female Condom Ever Catch On? General consensus among...experts is that the female condom has been stigmatized not only because of its initial negative impression, but also because it is often targeted at high-risk populations [like] sex workers. 4/9/2010 The Rise of Hypochondria: Dr. Brian Fallon Talks to Parade MagazineFor tens of thousands of Americans who suffer from hypochondria, every headache is a brain tumor and a simple cold spells cancer... 4/6/2010 Prescription Drug Addiction in Hollywood and in Your HomeDr. [Herbert] Kleber also pointed out that only "a small part of the prescription opioid abuse problem is a result of physicians. Other sources include home medicine cabinets, nursing homes..." 4/2/2010 Columbia Psychiatry Prog Gets $500G to Treat NYPD 9/11 RespondersThe money will go to Project COPE, a free and confidential program run by the NYC Police Foundation and Columbia University Medical Center. … 3/31/2010 Disruption in Brain Connection Linked to Genetic Defect in Schizophrenia Joshua Gordon and colleagues at Columbia Psychiatry show how a genetic variant may lead to schizophrenia by causing a disruption in communication between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex regions of the brain... 3/25/2010 Letters to the Editor: Suicide Among the Young - How to Try to Prevent It Maria A. Oquendo … The writer is a professor of clinical psychiatry and vice chairwoman for education in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University. 3/23/2010 Psychologists: Memorials Can Trigger More Suicides Researchers have found that suicide can, in effect, be contagious, creating clusters of people taking their own lives in close proximity within a few months. 3/22/2010 Watch Eric Kandel on Charlie Rose Brain Series, March 25 Episode 6: The Aging Brain will be broadcast Thursday, March 25 at 11PM (EST) on PBS 3/19/2010 Dr. Daniel Seidman Sends An Open Letter to President Obama on Smoking People talk about the power of cigarettes, how hard they are to give up, but they don't talk about what really makes them powerful, which is the most interesting part. 3/15/2010 In This Economy, Keep Doing What You Love "We don’’t know whether increasing positive affect would protect against heart disease," she says. 3/14/2010 Happier News for Those Suffering from SAD "There’’s nothing to joke about, depression," Dr. Terman said. "It’’s a miserable experience for these people for up to five months each year." 3/10/2010 Cocaine Vaccine May Not Be The Answer The good news is that the vaccine makes crack less pleasurable, notes Meg Haney of Columbia University, who led a 2010 vaccine study. 3/10/2010 Dr. Daniel Seidman Writes An Open Letter to President Obama on SmokingPeople talk about the power of cigarettes, how hard they are to give up, but they don’’t talk about what really makes them powerful, which is the most interesting part. 3/5/2010 Same-sex Marriage Ban Increases Anxiety: New Study by Deborah HasinU.S. researchers found an increase in psychiatric disorders among the lesbian, gay, bisexual population living in states that ban same-sex marriage. 3/4/2010 Celebrity Suicides Raise Questions on Antidepressants Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, [Director] of the [NY State] Psychiatric Institute, feels that antidepressants are impacting the suicide rate for the better. 3/3/2010 Why Psychiatry Needs Therapy: Dr. Robert Spitzer Talks to the Wall Street JournalIt [DSM] was largely the brainchild of Columbia University psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, an energetic and charismatic individual who had been schooled in psychometrics. 3/1/2010 The New Yorker Celebrates 85th Year - Spotlights Oliver Sacks In 1993, Oliver Sacks wrote, “A neurologist’s life is not systematic, like a scientist’s, but it provides him with novel and unexpected situations, which can become windows, peepholes, into the intricacy of nature..." 3/1/2010 American Medical News Reports on DSM Changes"A major focus turned out to be ... clinical utility and validity. How do we assure that the criteria is as clinically useful as we can make it?" 2/25/2010 Dr. Madelyn Gould Advises Santa Barbara on "Suicide Spike"I found out about Madelyn Gould [the expert on suicide clustering], and called her and she started tutoring me. 2/25/2010 Dr. Eric Kandel on Charlie Rose Brain Series Episode FiveOn episode five of the Charlie Rose Brain Series, a discussion of the developing brain... 2/25/2010 Is Your Doctor Using a Checklist? by Drs. Lloyd Sederer and Jeffrey Lieberman Who can provide state of the art care and deliver complex treatments to numerous patients day after day without error? No one. It is simply not humanly possible to be error free. 2/24/2010 Healthy Sexual Appetite vs Addiction: Columbia Psychiatry Experts Comment "a couple in love, floating five feet off the ground, having frequent sex” is different from a patient unable to stop watching pornography at work. 2/23/2010 Could Acupuncture Help Ease Depression in Pregnancy?"Remission is a more stringent criterion of treatment effectiveness, suggesting here that the active acupuncture did not really differ from the sham technique or massage," according to Dr. Philip Muskin... 2/22/2010 Googling Your Way Back to Health: Dr. Robert KlitzmanA lot of mental health sites focus solely on depression, but WebMD.com gives good background on everything from stress management to ADHD. 2/22/2010 Child Psychiatric Diagnosis on TrialDavid Shaffer of Columbia University in New York, who chairs the APA working group that proposed the new TDD definition, argues that it has been carefully defined to focus on children with especially severe outbursts. 2/11/2010 Dr. Michael First Talks ABout Proposed Changes to Psychiatric Manual“What you call something has a huge implication. Certainly the names have treatments associated with them, certain levels of stigma, so the name is extremely important..." 2/11/2010 Dr. Michael First Talks to WNYC About Proposed Changes to Psychiatric Manual“What you call something has a huge implication. Certainly the names have treatments associated with them, certain levels of stigma, so the name is extremely important..." 2/10/2010 Children Labeled "Bipolar" May Get a New Diagnosis The condition will be called temper dysregulation disorder, and it will be seen as a brain or biological dysfunction, but not as a necessarily lifelong condition like bipolar. 2/10/2010 Columbia Psychiatry Experts Discuss DSM and Disorders Like Binge Eating Far fewer children would get a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. “Binge eating disorder” and “hypersexuality” might become part of the everyday language. 2/2/2010 A Doctor Disagrees - Dr. Robert Klitzman in NewsweekAntidepressants Have Helped Not Only My Patients, But Myself, writes Dr. Klitzman 2/2/2010 Study of Fish Oils Shows Benefit in Prevention of Psychosis "If it works, it will be an absolutely tremendous development," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman... 1/20/2010 Dr. Margaret Haney Talks to Wall St Journal About Medical Marijuana Long-term marijuana use can lead to physical dependence, though it is not as addictive as nicotine or alcohol, says Margaret Haney... 1/20/2010 Dr. Timothy Walsh on Narrowing an Eating Disorders Label … In the current...Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it [the diagnosis of “eating disorder not otherwise specified,” ...] encompasses virtually every type of eating problem that is not anorexia or bulimia... 1/15/2010 Dr. Rene Hen: Why Antidepressants Often FailAntidepressants fail to help about half of the people who take them, and a [new] study [by Dr. Rene Hen at Columbia Psychiatry] may help explain why. 1/12/2010 Dr. Daniel Seidman Tells Wall St. Journal About Strategies for Quitting Smoking For most smokers, the desire to smoke is a complex mix of physical addiction, behavioral conditioning and psychological factors, says Daniel F. Seidman... 1/12/2010 Dr. DP Devanand Talks to Healthday About Antipsychotic Use in Nursing Homes "The only medications that have been shown to work are antipsychotics, but the problem is they have side effects so you get into a situation where it may work in some patients but it may cause some significant side effects in some patients... 1/11/2010 Herbert Spiegel, Doctor Who Popularized Hypnosis, Dies "...He really took the techniques out of the dark alleys, out of Hollywood and the world of the circus, and moved them into mainstream medicine.” 1/7/2010 Don't Throw Out Your Meds Just Yet says Dr. David Hellerstein...the findings aren’t comprehensive enough to indicate whether doctors should continue to prescribe antidepressants to people with mild or moderate depressive symptoms. 1/7/2010 David Hellerstein Advices Caution Re Study on Benefits of Antidepressants People on antidepressants should not stop taking them based on these new findings, Hellerstein adds. "Don’’t do anything rash, and talk to your doctor if you think this is relevant to you," he says. 1/5/2010 Cocaine Vaccine Does Not Fully Blunt Cravings [Margaret] Haney [of Columbia Psychiatry] has been studying pharmacological treatment for cocaine addiction for 15 years.She was surprised by how effective the medication was in blocking cocaine’’s effects. 1/5/2010 FDA Looks At ECT Reclassification In April 2009, the FDA issued an order to require manufacturers of devices that had not been formally reviewed, including ECT devices, to submit clinical data to support the products’’ efficacy and safety. 1/5/2010 Mark Olfson Reacts to Study on Ethnic & Racial Minorities Going W/O Treatment for DepressionThis study draws attention to the extent to which adults, "especially ethnic and racial minorities, particularly Mexican Americans, who have major depression aren’’t receiving guideline-based treatments... 1/4/2010 Columbia Psychiatry Study Finds Danger in Sleep Deprivation...researchers recently published a report showing that sleep deprivation may have detrimental effects on students’ mental health. 12/29/2009 Eric Marcus and Other Experts Offer Advice on Leaving the Stress Behind This Season "During the holidays, our lives become even more stressful as we try to juggle our usual responsibilities with extra holiday preparation and complicated family dynamics," 12/29/2009 Dr. Eric Kandel Co-Hosts Charlie Rose Brain Series Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel makes his 11th appearance on the Charlie Rose show to co-host a series on how the brain controls movement. 12/21/2009 Dr. Gail Wasserman Comments on Texas Policy re: Mentally Ill Juveniles...youths in Texas who are serving indeterminate sentences and who have completed their minimum required time in custody are released to parents or guardians. 12/16/2009 Dr. Madelyn Gould Sheds Light On Suicide Clusters The most distinctive feature of suicide clusters is that the victims are teens... They are “intensely focused on other teenagers,” she said, and imitate their peers in what is known as “social modeling.” 12/14/2009 Columbia Study Finds Poor Children More Likely to Get Antipsychotics Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatry professor at Columbia and a co-author of the study, said at least one thing was clear: “A lot of these kids are not getting other mental health services.” 12/8/2009 Joseph Califano On Treatment for Substance Abuse: NYTimes Story on New Drug Czar“I can tell a state legislator that if you would only provide treatment for these guys, we’d have the greatest reduction in crime,” said Joseph A. Califano Jr. of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. 12/7/2009 The Outlook, Premier Center for Eating Disorders, Opens in WestchesterThe Outlook, as its name implies, will, “allow patients to do the hard psychological work of shifting their views” about their diagnosis and taking the necessary steps towards recovery, noted Dr. Evelyn Attia. 12/4/2009 Drs. Appelbaum and Klitzman Share Findings Re Participation in Research The researchers said their goal was to identify any constraints participants believed limited their capacity to make a choice about participation. 12/4/2009 Wall St. Journal Talks to Dr. Michael Terman About Winter Blues"Most people with winter depression blame themselves, or attribute it to something else—to not liking the cold or bad family experiences at Christmas time, or school or work stress," says Michael Terman... 11/30/2009 Madelyn Gould Comments on Suicide in a California Town..school, social stress, romantic problems or even having a classmate who died by suicide are rarely big enough triggers alone to cause a teenager to end his or her life, said Madeline Gould... 11/30/2009 Dr. Timothy Walsh on Defining Binge Eating Disorder: LA Times "We shouldn’’t be so conservative that we leave half the people with eating disorders with no effective labels" to help define their affliction and guide their treatment, says Columbia University psychiatrist B. Timothy Walsh, who chairs the American Psychiatric Assn.’’s work group on eating disorders. 11/30/2009 Dr. Madelyn Gould Talks to NPR About Suicide Coverage in Media “Suicides following the exposure to someone’s death by suicide, was about two to four times higher among 15- to 19-year-olds than [in] other age groups,” Gould says. 11/25/2009 Is Binge Eating a Psychiatric Disorder? Dr. Timothy Walsh Responds"But just because a system can be abused doesn't mean the system is flawed. We have to try to draw lines when we have reasonable confidence we're describing a group of folks who are struggling with impairment." 11/18/2009 In NYTimes Interview Dr. Yuval Neria Comments on Effects of Terror Trial on NYers "...while the trial could be cathartic for some, "for others, it will be brutally painful," Neria said. 11/10/2009 Dr. Mark Olfson and the Dangers of Over-Prescribing Antipsychotics "A concern that arises when you have someone seeing an inordinate number of patients is: Do they have time to care for people?" said Olfson, who specializes in psychiatric practices. 11/10/2009 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Joins Panel on CNN re: Stress and Military Personnel "This incident is tragic, but replete with ironies," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Chairman of Columbia Psychiatry. 11/9/2009 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Comments on Fort Hood Shooter “Mass shooters are impelled by a mental disorder, revenge, some type of ideological motivation or even perversion,” said Dr. Lieberman 11/9/2009 Dr. Sarah Lisanby Discusses Alternatives to Antidepressants ECT, which has been controversial since the days when it was performed without anesthesia and sometimes without proper consent, has evolved considerably in recent years... 11/6/2009 Dr. John Mann Joins Congress in Addressing Stressors Facing Soldiers Suicide in the armed forces has risen sharply in recent years to rates equal to those in comparable, demographically adjusted civilian populations, prompting a $60 million study of suicidality in the Army and Marines... 11/4/2009 Dr. Kelly Posner on Student Suicide and College Depression "Forty-nine percent of college students say they’’’’ve been so depressed at any one time that they have trouble functioning..." 11/2/2009 Suicide Expert Madelyn Gould Reacts to Teen Suicides in CA "These poor kids died from an untreated psychiatric illness, or undertreated. It's not as if it's a mysterious thing and it's not as if it's not preventable," ... 10/29/2009 CATIE Study Leader Jeffrey Lieberman On New Study of Adverse Effects of Antipsychotics "Calls for regular monitoring of weight and metabolic parameters in children and youth and others early in the course of antipsychotic treatment are clearly warranted." 10/22/2009 Columbia Psychiatry Reports Important New Finding Re: Parkinson's An unprecedented worldwide study has clinched the case that the gene behind Gaucher disease, a rare neurological disorder, is also involved in Parkinson’’s disease. 10/21/2009 Dr. David Shaffer Comments on Suicide Contagion Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia Psychiatry and the New York State Psychiatric Institute agrees with Palo Alto police about not releasing much information to the media. 10/20/2009 Dr. Elisabeth Guthrie on a Child’’s Ability to Distinguish Fantasy from Realty "An 8-year-old would be much better" at distinguishing reality, says Dr. Elisabeth Guthrie of Columbia Psychiatry. 10/20/2009 Dr. Paul Appelbaum Comments on the Criminally InsaneNo one compiles national statistics on such cases, or on how long people remain in custody, said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum of Columbia [Psychiatry] 10/17/2009 Research Begun at NYS Psychiatric Inst. Sheds Light on Infant LearningEarly in development infants of many species experience important transitions -- such as learning when to leave the protective presence of their mother to start exploring the wider world. 10/16/2009 Columbia Psychiatry's Michael Terman: Let There Be LightSAD, also known as seasonal depression or winter depression, begins affecting people in late fall and can last through early May; in accordance with the time of year when overall daylight is shortest. 10/16/2009 What Columbia Psychiatry’’s Richard Sloan Has in Common with Barbara Ehrenreich Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral psychology at Columbia, is a more recent member of the Negatives. He has written... about the absence of scientific evidence showing links between prayer and healing... 10/13/2009 Columbia Psychiatry Study of Flu & Depression Cited in Time Mag ArticlePerhaps the most commonly cited paper is one by researchers at Columbia University, which associated a mother’’s influenza with her child’’s risk of mental illness. 10/9/2009 Psychologist Walter Mischel Welcomes Critical Look at TherapyWhen we're battling psychological problems and go see a therapist for treatment, we tend to trust that it's doing us good. But should we? 10/8/2009 Dr. Margaret Spinelli on Treating Depression in Pregnant Women: Times Health Blog Although this treatment [IPT] is not for all depressed women, it should be considered when making a decision about the risk of illness vs. the risk of treatment. 10/8/2009 Higher Autism Rates? Columbia Psychiatry Expert Says Genetics One Cause"Autism is probably caused by many, many things, most of them genetic...," said mitochondrial expert Salvatore DiMauro...and the author of a study of autistic individuals with mitochondrial disease. 10/2/2009 Rates of Dementia & Ex-NFL Players: Columbia Psychiatry Expert Weighs In "The most important thing it tells us is that additional studies need to be performed, and I would say, urgently," he said. "This is not a trivial matter." 9/29/2009 After a Death, An Extreme Form of GrievingFor some people... grieving becomes what Dr. M. Katherine Shear, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia, calls “a loop of suffering.” 9/28/2009 Baby Boomers: Depression’’s TollDr. Myrna Weissman of Columbia Psychiatry said that starting about 20 years ago researchers noticed a higher rate of depression in boomers than the previous generation at that age. 9/25/2009 Sleep Deprivation Might Lead to Alzheimer’’sDr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, an associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, said the findings are "very impressive, extremely valid and useful." 9/22/2009 Drinking in Adolescence May Lead to Risky Choices LaterIt’’s well known that people under the influence of alcohol or drugs take bigger risks, said Dr. Adam Bisaga of Columbia Psychiatry. 9/21/2009 Tinkering With Opiod Pills to Stop Their Abuse...opioid abuse might be diminished if there were national standards on how to dispose of unused pills, said Sandra Comer... 9/21/2009 Patients in Vegetative State Can Learn, Predicting Recovery In patients who have survived severe brain damage, judging the level of actual awareness has proved a difficult process. And the prognosis can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. 9/14/2009 1 in 10 Americans Taking Antidepressants An estimated 27 million U.S. people ages 6 and older were taking the drugs by 2005, while their use of psychotherapy declined, according to Columbia Psychiatry researchers. 9/11/2009 Columbia Psychiatry: Schizophrenia & Early Detection"Right now, the odds of knowing who will go on to develop schizophrenia from [early indications] is only a little better than a coin toss," 9/9/2009 Brain Defect Implicated in Early SchizophreniaIn the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of its kind, neurologists and psychiatrists at Columbia University have identified an area of the brain involved in the earliest stages of schizophrenia... 9/9/2009 Healing Post-Partum DepressionDr. Fitelson of Columbia Psychiatry says new mothers should receive counseling, advice on nutrition and awareness to signs of depression. 9/9/2009 Depression and Heart Disease May Prove Fatal"Because persistent depression increases mortality and decreases medication adherence, physicians need to aggressively treat depression and be diligent in promoting adherence to guideline cardiovascular drug therapy.” 9/2/2009 NOVA Investigates How Memory WorksNeurobiologists are honing in on how memories form, and then finding ways to erase them. Dr. Eric Kandel... is interviewed about how memories form... 9/1/2009 How to Help Your Depressed or Suicidal Teen Pre-teens and teenagers can be subject to serious depression and, if there is no intervention, some may even start thinking of suicide. 9/1/2009 Columbia Psychiatry Study Shows Link Between Teen Depression & Depression Later"The study findings emphasize the importance of providing needed assistance and support to youths who have two or more persistent symptoms of depression," said Dr. Johnson. 8/31/2009 Children Modeling Parents' Behavior When It Comes to Drugs & Alcohol Teenagers who see their parents get drunk are more likely to get drunk or use drugs, according to Columbia researchers. 8/28/2009 When the Patient is a VIP by Columbia Psychiatry’’s Robert KlitzmanWhile an overdose may have killed Mr. Jackson, I would argue that he suffered from another serious health problem. It’s called V.I.P. syndrome. 8/25/2009 Generics vs Brands: How it Plays Out in PracticeMedPage Today looks at the problems that can arise when generics are substituted for brand name products -- or when switches are made between generic drugs from different manufacturers. 8/24/2009 Please Explain: NeurofeedbackSarah Lisanby, M.D. of Columbia Psychiatry is interviewed about transcranial magnetic stimulation and other ways of modulating brain function to study and treat psychiatric disorders. 8/21/2009 Army, NIMH Search for Causes of Soldier Suicide Crisis Columbia University’’s J. John Mann, MD, has extensively studied the neurobiology of suicide and the use of the psychological autopsy to examine factors leading up to the event. 8/21/2009 Virginia Tech: Evaluations Found No Homicidal Risk "There is nothing in these records that show just how troubled he would become...just 16 months later," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum of Columbia University, who was not involved in the investigation. 8/18/2009 Antidepressant Rx Rates in Some States Surpass National Average Much of the American South is ailing, with West Virginia the worst off--at least, if the rate of prescription drug use is any indication. 8/18/2009 Sports Announcer Speaks Frankly About His Depression ...a Columbia [Psychiatry] study published earlier this month found that use of [antideperessants]doubled between 1996 and 2005. And yet depression remains widely stigmatized. 8/18/2009 New Columbia Study Shows Fish is Brain FoodLots of exercise, combined with eating a diet rich in fish, fruits and vegetables, may lower a person’’s chance of developing Alzheimer’’s disease... 8/12/2009 Dementia Studies Find that Diet and Exercise MatterIn the Columbia research, those who adhered most closely to the diet reduced their risk for Alzheimer’’s by 40%, while those with the highest physical activity decreased their risk 33%... 8/11/2009 Do You Have Compassion Fatigue? What May HelpWhat happens when caregivers need care? The next time someone dreams up a new superhero, she should be wielding a bedpan. And Kleenex. 8/7/2009 Decreasing Stigma and Antidepressant Mis-Use Mark Olfson believes that those at risk for being inappropriately prescribed antidepressants are healthy people who function well day to day but develop some anxiety or depressed mood directly after a stressful event ... 8/6/2009 Does the Marijuana Pill Work?A pill known as Marinol has been legal and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use with a prescription anywhere in America since 1985. 8/5/2009 New Study Shows More Patients Mixed Antidepressants and Antipsychotics It isn’t clear from the data whether the rising trend reflects overmedication of people with depression, or whether they were previously undertreated, according to Mark Olfson of Columbia University [and the NYS Psychiatric Institute]. 8/4/2009 Antidepressant Use Rates Rise in US "Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] in New York. 7/24/2009 Schizophrenia Drug Faces Tough Challenge Fanapt would enter a “crowded field” of seven medications that work similarly, said Jeffrey Lieberman, of Columbia University in New York. 7/22/2009 Stem Cell Research: All Eyes Are On New York “Across the country, there’s been virtually no donation by women of eggs for research. The national guidelines recommend against compensating donors, and that has become the norm,” Klitzman says. 7/22/2009 Families Brace for Financial FalloutDr. Jeffrey Lieberman comments on whysome families are storing food for a potential economic collapse. 7/21/2009 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Leads Nationwide Effort to Develop Early Intervention for First Signs of Schizophrenia“This award will enable researchers to demonstrate how a strategically timed intervention at the onset of symptoms can prevent the debilitating effects of one of humankind’s most devastating and costly mental disorders,” says Dr. Lieberman... 7/21/2009 Is Alcohol Moderation Feasible For Gay Men?“It’s too socially debilitating to cut a gay man off from the bar and club scene,” said Jon Morgenstern, who is leading a study at Columbia . 7/20/2009 Controversy Infects Lyme Disease Treatment, Diagnosis Staff from the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center of the Columbia University Medical Center, offered free blood testing last week in Norwalk. The samples will be used in an ongoing study... 7/17/2009 We Mourn Michael Jackson So Deeply Because of his Demons; Op Ed by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Maybe some of our grief for, and connection with, Michael Jackson stems from what we see in our own families or in our own lives - a recognition of the private pain that many families have kept to themselves or suppressed. 7/16/2009 Columbia University Medical Center One of Four Sites to Lead Largest Ever Study of Suicide in the Military Four of the nation’s leading experts in suicide research, including Dr. John Mann of Columbia University Medical Center, will carry out the largest study of suicide and mental health among military personnel ever... 7/16/2009 Can Video Games Slow Mental Decline?"I think it is silly for someone to run out and buy a game with the hope that it is going to help them age better. There is no proof that it is going to be effective," says Columbia University neuropsychologist Yaakov Stern, who...is conducting a video game study of his own. 7/10/2009 Critics Argue Over Payment to Egg Donors for Stem Cell Research New York is now the first state in the country to use taxpayer dollars to pay women to donate their eggs for stem cell research. Dr. Robert Klitzman sits on the state’’s ethics board. 7/8/2009 Are You at Risk for Depression? Family History Holds the Key...there is a relatively easy way to figure out whether some young adults are at greater risk of psychiatric problems or drug abuse -- just ask about their family. 7/6/2009 FDA Committee Votes on Antipsychotic Use by Teens Laurence Greenhill, MD...urged the FDA to require a registry for the use of these antipsychotics in children and adolescents so that more long-term data on the safety and efficacy can be centrally collected and monitored. 7/2/2009 Oliver Sacks Book Inspiration for Musical Minds on PBSMusical Minds, the season premiere of Nova on PBS, is based on the neurologist Oliver Sacks’s most recent book, Musicophilia... 7/2/2009 Breathe in...Breathe outDr. Richard Brown, an integrative psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center, has been studying and teaching a variety of breathwork practices for years. 7/2/2009 Eric Kandel Shares His Views: A Biology of Mental DisorderUnderstanding the biology of mental illness would be a paradigm shift in our thinking about mind. 6/26/2009 New York State Allows Payment for Egg Donations for Research“What we’re doing is making it in some ways more reasonable for women who are interested in donating for research to do so,” said Dr. Robert Klitzman... 6/23/2009 Depression in Mothers and Children: Find Out More on YouTubeTo learn more about participating in a depression research study, contact 212-543-6659 or 212-543-4314. 6/22/2009 Kandel Honored at Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards Comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Nobel laureate Dr. Eric Kandel were among five notables honored last week at the eighth annual Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards... 6/17/2009 Report on Gene for Depression is Now Faulted “...it ignored extensive evidence from humans and animals linking excessive sensitivity to stress” to the serotonin gene, said Myrna Weissman of Columbia U. 6/17/2009 FDA questions heart risk findings on ADHD drugsMadelyn Gould, the lead author, said the researchers generally agreed with FDA statements and "didn’t want our findings to result in a change of parents or physicians’ attitudes about... 6/16/2009 Westinghouse Finalists: Where Are They Now? In the early 1970s Michael First's Philadelphia-area high school purchased some computer terminals and subscribed to a local time-sharing service. As a student there, he loved the challenge of trying to program on these early machines, and he hunted around for practical applications. 6/16/2009 Some of Our Best Top NY Magazine’’s List of This Year’’s BestAdult Psychiatry Paul Appelbaum, MD, Director of the Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry Evelyn Attia, MD, Director of the Columbia Center for Eating Disorders Edward Nunes, MD, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry 6/16/2009 Is Ritalin Too Risky for Kids with ADHD?Researchers led by Madelyn Gould of Columbia University Medical Center and [NYS Psychiatric Institue], found that 10 of 564 children who died suddenly had been taking stimulant drugs... 6/15/2009 Study Finds Association between Sudden Death and Stimulant Medications Sudden Death and Use of Stimulant Medications in Youth by Dr. Madelyn S. Gould and colleagues of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center is the first study to ... 6/9/2009 Study Links Teen Depression to BedtimesThe lesson for parents is simple, [Dr. James] Gangwisch says: Try as much as possible to sell teenagers on the importance of getting enough sleep... 6/8/2009 Patients Not Always Truthful About Following Doctors’’ OrdersA "don’’t ask, don’’t tell" policy, [Robert] Klitzman adds, isn’’t productive for doctor-patient relationships. If the doctor doesn’’t ask about sensitive topics, it’’s unlikely the patient will volunteer information about them. 6/5/2009 Can Prayer Heal?Dr. Richard Sloan is the author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine … 6/5/2009 Is Sex Addiction Real? Experts Are Divided "Is it an addiction? I’’’’m convinced gambling is an addiction but am agnostic about sexual addiction. Once you let one of them in the door do you let in shopaholics, kleptomaniacs, etcetera? Where do you draw the line?" 6/4/2009 Early Intervention Key to Preventing Depression in TeensBecause it focuses on prevention, the JAMA study "really moves the field forward," says child psychologist Anne Marie Albano, who directs the Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders at CUMC. 6/3/2009 Conflicts of Interest Plague Psychiatric Drug Research The debate over whether economic self-interest may bias the DSM and treatment guidelines leads to a root issue: Drug companies pay for gathering evidence, and there’s no major alternative on the... 6/3/2009 ADHD Drugs the New Rage on College CampusesDr. John Mariani of Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] said it is especially dangerous for students to take the drugs without medical supervision. 6/2/2009 Cause Célèbre Brings Mental Illness to the Stage; Proceeds to Benefit Columbia Psychiatry On Sunday evening, March 31, Columbia Psychiatry, in collaboration with Cause Célèbre, celebrated opening night of a special theater event at The Acorn Theatre. The next show is Sunday, June 7th at 3 PM. 6/2/2009 8 Myths About Bipolar DisorderEstimates for children and teens vary widely, partly because there is debate about the criteria for diagnosis, say Thomas E. Smith, MD, a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute... 6/2/2009 Should Teens Be Routinely Screened for Depression? "...we have never been very good as a nation about checking for mental and emotional problems, yet these are more likely in this age group than physical problems," said Laurie Flynn, executive director of TeenScreen at Columbia University. 5/21/2009 Substance Abuse May Account for Most Violent Acts in Schizophrenia "Efforts to prevent people with schizophrenia from using drugs of abuse are very important both to help them stay away from detrimental effects and to protect society from the potential for violence," Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman said. 5/21/2009 Poll Finds High Stress Levels Among College StudentsAnne Marie Albano, an associate professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, said college is a "tender age" developmentally, a period when young adults start taking responsibility for their lives. 5/18/2009 Herbert Pardes Bldg of NYS Psychaitric Insitute Unveiled "It is fitting to name the main building of the New York State Psychiatric Institute after Dr. Herb Pardes. His achievements in education, research, clinical care and health policy demonstrate his dedication to medicine and his commitment to people..." 5/15/2009 Generating 'Healthy Minds' Across AmericaA unique collaboration between the American Psychiatric Foundation, APA's Office of Communications and Public Affairs, and public television leads to the national distribution of a television series on mental health. 5/14/2009 Myrna Weissman One of America’’s Top 21 Women’’s Doctors of 2009 “We’ve recognized these doctors for their exceptional work in the emerging field of women’s health,” says Laurie Berger, VP/editor-in-chief of LifeScript.com. “Their ongoing commitment to research and patient education is saving women’s lives across America.” 5/13/2009 HBO’’s Alzheimer’’s Project: Is There Progress in the Research?Scott A. Small, M.D. of the Columbia University Medical Center discusses the evolution of our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease in this HBO.com film. 5/13/2009 HBO’’s Alzheimer’s Project: Late-Onset and the Nanney-Felts FamilyDr. Richard P. Mayeux, co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’’s Disease and the Aging Brain, discusses role of genetics in late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which devastates a Tennessee family. 5/8/2009 Non-Prescription Use of ADHD MedicationsThe "unofficial" use of stimulant medication among college-age students continues to draw attention and widespread concern. 5/6/2009 Masters of Bioethics Program Website Now LiveThe program director, Dr. Robert Klitzman, is a respected expert in ethical issues related to medicine and psychiatry. 5/6/2009 Increased Use of Medications Seen Among Older Americans A rising number of people of all ages received treatment for mental disorders over the 10 years, but there is evidence that the most seriously ill may be receiving less care from specialists, says the study by...Sherry Glied of Columbia University . 5/6/2009 New Study: Increased Medication Use for Mental Illness”What we generally find is there has been an increase in access to care for all populations,” said Sherry Glied of Columbia University in New York... 5/4/2009 Dr. Klitzman On CBS’’ Eye on New York: Anxiety About Swine Flu Dr. Robert Klitzman addresses the anxiety many New Yorkers are experiencing due to reports of a possible swine flu pandemic. 4/30/2009 Your Personal Energy Crisis SolvedSo get what you can first thing in the A.M. An early-morning walk is ideal, says researcher Michael Terman, Ph.D., but a dose of sunshine at any time boosts alertness. 4/30/2009 NYSPI Gets to the Root of Depression“For years people have said that depression or mood disorders are a chemical imbalance in the brain,” NYSPI's John Mann, MD, said. “Now we have a large imaging center here on the medical campus and we’re actually able to image brain neurotransmitter systems in patients..." 4/30/2009 Psychology of Disease PanicDr. Robert Klitzman of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University researches why our culture overreacts to some diseases like Swine Flu but under-reacts to other threats. 4/28/2009 Swine Flu: Sky Not Falling"In general, people are risk averse, they want to protect themselves," said Dr. Robert Klitzman, a Columbia University Medical Center psychiatrist who has researched the AIDS and mad cow epidemics. 4/27/2009 Beyond Belief: Research on ReligionOne of the most powerful critics of the new science of religion is Columbia University psychiatrist Richard Sloan, who surveyed hundreds of published studies on the benefits of religion... 4/27/2009 More Teens Get Screened for Depression"If you don’’t ask, they won’’t tell," says Leslie McGuire, deputy director of Columbia TeenScreen. She supports the guidelines. 4/21/2009 Poor Health Linked to PTSD Risk Among Vets Those personnel at highest risk of PTSD could be targeted for prevention programs, early intervention after exposure to stress, or even protection from stressful exposures, the report said. 4/21/2009 Rapid Emotional Swings Could Precede Violence Although the new findings are intriguing, further research must clarify what percentage of psychiatric patients’ violent acts are accurately predicted by rapidly fluctuating and worsening symptoms, said Paul Appelbaum of Columbia University. 4/17/2009 Dr. Myrna Weissman of Columbia and NYSPI Recognized in Annals of Epidemiology Special Issue “When I was invited to describe how my career unfolded I realized that I would not have had a career if not for the civil rights movement of the 70’s,” said Dr. Weissman. 4/17/2009 René Hen of Columbia and NYSPI Receives NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award “Dr. Hen’s work has the potential to be applied by various investigators as a bold new set of techniques that may have relevance for several forms of severe mental illness including depression as well as schizophrenia...” 4/15/2009 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Featured on Night TalkDr. Lieberman, a leader in schizophrenia research, was tapped by the broacast cable program to discuss the latest research in the field. 4/14/2009 We’’re Walking for NAMI on May 9th!Join the NYSPI/CU Psychiatry team today or sponsor an employee and show your support for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. 4/14/2009 Join Us For An Exceptional Theatre Series... Benefitting the Lieber Recovery & Rehabilitation Clinic at Columbia Psychiatry. Beginning Sunday, May 31st, at the Acorn Theatre, you can enjoy three one-act plays. 4/13/2009 What Doctors Get Wrong About PTSDStanding in the way of reform is conventional wisdom, deep cultural resistance and foundational concepts of trauma psychology. Nevertheless, it is time, as [Robert] Spitzer recently argued, to "save PTSD from itself." 4/10/2009 How to Keep Your Brain YoungColumbia University neuropsychologist Yaakov Stern, an early champion of the theory that you can build up a "cognitive reserve," compares the aging brain to a telephone network with some of its lines knocked down. 4/9/2009 City Schools Confront Mental Health The TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University is an organization focused on identifying and treating mental illness in teenagers. 4/6/2009 Would You Rather Forget the Past? Researchers Look at Erasing Memories Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit... 4/6/2009 Residents’’ Personality, Motivation Keys to Learning PsychotherapyDo residents’’ personalities play a role in whether they can learn to do psychotherapy? Can psychotherapeutic skills be mastered by the end of residency? Psychotherapy educators, including Dr. Deborah Cabaniss, answer such questions. 4/2/2009 Multiple Births Increase Postpartum Depression Risk “The process of any kind of assisted reproduction is very stressful for women and couples, and can put a vulnerable woman on the edge,” said Catherine Monk of Columbia and NYS Psychiatric Institute. 3/31/2009 Panel Backs Teen Screen for Major DepressionLaurie Flynn, executive director of the TeenScreen mental health testing program at Columbia University, called the task force recommendation "a major step forward in improving teen health and reducing youth suicide in the United States." 3/27/2009 Men’’s Depression Expected to Increase as Economy Declines Why talk about men and depression in a roomful of women? Because men will often first talk to the women in their lives, and women “are the ones who help bring them into treatment,” said Dr. Steven Roose, 3/26/2009 Thinning in Brain’’s Cortex May Signal Depression RiskDr. Bradley Peterson’’s brain imaging study found the thinning in descendants of depressed parents and grandparents, whether or not the individuals themselves had ever suffered a depressive episode or... 3/25/2009 Curative Aesthetics“Doctors generally care about medical outcomes, much more than style and aesthetics,” Dr. Robert Klitzman, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center... 3/25/2009 With a Buzz Cut, I can Take on AnythingIssues of hair and appearance are often uppermost in the minds of cancer patients. The challenge with cancer is to find a new sense of self, said Dr. Robert Klitzman, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, because the narrative of yourself has been disrupted. 3/25/2009 Desire to Amputate Healthy Limbs Shows Up in Brain Scans Now a study of four men with BIID suggest their condition is linked to reduced activity in a brain area involved in forming a mental body map... 3/25/2009 Proposed bill would recognize postpartum psychosis as a defense for infanticide If lawmakers approve the measure, Texas would be the first state to have an infanticide law. "The insanity defense can be an extremely strict law as it is in Texas and other states," said Margaret Spinelli of Columbia University. 3/24/2009 Suicidal Behavior May Run in FamiliesThe data set shows that this brain surface thinning was present before these people developed mental problems, and was found in both children and grandchildren of depressed people, said Dr. Bradley Peterson, 3/13/2009 Lifestyle Choices May Reduce Dementia RiskElizabeth P. Helzner and colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center collected data on 156 people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at an average age of 83. They found that people with higher total and LDL, or "bad," cholesterol levels and diabetes had a more rapid cognitive decline after developing Alzheimer's disease. 3/13/2009 New Treatment Strategies for OCDWhat do Albert Einstein, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Michelangelo, David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, Howie Mandel and Cameron Diaz all have in common? Aside from sharing celebrity status, they’ve each experienced various types of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). At the recent NARSAD Mental Health Symposium, Dr. Helen Blair Simpson of Columbia University Medical Center and the NYS Psychiatric Institute, discussed new treatments for OCD. 3/10/2009 Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman Discusses State of Schizophrenia TreatmentIn this point and time in the 21st century, it is a very, very serious brain disorder that affects mental function and behavior, but there are treatments which can enable people to lead productive lives and achieve... 3/9/2009 Setting Clocks Back Spells Trouble for SomeMore evening light may mean less electricity used. But it also means more blues for those prone to winter depression. The change sets us back to mid-January in terms of morning light, according to Michael Terman, a biological rhythms expert at Columbia University and the NYS Psychiatric Institute. 3/9/2009 New Insights on Suicides Among Teens "There have been suggestions that these events may be increasing among adolescents, which is alarming." The findings in the study can be valuable to clinical practice, said Dr. Myrna Weissman. 3/5/2009 Babies Made to Order?"Do you want blue eyes with your baby? That’s one of the questions a fertility clinic will be asking when it begin offering custom-designed babies to would-be moms and dads. Critics like Dr. Robert Klitzman say... 3/5/2009 Medical Marijuana Debate: Experts Face OffHas medical marijuana gotten a bad rap? Dr. Jon LaPook talks with Dr. Herbert Kleber, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center... 3/3/2009 Adolescent Struggles Not Necessarily Due to College LifeEven among college students, it’’s not academics, but love that hurts most. Emotional problems were more than twice as common among students who had recently had a major loss -- typically a romantic breakup -- than among those who had not, says Dr. Mark Olfson, the Columbia University/NYS Psychiatric Institute psychiatrist who led the research. 3/3/2009 Brides Take Drastic Measures to Lose Pounds“With any kind of eating problem—excessive dieting or more disordered—we talk in terms of control mechanisms,” says Stacey Rosenfeld, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders at Columbia University Medical Center. “You focus on your body and food to the exclusion of other things..." 2/13/2009 What Role Should Faith Play in Medicine?Dr. Richard Sloan of Columbia Psychiatry: Spirituality and religion play a substantial role in helping patients overcome discomfort. But I don’’t think that it’’s any business of medicine, and I think it’’s extremely difficult for science to study. 2/11/2009 Diet May Repair Mild Memory Problems"We know from previous research that a healthy diet like this is protective for cardiovascular risk factors like cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. Now this current study shows it may help brain function, too," said Nikolaos Scarmeas, Columbia University Medical Center. 2/3/2009 Research Suggests More than Half of Young Adults Mentally IllEmotional problems were more than twice as common among students who had recently had a major loss - typically a romantic breakup - than among those who had not, says Dr. Mark Olfson, the Columbia University/NYSPI psychiatrist who led the study. 2/3/2009 Mental Illness No Trigger for ViolenceColumbia University psychiatry professor Dr. Paul Appelbaum: "We ought to be concerned about providing good treatment and helping people lead fulfilling lives, not obsessed with protecting ourselves from phantom threats that appear to be unrelated to mental illness." 2/3/2009 Mental Illness Alone No Trigger for ViolenceColumbia University psychiatry professor Dr. Paul Appelbaum: "We ought to be concerned about providing good treatment and helping people lead fulfilling lives, not obsessed with protecting ourselves from phantom threats that appear to be unrelated to mental illness." 2/3/2009 Columbia TeenScreen Launches National Center for Mental Health Checkups The goal of the National Center is to improve early detection of mental illness by moving mental health checkups into the mainstream. 2/3/2009 SSRI’’s May Reduce Suicide in Adults Dr. John Mann of Columbia and NYS Psychiatric Institute: "alarmingly, concerns about the risk of suicide in youth have led not only to fewer SSRI prescriptions without substitution of alternative medications..." 1/28/2009 Gene Identified for Most Common Form of Epilepsy "It's the first step toward developing a diagnostic test, which can help provide a more precise diagnosis..." said study senior author Dr. Deb Pal of Columbia University Medical Center/NYSPI. 1/23/2009 For Winter Depression, Say No to Tanning Beds SAD is often treated with daily sessions of exposure to bright light. While some isolated reports have linked tanning to improvements in mood, Dr. Michael Terman [of Columbia and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] said that real light therapy works through the eyes, not the skin, and uses a completely different type of light. 1/22/2009 Reducing Stress May Decrease Your Dementia RiskPeople with a stable mood and better capacity to handle stressful situations without anxiety have a reduced risk of developing dementia, according to a study published this week in the journal Neurology. 1/22/2009 Columbia Researchers Reveal Surprising New Findings on fMRI TechnologyThe findings suggest that scientists who use fMRI may need to interpret their data differently, concludes neuroscientist David Leopold at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. 1/16/2009 Good News for Depression SufferersTMS Therapy is a non-systemic and non-invasive (does not involve surgery) form of neuromodulation which stimulates nerve cells in an area of the brain that is linked to depression, by delivering highly focused MRI-strength magnetic pulses. 1/16/2009 Watch Healthy Minds Sunday, January 18This segment of Healthy Minds tackles Obessivive Compulsive Disorder with expert Dr. Blair Simpson. See it at 9:30 a.m. on WLIW. 1/15/2009 Most Support Alzheimer’’s Research Based on Family Consent...a new study led by the University of Michigan Health System suggests that older Americans are very supportive of family surrogate-based research, and would support having their family members enroll them in research in case of future incapacity. The study appears in the new issue of the journal Neurology; Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D. from Columbia University was the senior author. 1/15/2009 Newer Antipsychotics Linked to Increased Risk for Heart Attacks“This study puts the last nail in the coffin” of the notion that the new drugs are less risky for the heart than the old ones, said Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of Columbia Psychiatry. 1/7/2009 A Leader in Depression Research is Cover Story in Hometown PaperDr. Sarah Hollingsworth Lisanby — Holly, to her family and friends — is the daughter of retired Rear Adm. James and Gladys Lisanby, of South Jefferson Street in Princeton. 1/7/2009 Study Offers Insight on Risk-Taking BehaviorDr. Adam Bisaga, an addiction psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, agreed that the findings could help lead to improved addiction treatment. 1/6/2009 Brain Circuit Abnormalities May Underlie Bulimia Nervosa in WomenWomen with bulimia nervosa appear to respond more impulsively during psychological testing than those without eating disorders, according to a study by Dr. Rachel Marsh and colleagues. 12/30/2008 Columbia Researchers Link Sugar to "Senior Moments"Senior moments, also dubbed by New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks as being "hippocampically challenged," are a normal part of aging. Such lapses in memory, according to this new research, could be blamed, at least in part, on rising blood glucose levels as we age. 12/29/2008 Michael Greenberg Reads from Hurry Down Sunshine The Program in Narrative Medicine grand rounds with Michael Greenberg is Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 5 p.m. The book is about the dramatic summer that Greenberg’s daughter initially presented with mania... 12/29/2008 Is There A Role for Religion In Medicine?"There is nothing, nothing, nothing in this [scientific] literature that suggests there are any practical implications" for physicians, says Richard Sloan of Columbia/NYS Psychiatric Institute. 12/29/2008 Update on the Schizophrenia Patient Outcomes Research TeamThe Division of Mental Health Services and Policy Research is pleased to announce that Dr. Lisa B. Dixon will be speaking at the division’s seminar series on Thursday January 8, 2009. 12/19/2008 DSM-V Stirs Debate Among PsychiatristsThe [DSM-V] is at least three years away from publication, but it is already stirring bitter debates over a new set of possible psychiatric disorders...including gender identity, diagnoses of illness involving children and addictions like shopping and eating."Many of these are going to involve huge fights, I expect," said Dr. Michael First of Columbia University. 12/18/2008 Gray Matters at Columbia University Medical Center Announces First FellowDr. Laura Rodriquez Murillo has been named the first Gray Matters Fellow at Columbia University Medical Center. The $250,000 research fellowship was established in 2007 to support the study of schizophrenia. 12/16/2008 Scientist Who Won Nobel Prize for Work on Prion Diseases DiesDr. Carleton Gajdusek, known for his study of brain diseases that led him to New Guinea, died last week at age 85. Dr. Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, wrote The Trembling Mountain, an account of his time as a graduate student under Dr. Gajdusek in New Guinea. His brain “worked faster and at a higher level than anyone’s I’ve ever met,” he said... 12/11/2008 Angst or Something More? Signs Easy to Miss, Says Dr. Mark OlfsonIt might be tough to watch your beloved child morph into a teenage cliché: back-talking, door-slamming...But it might be tougher yet to discern ’’normal’’ adolescent behavior from the signs of a...mood disorder. 12/11/2008 Prescription Drug Deaths on RiseDr. Adam Bisaga thinks that improved guidelines for appropriate prescribing, along with training to detect substance use disorders in patients, might reduce the unintended consequences seen in this study. 12/8/2008 Oliver Sacks Honored in Ceremony at Buckingham PalaceDr. Sacks was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) for his services to medicine. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center... 12/3/2008 World AIDS Day Brings HIV/AIDS to the ForefrontOn December 1, World AIDS Day, experts around the world and here at home, including Dr. Robert Klitzman, took stock of the state of HIV/AIDS research and the public health implications. 12/2/2008 College-Age Individuals Show High Rates of Mental IllnessA total of 45.8 percent of college students and 47.7 percent of young adults not in college met the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder, according to a new study by Dr. Carlos Blanco. 12/1/2008 Dr. Bruce Luber to Present on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Saturday, December 6 at 10 a.m.Dr. Bruce Luber will present a talk on "What Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Can Say About Self and Self-Awareness" as part of the Neuropsychoanalysis Lecture Series. 12/1/2008 Stress Induced by Combat a Focus of News StoryA 2006 study conducted by Bruce Dohrenwend of the New York State Psychiatric Institute [at Columbia University Medical Center], said 20% of Vietnam veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. 12/1/2008 On Living With Schizophrenia: PBS' Healthy MindsDr. Alice Medalia and the Lieber Recovery and Rehabilitation Clinic at Columbia were featured in the award-winning PBS series Healthy Minds on Sunday November 23, 2008. Encore presentation on December 2. 11/20/2008 Columbia Psychiatry/NY-Presbyterian Performs First Local DBS Implant in Depression Study“This is an important first step towards evaluating a new treatment alternative for patients with severe, medication resistant major depression,” said principal investigator Dr. Sarah Lisanby. 11/12/2008 "Cognitive Reserve" May Help Fight Alzheimer’’sIt’’s hard to say whether people can do anything to increase their cognitive reserve, said Yaakov Stern, professor of Columbia University and an originator of the cognitive reserve hypothesis. 11/12/2008 Panel Looks at Relationship Between Medication and Suicide Risk "Debunking false notions of risk is just as important to the public health as knowing about risks that exist,"said Kelly Posner, a Columbia researcher who led the effort to develop the screening system. 11/7/2008 Department of Psychiatry at Columbia/Psychiatric Inst. First in NIH Grants NationwideDr. Jeffrey Lieberman, today reported that the department has earned the most NIH-funded grants, more than any other department of psychiatry in 2007. 11/7/2008 Identity and Ideology: What Do Political Labels Mean?What makes up our sense of self? When we call ourselves Democrats or conservatives or progressives or Republicans, are we talking about a set of agreed-upon values...? Columbia University psychologist Michael Morris and his colleagues have been exploring these questions... 11/5/2008 Bright Light Beats the Blahs It’’s now thought that about 5% of people in the USA have so-called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), says Michael Terman of Columbia University Medical Center. 11/5/2008 Columbia Study: Diabetes & Hypertension Hasten Death in Alzheimer’’s Patients... Alzheimer’s patients with diabetes were twice as likely to die sooner than those with the dementia condition but no diabetes. 10/31/2008 Good News for Children with Anxiety Disorders"What's significant about this study is we are able to talk now with data behind us that there are these three options," said Anne Marie Albano, associate professor at Columbia Psychiatry and a study author. 10/30/2008 Drug-Therapy Combo Best for Anxiety in Children“This trial is significant as it is the largest and only to date study comparing different modes of treatment..."said Anne Marie Albano, Ph.D. 10/29/2008 Taming Temper Tantrums in Your Child"Frustration is the most common of human emotions," says Dr. Michael Sweeney of Columbia University, who was in Dublin recently to talk on Managing Anger in Your Child. 10/29/2008 Fighting for Approval of Huntington’’s Disease DrugColumbia University neurologist Nancy Wexler, who spearheaded the research leading to a genetic test for Huntington’’s, says she had hoped the FDA would see the merits of the drug... 10/24/2008 Compromising Health in Ailing Economy"When people cut back on preventive care on the monitoring and care of chronic illnesses, they are really cutting back on...the health and quality of their lives in the long run," said Dr. Sherry Glied of Columbia University. 10/24/2008 Columbia Psychiatry/Psychiatric Institute 1st in Region to Offer TMS for Depression "We are very proud to be among the first clinical programs in the US to be offering it, and to be doing this under the leadership of Dr. Lisanby, one of the pioneers in the field of brain stimulation.” 10/24/2008 Columbia Psychiatry/NYS Psychiatric Institute First in Region to Offer TMS for Major Depression "We are very proud to be among the first clinical programs in the US to be offering it, and to be doing this under the leadership of Dr. Lisanby, one of the pioneers in the field of brain stimulation.” 10/22/2008 On the Cutting Edge: Dr. Sarah Lisanby Discusses New Treatment for Major DepressionTMS is part of a new era in understanding and treating psychiatric disorders. Using high-tech imaging, scientists can now see depression in the brain... 10/20/2008 Therapists Expect To See More Patients As Economic Trouble ContinuesMen in particular often deal with emotional strain poorly, according to Robert Klitzman, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center 10/20/2008 Mapping of Brains of Schizophrenia Patients Reveals Differences in Initial Loss of Gray Matter “These maps of gray matter loss show us that different treatments may prevent some volume loss and thereby mitigate disease progression,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia and Psychiatric Institute. 10/20/2008 Dr. Richard Mayeux to Speak at Alzheimer’’s Assoc. Call-InTo kick off the call-in support group, the Alzheimer’’s Association is hosting a free tele-education event on Wednesday, October 22nd at 7 p.m. The guest speaker will be Dr. Richard Mayeux, MD, 10/16/2008 Dr. Allan Rosenfield, Former Dean of Mailman School, Dies"... I had many interactions with Allan and found him always to be wise, gracious and committed to the ideals of academic medicine and public health care," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia Psychiatry and Psychiatric Institute. 10/15/2008 A New Look at How We GrieveKatherine Shear, a psychiatrist from Columbia University, told New Scientist: "This study holds promise of providing a model for studying bereavement that can be very important." 10/10/2008 Columbia/NYS Psychiatric Inst. First to Offer TMS for Major DepressionTMS is the latest non-invasive therapy for adults with major depression who have failed to respond to medication. Call 212-543-5767 or depression@columbia.edu for information. 10/9/2008 Tracking Bipolar from Childhood Onward“This is a landmark longitudinal study that provides the first strong evidence for continuity between childhood and late adolescent/early adulthood bipolar,” said Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia 10/9/2008 Meditation and Other Types of Natural Prozac May Help Overcome DepressionThe brain can produce antidepressants with the right signal, a finding that suggests that meditating, or going to your "happy place," truly works, according to a new study by Eric Kandel and colleagues. 10/8/2008 As Economic Woes Grow, Many Cut Back on Mental Health"You are more likely to forgo your therapy compared to your surgery or chemo," said Dr. Harold Pincus of Columbia University Medical Center. 10/1/2008 Psychoanalytic Therapy Making a Comeback?Dr. Andrew Gerber of Columbia says a new study suggests long-term therapy like psychoanalysis may be more effective for disorders like substance abuse. 9/29/2008 Teen Suicide Devastating for Those Left BehindThe danger of completed suicides is their potential to trigger copycat suicides, said Dr. Madelyn Gould of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. 9/24/2008 Drug Maker to Make Payments to Doctors Public“This is a good step, and one that should be emulated by other companies, even in the absence of legislation requiring it,” said Dr. Paul Appelbaum of Columbia and NYS Psychiatric Institute. 9/23/2008 Winter Blues or Something More Serious?Winter depression expert Michael Terman discusses seasonal affective disorder. 9/23/2008 New Research Focuses on Bisexual Black Men More awareness and acceptance of male bisexuality critical to stemming HIV in bisexual men, according to new study co-authored by Dr. Theo Sandfort. 9/22/2008 Blood Test to Detect Alzheimer’’s Risk Close According to Columbia U. Medical Ctr. StudyDr. Richard Mayeux and colleagues found that blood plasma levels of a peptide called Amyloid Beta (AB42) appear to increase before the onset of Alzheimer’’s... 9/19/2008 Sadness and the BrainResearch by Dr. John Mann and colleagues was referenced in a Newsweek article on the biology of emotions. 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 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. 9/3/2008 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 ... 9/2/2008 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. 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. 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 "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 ... 8/21/2008 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. 8/19/2008 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 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 … 8/15/2008 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." 8/14/2008 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 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." 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 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. 8/4/2008 Psychiatrists Shift Away from Providing PsychotherapyMark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University Medical Center & NYSPI & other psychiatrists, analyzed trends in psychotherapy provision using data from national surveys of office-based visits from 1996--2005. 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 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. 6/27/2008 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." 6/25/2008 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 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. 6/17/2008 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." 6/12/2008 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 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. 6/9/2008 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. 6/5/2008 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 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 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 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 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." 3/21/2008 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. 3/17/2008 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 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. 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. 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 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. 2/20/2008 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. 2/14/2008 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 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." 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. 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 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. 1/24/2008 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. 1/22/2008 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 NYS Psychiatric Institute Researchers Receive Landmark Stem Cell Award Governor Eliot Spitzer and Lieutenant Governor David A. Paterson announced this week that the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) will receive $504,809 to fund infrastructure that will support its stem cell research program. The award comes eight months after Governor Spitzer created a stem cell research initiative in the 2007-2008 budget. So far, $14.5 million has been awarded throughout the state for this groundbreaking multi-year stem cell research program, which will help support research into debilitating disorders. “My colleagues and I are extremely pleased with this award and are ready to embrace the opportunity now possible as a result of this investment by Governor Spitzer and Lieutenant. Governor Paterson,” said Dr. Rene Hen, Director of the Division of Integrative Neuroscience at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Professor of Pharmacology in Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. 1/8/2008 Effect of antidepressant warnings moderate-US studyDoctors have assumed that a spike in teen suicide in 2004 reulted from a sharp fall in use of antidepressants among children and youth. That was not the case, according to Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University Medical Center. "When the warnings first appeared, there was a great deal of concern among psychiatrists and other mental health professionals that these warnings would result in a precipitous decline in antidepressant use by young people, and as a result, youth with depression would have less access to treatment," said Olfson, whose study appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry. "What we found is the FDA warnings had a relatively moderate and targeted effect in slowing the growth of antidepressant use by children," Olfson said in a telephone interview. 1/8/2008 To Gephyrophobiacs, Bridges Are a Terror Dr. Michael R. Liebowitz, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, said that while fear of flying is widely accepted, especially in the wake of Sept. 11, the fear of crossing bridges is less well known and still “carries a stigma.” There are no exact numbers of how many people suffer from the disorder, he said, adding that it is not only common but treatable. “It’s not an isolated phobia, but usually part of a larger constellation,” said Dr. Liebowitz, founder of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. “It’s people who get panic attacks. You get light-headed, dizzy; your heart races. You become afraid that you’ll feel trapped.” 1/2/2008 Insurance coverage for mental health still limited The recent shootings in Nebraska and Colorado, while tragic, are only the most recent in a series that have captured national headlines. Like the Virginia Tech and Columbine High School shootings and others, these incidents are notable for the clear signs of mental instability in the perpetrators... Unless something is done, these acts of violence will recur with a frightening regularity. It shouldn’’t take a tragedy to spur Congress and policymakers to action - and we shouldn’’t have to ask how many more collective gasps of horror and moments of silence we must endure before Congress acts. In the first decade of the 21st century, it’’s paramount that our representatives on Capitol Hill make mental-health parity an urgent national priority. Jeffrey A. Lieberman is chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons 12/27/2007 Many Psychiatrists Self-Prescribe, Study Says A new study from a professor at the University of Michigan looks at how frequently psychiatrists prescribe medication for themselves. It finds that many are writing their own prescriptions to avoid the stigma associated with being a doctor with a mental health problem. ALIX SPIEGEL: Several weeks after Robert Klitzman's sister died on 9/11, the respected New York psychiatrist took to his bed. He was overwhelmed, he says now, by intensely painful symptoms…Dr. Robert Klitzman (Co-Founder, Columbia University Center for Bioethics; Director of the Ethics, Policy, and Human Rights Core of the HIV Center, Columbia and the New York State Psychiatric Institute): You know, my eyes hurt and I just didn't feel like moving. And I - just to move my muscles, to move my arms, to get to the bed felt like a huge effort. I felt like I was sick physically... 12/27/2007 Can a drug cure an addict?Despite these concerns, proponents say vaccines, if and when they are shown to be safe and effective, will hold an important niche in addiction treatment and therapy... Right now, she says, there are not enough medications available to treat most types of drugs of abuse, particularly cocaine. "A vaccine is not going to cure cocaine addiction," [Meg Haney of Columbia University and the NYS Psychiatric Institute]says. "But there is a subset of people who will benefit from this approach ... There is a great call out there among people who are dependent, and from their family members, for something to help." 12/26/2007 COPING WITH ALZHEIMER'S Disease brings drastic changes to patients, and stress to family members Richard Mayeux, a professor of neurology, psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University, and co-director of its Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain, said relatives suffered enormous stress from not understanding the disease or knowing what to expect. For instance, Mayeux said, a patient may tell a close relative: "I don't know who you are. Take me home.'" He recalled one patient who called her daughter, frightened because there was a stranger in the house — her husband. 12/19/2007 Brought on by Darkness, Disorder Needs Light In a few days, the winter solstice will plunge us into the longest and darkest night of the year. Is it any surprise that we humans respond with a holiday season of relentless cheer and partying? It doesn’t work for everyone, though. As daylight wanes, millions begin to feel depressed, sluggish and socially withdrawn. They also tend to sleep more, eat more and have less sex. By spring or summer the symptoms abate, only to return the next autumn. The timing of phototherapy is critical. “To determine the best time for light therapy, you need to know about a person’s individual circadian rhythm,” said Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at the Columbia University Medical Center. 12/19/2007 Recent violence should spur Congress to act on parity for mental healthEleven years ago, Congress enacted the Mental Health Parity Act. Unfortunately, this important milestone has produced few substantive changes….[Dr. Jeffrey]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 New York Presbyterian Hospital. 12/13/2007 Mental Reserves Keep Brains Agile The brain, like every other part of the body, changes with age, and those changes can impede clear thinking and memory. Yet many older people seem to remain sharp as a tack well into their 80s and beyond. Although their pace may have slowed, they continue to work, travel, attend plays and concerts, play cards and board games, study foreign languages, design buildings, work with computers, write books, do puzzles, knit or perform other mentally challenging tasks that can befuddle people much younger. But when these sharp old folks die, autopsy studies often reveal extensive brain abnormalities like those in patients with Alzheimer’s. Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas and Yaakov Stern at Columbia University Medical Center recall that in 1988, a study of “cognitively normal elderly women” showed that they had “advanced Alzheimer’s disease pathology in their brains at death.” Later studies indicated that up to two-thirds of people with autopsy findings of Alzheimer’s disease were cognitively intact when they died. 12/6/2007 New Info Revealed on Omaha Mall ShooterDr. Jeffrey Lieberman: Well, clearly, this person was mentally ill. He had sought treatment. He been in treatment. He had drifted downward and been cast out by his family, was taken in by a friend to live there. But clearly he was in distress. Is there a mental health care system in Nebraska and Missouri that he was involved with? Yes. But did he engage in treatment in a way that adequately controlled his illness and sustained his involvement in treatment? And the answer is no. 11/30/2007 Hostage Standoff at Clinton Campaign Headquarters Ends PeacefullyChairman and Director of Columbia Psyciatry and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Dr. Jeffrey LIEBERMAN: ...I wouldn’’t say that the system is broken. The fact of the matter is, is that there is treatment for mental illnesses available through hospitals, through clinics, through doctors’’ offices. The problem often is, though, it’’s not widely known to people who need it how to go find it and to get it. Secondly, when they do find out where to receive it, they may not have medical insurance or health care coverage to cover it. Frequently, mental illness is not covered or reimbursed to the same way that non-psychiatric medical illnesses are. And, of course, we have a large number of people who are uninsured. And the third thing that happens is that, when somebody has a mental illness, it’’s a problem with the brain. The brain is the part of the body that reasons, that exercises judgment. So, many people who are ill with depression, with schizophrenia, with psychosis don’’t think they need treatment. 11/30/2007 Losing Virginity Later Linked to Sexual Problems Those Who Have Sex Later, Particularly Men, Seem to Experience More Sexual DysfunctionWhile past research has linked early sexual activity to health problems, a new study suggests that waiting too long to start having sex carries risks of its own. Those who lose their virginity at a later age -- around 21 to 23 years of age -- tend to be more likely to experience sexual dysfunction problems later, say researchers at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute's HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. 11/28/2007 Darkness falls You’re gaining weight, feeling tired and completely antisocial. Happily, there’s an escape from your cold-weather SADness. It’s Monday morning, frickin’ freezing and pitch-dark outside your window. You caaan’t get out of bed—and once you finally do, you feel fat, lethargic and generally blue. “Dark apartments are killer for people with SAD,” says Michael Terman, M.D., director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at New York Presbyterian/Columbia. “So is our terrible urban work routine: We’re out of the house, in the subway, then into an office without any outdoor light exposure. It’s depressogenic.” 11/28/2007 Helping Mental Patients Gain Some Control Over Treatment After multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, Mary Blake decided she needed to set some treatment terms for times when she is unable to make decisions herself. So she created a document detailing the signs of deterioration that others should watch for, and noting her medication preferences. In the document, known as a psychiatric advance directive, or PAD, she authorized her doctors to hold her at the hospital rather than allow her to sign out against medical advice... "The underlying goal is to try to respect patients’’ choices, their preferences and their autonomy even in circumstances where they’’re unable to exercise that autonomy themselves," says Paul Appelbaum, professor of psychiatry, medicine and law at Columbia University. 11/20/2007 New Non-Drug Therapy Promising for People with Schizophrenia; SCIT Groups Improve Quality of Life, Help People Cope With Social Situations The condition described above is schizophrenia, a severe brain disorder that usually emerges during young adulthood, and affects one percent of Americans, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). People with this condition are typically treated with a variety of drugs and various group and individual therapy sessions. But now a new non-drug therapy called Social Interaction and Cognition Training (SCIT) is generating interest from clinics across the country as a promising way to help people with schizophrenia interact with others. Alice Medalia, a clinical psychiatry professor, is implementing the new therapy at the Columbia University’’s Lieber Recovery and Rehabilitation Clinic for Psychotic Disorders, which opened in April. 11/19/2007 Doctor-writer Oliver Sacks now tunes in to music "Oliver Sacks has consistently illuminated the human sides of doctoring, and of patients’’ lives," says Dr Robert Klitzman, a colleague and physician at Columbia University. "He has inspired an entire generation of medical students, pre-med students, young – as well as seasoned – doctors, and patients and their families." Sacks is acutely aware of the burden that this reverence places upon him. "One always has to be careful not to exploit," he says, before explaining how he goes to great lengths to include the people he speaks to in his books. Much of his current correspondence has to do with responses to Musicophilia, for which he is already compiling an expanded paperback edition. "You can’’t squeeze everything in," he laments. 11/13/2007 Hyperactive children catch up with peers, study finds The brains of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder develop more slowly than those of other children but eventually catch up, according to a government study published Monday that suggests ADHD may be a transient condition, at least for some. Dr. Bradley S. Peterson of Columbia University, who was not connected to the study, said that although the brains of children with ADHD reached the appropriate thickness, there was no way of knowing from the study whether individual cells were normal. "Billions of cells make up brain tissue, and we cannot measure all the cells and all the connections between the cells," he said. "Subtle deficits could easily remain." 11/13/2007 AMA Honors New York Physician for Ethics Leadership The American Medical Association (AMA) presented New York physician Paul Appelbaum, M.D., with an award for his excellent leadership and dedication to the principles of medical ethics. Dr. Appelbaum received the Isaac Hays, M.D., and John Bell, M.D., Award for Leadership in Medical Ethics and Professionalism Saturday at the AMA’’s semi- annual policy-making meeting. "Dr. Appelbaum’’s devotion to improving the medical profession through extensive ethics research and education of young physicians about medical ethics serves as a shining example for all physicians," said AMA Board Chair Edward L. Langston, M.D. 11/7/2007 10 Questions: For Oliver SacksAny excuse to talk with Oliver Sacks is welcome, and now he has a new book, "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain." Born in London in 1933, Dr. Sacks is a neurologist who trained at Oxford University and has lived and worked in New York since 1965. He’s taught at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and New York University. Just this past summer, he was appointed a professor of clinical neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University. 11/7/2007 Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a SicknessShyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness provides not only a comprehensive picture of how an ordinary trait became a mental disorder, but also a new and vitally important perspective on anxiety today. Insisting that we're overdiagnosed and overmedicated, it describes in precise detail how psychiatrists, public relations consultants, and drug companies successfully turned shyness, self-consciousness, and even introspection into major psychiatric disorders. I quote previously classified memos circulated among drug company executives; reproduce documents voicing grave concerns about the side effects of drugs that are now household names; and include probing interviews with all the leading psychiatrists in question. First among these is [Columbia’s] Robert Spitzer, arguably the most influential psychiatrist in the twentieth century, who chaired the task force that reshaped the entire discipline. 11/7/2007 Profs link criminal behavior to genetics It’’s a bird! It’’s a plane! No - it’’s an XXY Supermale attempting to evade a crime based on his genome. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, lectured on behavioral genetics and its relation to crime last night in Houston Hall. And no, the "Supermale" claim will not prove insanity in a court of law. 10/30/2007 ’’Speed’’-like drug tempts studentsAdderall is one of the more popular of a bunch of amphetamine-like stimulant drugs nicknamed "cognitive steroids" that are used for treating attention deficit disorders. But they have become the crutch or the plaything of college kids... Anyone with a supply not infrequently sells or barters his prescription to others who have to pull an all-nighter or the like. She tells me the drug’’s effects are miraculous. You can read for hours when preparing for a test. You can bang out papers no problem. It seems to be seen by many as the genius drug. Not so, warns Dr. Laurence Greenhill, clinical psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York. He says the drug "won’’t increase your intelligence, just your diligence." 10/30/2007 Seeing the Light of Day: Artificial Illumination Can Affect More Than Your Mental Health Science is finding that our manhandling of light and time is making us sick. While genes clearly play a role (night owls are more often affected), location also matters. Recent work by Thomas White of the New York State Office of Mental Health and Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University Medical Center, has shown that seasonal depression and mood disorders become more prevalent not only at northern latitudes -- not surprising, as days are shorter there -- but also toward the western edges of time zones, where people remain in darkness almost an hour later each morning than their same-timed counterparts farther east. "From the psychiatric perspective, the extension of daylight saving time this year was a very bad decision," Terman said. "Our expectation is we will see increased depression and mood disorders." 10/26/2007 The Disappearing Patient by David J. Hellerstein, MDHave you looked at psychiatry journals lately? They are full of multicolor MRI scans and complex genetic maps. Fantastic progress is being made in understanding the biology of mental disorders. However, actual human beings with mental disorders have practically disappeared from their pages. Now look at the major medical journals. Along with cutting-edge science, they now include a substantial amount of the medical humanities -- first-person accounts of illness by patients and doctors. Essays, stories, even poems! Why the discrepancy? After long delay, psychiatry has eagerly embraced the scientific model. It has largely thrown out the "soft" disciplines, including the humanities. 10/24/2007 When Doctors Become Patients: Questions for Robert Klitzman For his new book, "When Doctors Become Patients," Robert Klitzman interviewed over 50 physicians who had gotten sick with serious disease to understand how the experience changed them. Q. What made you write the book? A. On 9/11, my sister died at the World Trade Center, and for weeks I couldn’t get out of bed. I thought I had the flu, but friends said, "You’’re depressed." Even though I was a psychiatrist, I initially resisted the diagnosis of depression. 10/19/2007 Statue Honors Slain Spouse, DadIn his book, “The Clinical Handbook of Psychiatry and the Law,” Paul Appelbaum, also a professor at Columbia University, said the factors that determine if a criminal defendant is competent to stand trial are complicated. “They must understand the nature and purpose of court proceedings and have the ability to assist council in his own defense,” he said. A psychologist will administer a series of questions to piece together whether they can comprehend the reality they are facing, and how well they will cooperate with an attorney, he said. A mental disorder may interfere with court proceedings. But most patients are able to eventually stand trial once they are given treatment, Appelbaum said. 10/16/2007 How Young Is Too Young to Pursue a Dangerous Dream? Hathaway feels that a parent’’s role is to protect their children but not to control them, and reaffirms that she would never have wanted her daughter to stop doing what she loved. Columbia University’’s Dr. Elisabeth Guthrie, a pediatrician and psychiatrist, would advise parents differently, and has the physiological backup to prove it. "I think parents have to be their kid’’s frontal lobes for the first 10 or 15 years of their lives," she said. "And that’’s really our task." 10/16/2007 ICE drugging detainees set for deportationFormer detainees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement accuse the agency in a lawsuit of forcibly injecting them with psychotropic drugs while trying to shuttle them out of the country during their deportation. Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry, law and ethics at Columbia University, reviewed both men's medical records for this report and was stunned by what he discovered. "I'm really shocked to find out that the government has been using physicians and using potent medications in this way,...That is the sort of thing that would be subject to a malpractice claim in the civilian world." 10/10/2007 Dangerous DNA: Genes Linked To Suicidal Thoughts With Med Use Two gene variations appear frequently in depressed patients who contemplate killing themselves during treatment with a common antidepressant medication, a new study finds. … Other researchers who have tracked suicidal thinking among several hundred depressed children and teenagers treated with antidepressants might now try to obtain DNA from those youngsters in order to confirm the new findings, remarks psychiatric epidemiologist Myrna Weissman of Columbia University. 10/10/2007 Muddy ThinkingMore and more [patients] are turning their backs on the label of schizophrenia and its conventional treatments in an attempt to reclaim their lives. In fact, many have joined a growing group of renowned psychologists and psychiatrists to form the Campaign for Abolition of the Schizophrenia Label (CASL). At the other end of the spectrum, Jeffrey Lieberman, director of the department of psychiatry at Columbia University, insists schizophrenia’’s "reliability and usefulness are indisputable". Lieberman says, "People with schizophrenia have abnormalities in brain structure and function seen on neuroimaging and electrophysiological tests. In addition, the evidence that vulnerability to schizophrenia is at least partly genetic is indisputable. Unfortunately, changing the name of the condition or even abolishing the concept will not affect the root cause of the stigma - the public’’s ignorance and fear of people with mental illness." 10/5/2007 Lungs to Brain: Don’’t Panic! Carbon dioxide may deserve blame for more than just the panic over global warming. New research involving healthy people inhaling the gas indicates that the brain’’s reaction to carbon dioxide helps explain panic attacks and other anxious feelings, independent of rising world temperatures. This new insight, reported 3 October in PLoS One, could help physicians prevent the development of depression and other anxiety disorders Laszlo Papp, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, questions whether the reactions described by the healthy people are true panic attacks. He says the study simply shows that increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide inhaled results in more physical discomfort, such as shortness of breath and lightheadedness. 10/3/2007 Therapists console Mets’ fans and their woesAfter historic collapse, Mets' fans might be in need for some counseling. [Fred]Kass predicts that once the Mets begin making off-season trades, the sour taste will begin to fade. "By the time spring training opens, their hopes will be revived," said Kass, who recommends fans think of positive things like the team's young, talented roster and pitcher Pedro Martinez's comeback from injuries. 10/1/2007 New treatment for depression scrutinized Therapy shows promise; how it works still a mystery Scientists hope that a better understanding of TMS could lead to treatments for schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Freeman hopes his work is a step in that direction. One key will be to figure out why the treatments have a lasting effect on brain function, [Sarah]Lisanby said. "If we could understand that, we could really harness the clinical potential of TMS." 9/29/2007 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Socially Anxious? Or Just Plain Shy? To the Editor: Christopher Lane finds it “baffling, even bizarre, that ordinary shyness could assume the dimension of a mental disease.” People with social anxiety disorder, however, do not have ordinary shyness. The intense anxiety they experience in social situations results in marked distress, avoidance and interference in social and work functioning…. Franklin Schneier, M.D. New York, Sept. 21, 2007 The writer is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. 9/29/2007 Drug makers, FDA partner on drug safetyA rare collaboration of top pharmaceutical companies, regulators and university researchers has begun attacking one of the toughest problems in medicine: why severe drug side effects strike a small percentage of patients. Dubbed the International Severe Adverse Events Consortium, the project will use genetic data to try to design safer drugs and to identify patients at risk of dangerous side effects because of a variation in their genetic makeup. [The consortium’s chief executive] said the participating drug companies together have put up millions of dollars to fund the work. Other partners include Columbia University, which will coordinate and analyze data, plus the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products and two academic consortia in Europe, called Diligen and Eudragene. 9/29/2007 MEDICAL MYSTERY: One Doctor's Lonely Quest To Heal Brain InjuryDecades of research -- often conducted in spare time and with piecemeal funding -- led [Emory University professor Donald G. Stein] to a surprising hypothesis: that progesterone, a natural female hormone that protects fetuses in the womb, may actually protect and heal injured brains. His work slowly helped overturn medical orthodoxy that states that brain tissue, once injured, stays that way. By 2000, the findings of Dr. Stein and other brain scientists were swaying the textbooks. One leading neurology tome, "Principles of [Neural Science]," [by Columbia’s Eric Kandel, Thomas Jessell and J.H. Schwartz] said in its 2000 edition that functions such as thought, language and memory "are all made possible by the serial and parallel interlinkages of several brain regions, each with specific functions. As a result, damage to a single area need not result in the loss of an entire faculty as many earlier neurologists predicted." 9/24/2007 The Abyss; Music and AmnesiaIn March of 1985, Clive Wearing, an eminent English musician and musicologist in his mid-forties, was struck by a brain infection—a herpes encephalitis—affecting especially the parts of his brain concerned with memory. He was left with a memory span of only seconds—the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded. New events and experiences were effaced almost instantly. As his wife, Deborah, wrote in her 2005 memoir, “Forever Today”: His ability to perceive what he saw and heard was unimpaired. But he did not seem to be able to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. … 9/21/2007 Shock and Awe: The stunning comeback of electroshock...The most infamous form of this is shock treatment—now called electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT—but new modes of electromagnetic-based treatments, broadly called brain stimulation, are being tested on willing patients at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Sarah Lisanby, who runs the brain-stimulation lab at the medical center, admits that the stigma from the old days of ECT still lingers, despite significant improvements in the procedure. 9/21/2007 Researchers Examine ’’Purging Disorder’’An Iowa researcher is studying a little-known eating disorder that some doctors may miss: purging disorder. Though similar to women with bulimia, patients who fit this description don’’t binge-eat. Yet they feel compelled to purge, usually by vomiting, even after eating only a small or normal amount of food, said Pamela Keel, the University of Iowa researcher who led a study on the subject. … Keel "has helped put purging disorder on the map" as something that should be studied, said Dr. Tim Walsh, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. Many people with eating disorders don’’t meet all of the criteria for anorexia or bulimia, "so it suggests that we need additional descriptions to help patients," he said. Walsh heads a work group with the American Psychiatric Association that is charged with revising criteria for diagnosing such disorders. 9/19/2007 Young people and suicideOne year's alarming numbers don't confirm a trend. But Gibbons' work, published this month in the American Journal of Psychiatry, adds to a rising tide of evidence that the FDA overreacted to emotional arguments in 2003 and '04. As Columbia University professor of psychiatry Kelly Posner told Newsweek in July, "All the data point in one direction: Anti-depressants save lives and untreated depression kills people." 9/17/2007 Mind Over Manual Earlier this summer, the American Psychiatric Association announced that a 27-member panel will update its official diagnostic handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. … “You can have three patients with schizophrenia, but all that really means is that their symptoms fit a particular pattern,” says Dr. Michael First, a psychiatrist [at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] who was the editor of the current handbook, the D.S.M. IV. 9/14/2007 Experts Question Study on Youth Suicide Rates Last week, leading psychiatric researchers linked a 2004 increase in the suicide rate for children and adolescents to a warning by the Food and Drug Administration about the use of antidepressants in minors. The F.D.A. warning, the researchers suggested, might have resulted in severely depressed teenagers going without needed treatment. “The most plausible explanation is a cause and effect relationship: prescription rates change, therefore suicides change,” said Dr. J. John Mann, a psychiatrist at Columbia University and a co-author of the study. 9/14/2007 New research finds surprising errors at suicide hot lines. Like putting people on holdThe journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior has published a remarkable series of articles on the effectiveness of suicide hot lines, opening a window into the world of desperate people and the volunteers who try to help them get through the night. A deeper question lurks behind the studies: Do suicide hot lines reduce suicide rates? Researchers have come to conflicting conclusions. "They help people in a crisis," says J. John Mann, a psychiatrist at Columbia and a skeptic, "but whether those people would have gone on to kill themselves is unclear." But another new study in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, by researchers at Columbia, Rutgers, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, suggests that many of the people calling in are, indeed, in extremely dire straits. And these people seem to find solace in their phone calls. 9/14/2007 Oliver Sacks Joins Columbia Faculty Attracted by his breadth of interests, ranging from schizophrenia to music, Columbia University has appointed Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer, as its first Columbia artist, a newly created designation. Beginning next week, Dr. Sacks, who has been a clinical professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx for the past 42 years, is leaving to become a professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, a post he will occupy in addition to the new artist position. 9/10/2007 As youth suicides increase, FDA’’s label rule criticized Suicide rates for preteens and teenagers increased sharply when the Food and Drug Administration slapped a "black box" warning on anti-depressants and doctors started writing fewer prescriptions for young people, according to federal data released Thursday. … "It’’s time for the agency’’s warnings to be modified," said Dr. David Schaffer, a leading expert on teen suicide and chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. 9/5/2007 Diagnosing Bipolar Disorder in Children and TeensThe number of children and teens being treated for bipolar disorder has dramatically increased in the last decade. Was the disorder under-diagnosed in the past and is it over-diagnosed today? Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, discusses what's behind the jump in bipolar diagnoses. 9/4/2007 New Schizophrenia Drug Shows Promise in Trials In a clinical trial of about 200 patients, an experimental drug from Eli Lilly reduced schizophrenia symptoms without the serious side effects of current treatments, according to a paper published yesterday in the journal Nature. “This is potentially one giant step forward for patients,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia and the lead investigator on a federally sponsored clinical trial of schizophrenia medicines. “This drug may turn out to be not just a comparably good antipsychotic agent, but a better antipsychotic agent.” 8/30/2007 Putting Brains On the Couch For doctors who treat illnesses that strike from the neck down, a patient's symptoms are only the first step toward a diagnosis. In psychiatry, though, the laundry list of symptoms is it, the only basis for diagnosis. For a growing number of psychiatrists, the search for a modern, objective diagnostic tool has led to the past: the electroencephalogram, first used in 1929 to record the brain's electrical activity Still, EEGs have not exactly taken psychiatry by storm. "It's a gross oversimplification to believe that the sum total of neuronal firing could give you anything worthwhile in terms of diagnosis," says Michael First of Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute], who is leading the team updating the diagnostic manual. "The scans are not specific for the illness." 8/27/2007 It’’s Called Depression, Dude!In the U.S. teenagers kill themselves at the rate of 2,000 a year. A chilling statistic compiled by Columbia University: 60% to 80% of adolescents with depression go undiagnosed or untreated. Nancy and Robert Anthony, unassuming Bostonians with two grown sons, felt they couldn’’t let these statistics stand. They and their family foundation invested $1.7 million, plus a large dose of sweat equity, in adolescent mental health programs in the Boston area. 8/27/2007 Cranston drops 2 mentally ill inmates from voter listNine states still bar “idiots” or the “insane” from voting, she said. Seven states impose no restrictions. And the rest fall somewhere in between. But Paul S. Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said that policymakers and the courts seem to be moving away from broad-brush bans on voting and toward a more careful, case-by-case approach. 8/15/2007 U.S. scientists hunt better tests for tick-borne illnessPresident George W. Bush’’s recently disclosed treatment for Lyme disease makes him part of an unfortunate trend: The tick-borne infection is on the rise in the United States, with cases more than doubling in the past 15 years. "We have a lot of new tools to explore," adds Dr. Brian Fallon, who directs Columbia University’’s new Lyme and Tick-borne Diseases Research Center, funded by the advocacy groups Time for Lyme and the Lyme Disease Association. "Science is going to bridge the gap." 8/3/2007 Collapse Fuels Bridge Phobias For people already anxious about bridges, the collapse amplifies the sense of risk, often far out of proportion to the statistical reality. "They see this one event on the news, and it causes that anxiety to be triggered," said Anne Marie Albano, associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. 8/3/2007 Governor Spitzer Announces Appointments to Empire State Stem Cell Board; Board to Oversee $600 Million in Funding...> Governor Eliot Spitzer today named 11 appointees to serve on the committees that form the Empire State Stem Cell Board. The Board was established to oversee and administer $600 million in funding for the Empire State Stem Cell Trust Fund to promote stem cell research and development. Ethics Committee Samuel Gorovitz, Ph.D., Syracuse University David Hohn, M.D., Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Robert Klitzman, M.D., Columbia University, H. Hugh Maynard-Reid, D.Min, North Brooklyn Health Network Tia Powell, M.D., New York State Task Force on Life & the Law Robert Swidler, Esq., Northeast Health 8/1/2007 Weighing the Risks and Benefits of Shock TherapyNearly 100 thousand Americans sign up for electro-shock therapy every year to treat severe depression. Many patients call it life-saving, yet scientists still struggle to explain why it is effective. Expert interview: Sarah Lisanby, chief of the Brain Stimulation and Neuromodulation Division, Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute]; chairperson of the American Psychiatric Association Committee on ECT and Related Electromagnetic Therapies; president of the International Society for Transcranial Stimulation 8/1/2007 Shock Value"ECT is hands-down, for the short term, our most effective treatment for depression," says Harold Sackeim, professor of psychiatry and radiology at Columbia University. However, only about half of patients remain well even six months after one course, if given no other treatment afterward. "Acutely helping someone out of a period of depression is very important," says Sarah Lisanby, chairperson of the American Psychiatric Association Committee on ECT and Related Treatments. "But it's not the end of the story. The goal is long-term treatment." 8/1/2007 Why the scourge of alcoholism defies a cure More than 30 percent of U.S. adults have abused alcohol or suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives, according to a study released this month by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Yet only a quarter of those afflicted received any treatment. And other studies show that, at best, only a quarter of those who seek treatment manage to abstain from alcohol for a year. Experts say that AA is successful for only about 1 in 5 alcoholics. And relapses are so characteristic of the disease that no other combination of drugs or therapy offers much better results, if the measurement is total abstinence maintained for at least a year. So rather than discourage alcoholics by insisting on a goal many cannot reach, some addiction experts have begun changing the definition of success. "There's a shift in the treatment approach toward being a little more flexible and being respectful of the patient's goals," said Dr. Edward Nunes, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University in New York and an addiction expert. "There are many patients for whom abstinence is still the best outcome and the one you should shoot for, but it's clear from clinical experience that there are some patients who can move from problem drinking back to a level of moderated drinking that's not problematic any more." 8/1/2007 Pot Ups Risk for Mental Illness Smoking marijuana can raise your risk of developing a psychotic illness by 40 percent, British researchers say. "This seems to be the best of studies conducted so far, and although this issue could never be proven directly, due to ethical limitations of a prospective exposure study, it provides a solid evidence that smoking cannabis increases risk for the development of psychosis later in life," said Dr. Adam Bisaga, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, Division on Substance Abuse, at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York City. 8/1/2007 Nicotine Addiction Is Quick in Youths, Research Finds A young cigarette smoker can begin to feel powerful desires for nicotine within two days of first inhaling, a new study has found, and about half of children who become addicted report symptoms of dependence by the time they are smoking only seven cigarettes a month. “We know very little about the natural history of dependence,” said Denise B. Kandel, a professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia and a widely published addiction researcher who was not involved in the study. “This is really the first study that addresses the issue. Its strength is that DiFranza has followed a community sample of adolescents and interviewed them every three months, which is very difficult to do." 8/1/2007 Pot Ups Risk for Mental Illness"This seems to be the best of studies conducted so far, and although this issue could never be proven directly, due to ethical limitations of a prospective exposure study, it provides a solid evidence that smoking cannabis increases risk for the development of psychosis later in life," said Dr. Adam Bisaga, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, Division on Substance Abuse, at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York City. 7/17/2007 The Unmedicated MindFrom lobotomies with ice picks to early antidepressants that caused brain hemorrhaging, Americans have a complicated and ever-changing approach to treating mental illness. Now, spurred by the growing disenchantment with antidepressants, an increasing number of people are seeking treatment for depression, anxiety and eating disorders from naturopaths, acupuncturists and even chiropractors. Traditional therapists worry that alternative treatments might sway patients to give up conventional treatments too quickly. "People with very little data often say, ’’This works,’’ " says Philip Muskin, Chief of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center [sic] in New York. A psychiatrist and trained hypnotist, Dr. Muskin believes that wellness techniques like yoga, herbs and acupuncture can make people feel better psychologically. But he says alternative providers don’’t have adequate training to diagnose or treat severe mental-health disorders. "Many think if you get your liver and spleen into the right balance that will help," he says. 7/17/2007 Katie Couric's Notebook: Antidepressants and ChildrenKatie Couric talks about the dilemma some parents face about their children taking antidepressants, after the FDA warned that the medication could increase the risk of suicide in young people. 7/17/2007 Katie Couric's Notebook: Antidepressants and Children Katie Couric talks about the dilemma some parents face about their children taking antidepressants, after the FDA warned that the medication could increase the risk of suicide in young people. 7/13/2007 Suicide Findings Question Link to AntidepressantsTwo large new studies in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggest that treatment of depression, either with psychotherapy or drugs, reduces the risk of suicide attempts in all age groups, especially during the first months of treatment. The findings raise further questions about possible links between antidepressant drugs and suicide. Dr. David Shaffer, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Columbia who was not involved in the study, said the results should prove reassuring to people taking antidepressants. “The study provided no evidence that starting an antidepressant increases the likelihood of a suicide attempt,” he said. “Starting treatment, regardless of which kind, seems to reduce suicide attempts.” 7/10/2007 Virginia Tech Case Reveals Flaws in Mental Health System The investigation into the Virginia Tech shootings revealed weaknesses in screening and handling of mental illness. Health correspondent Susan Dentzer reports on deficiencies in the system and what is being done to address them. The school district launched a broad-based suicide prevention initiative that included a computerized mental health screening tool called TeenScreen. Laurie Flynn is national executive director of the TeenScreen program, which was developed by child and adolescent psychiatrists at Columbia University. 7/2/2007 Antidepressants, Birth Defects Are Rarely Linked, Studies Show ... The most widely prescribed pills for depression didn’’t significantly increase the risk of birth defects in two studies, suggesting the drugs may be appropriate for treating a common side effect of pregnancy. “It’’s not going to be so easy to say, `Oh there’’s no problem with the drugs’,”said Margaret Spinelli,Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute]in New York, in a June 26 telephone interview. Still, pregnant women with serious depression need treatment, and the antidepressants remain the best option, Spinelli said. 6/20/2007 When Mothers Kill Their Kids: An infanticide expert discusses why...NEWSWEEK: What was your first impression when you heard about Gabriel Estrada? Margaret G. Spinelli: Even eight months after the birth of her last daughter, we would consider it postpartum depression. So in infanticide or filicide like this, the woman is either psychotic, hearing voices [or] delusional. When she’s really depressed or suicidal it’s called altruistic infanticide or filicide—when the mother kills herself but kills her children too, because she can’t leave them behind. 6/19/2007 States Face Decisions on Who Is Mentally Fit to Vote A growing number of states [are] grappling with the question of who is too mentally impaired to vote. This summer, recommendations for national standards will be released by a group of psychiatrists, lawyers and others led by the American Bar Association, suggesting that people be prevented from voting only if they cannot indicate, with or without help, “a specific desire to participate in the voting process.” “To fail to have any standard that requires a person to have a grasp of what the process is all about would degrade the voting process,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, a Columbia University psychiatry professor who was a leader of a study that asked Alzheimer’s patients to choose between hypothetical candidates and describe how elections work. 6/18/2007 New ground in debate on 'curing' gaysAlan Chambers directs Exodus International, widely described as the nation's largest ex-gay ministry. But when he addresses the group's Freedom Conference at Concordia University in Irvine this month, Chambers won't celebrate successful "ex-gays." "What appeals to me is that it moves away from the total polarization" common in the field, said Dr. Robert Spitzer, the psychiatrist. "For many years, mental-health professionals have taken the view that since homosexuality is not a mental disorder, any attempt to change sexual orientation is unwise," said Spitzer, a Columbia University professor. 6/13/2007 Male U.S. Veterans More Likely to Commit Suicide Male U.S. military veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide as men who haven’’t served in the armed forces, a new study claims. "The main finding of this study resolves an important and timely question of considerable importance," said Dr. Randall Marshall, director of Trauma Studies at [Columbia University and the] New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. 6/12/2007 New York Magazine’s Best Doctors 2007Some of Our Department’’s Best Made the List: Addiction Psychiatry Herbert Kleber. Adult Psychiatry Paul Appelbaum, Evelyn Attia, Michael First, Neil Kavey, Lewis Opler, Steven Roose, B. Timothy Walsh. Child Psychiatry Hector Bird, Clarice Kestenbaum. 6/12/2007 Male Depression Is Linked to Poor Sibling Relations Men who had poor relationships with siblings during childhood are at significantly greater risk for depression in adulthood than those who got along better, a new study has found. “This is a really important study,” said Myrna M. Weissman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who was not involved in the work. “The one caveat is that these were all men, and sibling relationships may pertain more to men than to women.” 6/12/2007 Cocaine: Hidden in Plain Sight While cocaine and drug abuse seem to have faded from the headlines, with coverage limited to the not-so-veiled references surrounding the exploits of waifish celebrities, it is still very much a part of the social scene, especially in New York. Drug-abuse experts say the blasé attitude toward cocaine use is a result of “generational amnesia.” “There seems to be less of a stigma about” cocaine, said Dr. Herbert Kleber, director of the division of substance abuse at [Columbia University Medical Center and] the New York State Psychiatric Institute in Manhattan. As part of his oversight of research into cocaine addiction and treatment, and in his private clinical practice, Dr. Kleber hears stories about the drug’s use. “People don’t feel nearly as much the need to hide it,” he said. “They feel that they can use it in a more open fashion.” 6/6/2007 Drugmaker wants approval for schizophrenia drug for teens Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which has about 7,700 workers in New Jersey, asked U.S. regulators for permission to sell its antipsychotic drug Abilify to treat schizophrenia in adolescents. Sales of Abilify surged 41 percent last year, the biggest increase among antipsychotics, helped by studies showing it caused less weight gain than competing drugs. "I would expect Abilify to gain the most prescriptions from an approval for adolescent use because younger patients appear to be more susceptible to weight gain than adults,’’’’ said Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York. 6/5/2007 LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Preventing Suicide Re “Tracking an Online Trend, and a Route to Suicide” (Seoul Journal, May 23): The devastating effects of suicide are no doubt echoing through the South Korean population. Contagion, be it through the Internet or other informal or formal channels, has been a source of concern, especially in youth. But to ignore the well-known link to psychiatric disorders and to attribute suicide only to psychosocial causes wastes an important opportunity to avoid death for a vulnerable population. Maria A. Oquendo, M.D. The writer is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. 6/1/2007 Lyme Disease Primer This morning in HealthWatch: lyme disease. It’’s definitely something you don’’t want to get this summer. So let’’s get the facts from Dr. Brian Fallon, director of the new lyme disease research center at Columbia University Medical Center. Good morning. First thing’’s first, this thing is really kind of spreading around the country. It used to be here in the northeast and some other specific areas. It’’s pretty much everywhere now. FALLON: That’’s absolutely right. It’’s been reported throughout the United States and it’’s spreading. SMITH: And we’’re talking about a tick bite, right? FALLON: That’’s right. A tick is extremely small. At this time of year, it’’s about the size of a poppy seed or a freckle. So you might not see it. 5/24/2007 ’’Cyberchondria’’: Point, Click, Sick With Internet access at nearly everyone’’s fingertips, trying to find the cause of a headache or muscle pain can be just a few keystrokes away. According to a Pew Internet study, more than 7 million Americans go online every day to research health or medical information. But for a group of people dubbed "cyberchondriacs," online is far worse for their health than the ache or pain itself. "They’’re called cyberchondriacs and I would say that’’s the group of hypochondriacs who have a strong, obsessive compulsive focus to their symptoms," Dr. Brian Fallon of Columbia University said. Ninety percent of hypochondriacs with Internet access become cyberchondriacs, according to Fallon. He said it’’s a natural progression. 5/18/2007 Putting the Brakes on Psychosis A group in Maine is exporting a program that flags young people for therapy before mental illness sets in. Brain scans of a group of teenagers with schizophrenia show a loss of gray matter, suggesting a need for early intervention. It’’s difficult to compare the benefits of medication versus psychosocial support because there’’s so little data, says Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Of the available studies in preventing psychosis, only one--published by McGlashan in 2006--investigated medication as the sole intervention. That study suggested a drug called olanzapine could cut progression rates to psychosis in prodromal patients by half. However, the results were deemed inconclusive because weight gain and fatigue led to a high dropout rate in the treatment group. 5/15/2007 To them, you’’re a big snack You barely see them, but they sense you. Millions of tiny deer ticks are waiting in the woods and fields for a warmblooded creature to walk by and deliver their next blood meal. For humans, the encounter can result in Lyme disease. "New York state has traditionally accounted for more cases of Lyme disease than any other state," said Dr. Brian Fallon, director of the newly formed Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University in New York City. 5/15/2007 Dangerous Warnings Congress may soon increase the Food and Drug Administration’’s oversight of pharmeceuticals. I certainly don’’t think we should simply trust what drug companies tell us, but I have my worries about the FDA, too. The FDA recently opted to impose its most serious "black box" warning on the prescription of anti-depressants to those aged 18 to 24. This sends the wrong message about drugs that are often life-saving. Is there any science behind the fears of these useful meds? Dr. John Mann, director of neuroscience at the New York State Psychiatric Institute [and Columbia University] and an expert on suicide, notes that starting an anti-depressant can occasionally remove inhibition and fear of death - "the person is no longer indecisive, and suicide may ensue." But this theory is really a justification for careful observation by a trained professional like a psychiatrist, not for irrational fear of the drug. Any patient taking a drug for the first time may experience unexpected side effects, so early surveillance is always warranted. 5/11/2007 Doctor's supervision key with antidepressants Despite anecdotal reports of adverse reactions to antidepressants in children and adolescents, particularly with SSRIs such as Prozac and Zoloft, there are actually no cases of related suicides in all the pediatric clinical trial data that the Food and Drug Administration reevaluated in recent years, said Dr. John Mann, professor of psychiatry and radiology at Columbia University and director of research for the New York State Psychiatric Institute. 5/8/2007 Nine in 10 US babies watch TVAbout 90 per cent of US children under age 2 and as many as 40 per cent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said on Monday. A second study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that teens who watch three to four hours of television a day were more likely to have attention or learning problems and were less likely to get a college degree. "Even watching more than an hour of TV per day had some adverse consequences, but three hours was much worse than one hour, and two was worse than one," Jeffrey Johnson of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons* and the New York State Psychiatric Institute said in a telephone interview. 5/4/2007 Drug makers to widen suicide risk warning The Food and Drug Administration ordered drug makers yesterday to add warnings to antidepressant medications, saying the drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking or behavior in some young adults.The drug agency reached its conclusions after analyzing 295 antidepressant studies, including 77,000 adults from college students to retirees. The analysis found no increased risk of completed suicides in patients taking the medications. But 21 suicide attempts were reported among the 3,810 19- to 24-year-olds taking the drugs, working out to a 0.55 percent risk, twice the risk in adults of the same age who took placebo pills, the analysis found. By age 25, the risk was not significantly different, the agency said. Dr. Kelly Posner, an assistant professor of child psychiatry at Columbia University who helps the drug agency analyze suicidal behaviors, said the studies were not structured to assess suicide risk and could not determine the cause of the behavior. 5/2/2007 Depression Raises Risk of Diabetes, Study FindsDepression is associated with an increased risk for diabetes in older adults, even in people who have no other risk factors for the disease, a new study reports. Dr. Jonathan W. Stewart, a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute who was not involved in the work, said that the conclusions “fit with what else we think we know,” but he was troubled by one aspect of the work. “I worry that some of the items on the questionnaire could be attributed to diabetes rather than to depression,” suggesting that there is some overlap between the symptoms of the two disorders, he said. “This doesn’t make the study wrong or inaccurate, but it’s a serious limitation which they didn’t mention.” 4/18/2007 Kids and Antidepressants – More Good Than Harm? In the past few years, there has been a furious debate over the safety of antidepressants in children and teens. Both proponents and opponents of the drugs have complained about the lack of research. Now a new study suggests that the drugs do more good than harm. "I think it will increase the comfort level," says psychiatrist Lawrence Greenhillof Columbia University, "when [patients] turn to the possibility of taking an antidepressant, knowing that the risks are slightly smaller and the benefits are better defined." 4/18/2007 Benefits of Antidepressants Outweigh Risk of Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents The most comprehensive survey yet finds that the benefits of antidepressants outweigh the risks in children and teens during the first few months of treatment. The finding comes three years after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered pharmaceutical companies to put black warning labels—the strongest possible—on antidepressants cautioning that the drugs may increase the risk of suicidal behavior in kids. The result bolsters the case that antidepressants are effective in young people, says psychiatrist John Mann of Columbia University, who adds that the black box warning may be harming kids by making them less likely to take the drugs. 4/17/2007 Men, Boys Lack Options to Treat Eating DisordersFor many years, conventional wisdom held that one-tenth of patients with eating disorders were male. But in February -- in the first national survey of eating disorders -- Harvard researchers reported that males represent as many as one-quarter of anorexia and bulimia patients and close to 40% of binge eaters. Because of the lack of gender-specific research, eating-disorder experts say they have no proof that the treatment for males should differ from that for females. A successful regimen of care is often individualized and involves psychotherapy, family therapy and antidepressants. "The bigger problem arises if the male patient needs to be treated in a group setting," says B. Timothy Walsh, a psychiatrist and director of the eating-disorders research unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. "It can be difficult for a young man if he is the only one going through the process with a group of young women." 4/16/2007 How can I decide whether to take antidepressants? Untreated depression is a terrible disease, and antidepressants help millions of people. But they should be taken under tight medical supervision, said Dr. Alexander Bodkin , chief of clinical psychopharmacology research at McLean Hospital. * * Despite anecdotal reports of adverse reactions to antidepressants in children and adolescents, particularly SSRIs like Prozac and Zoloft, there are actually no cases of suicide related to taking antidepressants in all the pediatric clinical trial data that the US Food and Drug Administration has reevaluated in recent years, said Dr. John Mann , a Columbia University professor and director of research for the New York State Psychiatric Institute. 4/11/2007 Columbia University Medical Center Announces $9.2 Million Expansion of Lieber Center for Schizophrenia Research, Launch of New E. 60th Street Psychiatry Clinic Columbia University Medical Center announces today the expansion of its Lieber Center for Schizophrenia Research and the launch of a new comprehensive psychiatric care clinic at its East 60th Street location, all made possible through a $9.2 million gift from Stephen and Constance Lieber and the Essel Foundation. 4/10/2007 Long-Term Therapy Effective in Bipolar Depression Psychotherapy for as long as nine months is significantly more effective than short-term treatment for alleviating depression associated with bipolar disease, new research suggests. “This is a monumental study,” said Myrna M. Weissman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] who was not involved in the work. “There are no pharmaceutical companies willing to pay for research in psychotherapy, so we don’t have many clinical trials.” But, she added: “Psychosocial treatment for bipolar illness is not an alternative to medication. It’s a supplement.” 4/4/2007 You Might Feel Blue, but New Study Says Too Many Are Diagnosed With DepressionIt is widely estimated that more than 30 million Americans will suffer from depression at least once in their lives, but a new study finds one out of every four people told they have depression could, in fact, be reacting normally to some of life’’s more troubling times. "It’’s normal to be sad after a spouse dies. We’’re arguing that it’’s also normal to be sad after another terrible thing happens, like you lose your job or you get divorced," said Dr. Michael First, of Columbia University, a researcher who participated in the study. 4/4/2007 The Clinical Definition of Depression May ChangePsychiatrists have a strict definition for depression. It's more than just unremitting sadness. To be classified as depressed, patients also have to have several other symptoms. There's a bereavement exclusion for people who otherwise meet the definition but have just lost a loved one since they may just be responding normally to a loss. Now several mental health experts are suggesting that people who have just gone through other life problems, such as losing a job, should also not be categorized as depressed if it looks like their symptoms will be temporary. Joining us is psychiatrist Dr. Michael First of Columbia University. He's the editor of the major handbook for psychiatrists, "The DSM-IV." He's also co- author of a new study of depression. 3/30/2007 JIM LEHRER: And, finally tonight, Shakespeare wrote the play. A Supreme Court justice held the trial. Jeffrey Brown has a most unusual twist on the story of Hamlet… *JEFFREY LIEBERMAN, Columbia University*: I viewed it, from a clinical perspective, in the cold light of everyday reality, albeit of the 17th century. JEFFREY BROWN: The expert witness for the defense, Columbia *University psychiatry professor Jeffrey Lieberman*, explained that Hamlet`s words and actions, including that extreme ambivalence, proved this was one deeply and clinically depressed prince. 3/30/2007 Antidepressants Do Little To Help [Bipolar] Patients Recover –StudyAntidepressants frequently prescribed to help treat bipolar depression do little to help patients recover, according to a new study that adds fuel to a long-running debate over how to best treat an affliction that affects an estimated eight million Americans. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York, described the findings as "discouraging," adding that they underscore the need to find more innovative treatments. Dr. Lieberman did not take part in the study. *For a copy of the full article,mailto:mz2171@columbia.edu 3/23/2007 Psychoanalyst Milton Wexler Dies At 98 Milton Wexler, a prominent Hollywood psychoanalyst whose efforts to find a cure for the disease that killed his wife led scientists to pinpoint the Huntington's gene, has died. He was 98. Wexler launched what is now known as the Hereditary Disease Foundation in 1968, when his wife, Leonore Wexler, got the Huntington's diagnosis. That meant the couple's daughters, Alice and Nancy, had a 50 percent risk of also inheriting the disease. His research into Huntington's has become a family affair. Nancy Wexler, a professor at Columbia University, succeeded her father as foundation president. 3/21/2007 Facing Life With A Lethal GeneThe test, the counselor said, had come back positive. Katharine Moser inhaled sharply. She thought she was as ready as anyone could be to face her genetic destiny. She had attended a genetic counseling session and visited a psychiatrist, as required by the clinic. She had undergone the recommended neurological exam. And yet, she realized in that moment, she had never expected to hear those words. Ms. Moser was 23. It had taken her months to convince the clinic at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan that she wanted, at such a young age, to find out whether she carried the gene for Huntington’s disease. As a raft of new DNA tests are revealing predispositions to all kinds of conditions, including breast cancer, depression and dementia, little is known about what it is like to live with such knowledge. “What runs in your own family, and would you want to know?” said Nancy Wexler, a neuropsychologist at Columbia and the president of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, which has pioneered Huntington’s research. “Soon everyone is going to have an option like this. You make the decision to test, you have to live with the consequences.” 3/21/2007 Research suggests diagnoses inflated The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are so common that depressed people who have never faced trauma usually qualify for the condition, according to a new study that raises questions about whether thousands of Iraq war veterans as well as civilians are getting the right diagnosis and treatment for their emotional problems. Dr. Michael First, editor of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), said he believes post-traumatic stress disorder is a separate disorder. "My concern is that it's overused," said First, of Columbia University. "It started out as combat neuroses for very severely traumatized soldiers, but now it's all over the place." 3/14/2007 Depression: Stigma and shameDr. Lisanby: Most of my patients have severe depression; they may have remained depressed for many years despite taking psychotherapy or antidepressant medications. The sad thing is these treatments don’t work for everybody. But the good news is there are alternatives I’d like to talk about. One is called E.C.T. We at Columbia and the Psychiatric Institute do research on biological treatments that offer hope when medications fail. 3/7/2007 Change in daylight saving time may affect moods Daylight saving time begins three weeks earlier this year and lasts one week longer — welcome news for people who relish the extra afternoon light to garden, ride a bicycle, walk the dog or just take out the trash when they can still see the curb. But the extension, which begins Sunday, could actually make millions of Americans feel less sunny. For those people — suffering from seasonal affective disorder or its milder cousin, winter blues — the corresponding reduction in morning light may worsen or lengthen their depression, doctors and mood experts say. "We''re very worried about it," says Michael Terman director of [Columbia University Medical Center and] New York-Presbyterian Hospital''s Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms. "It''s the early morning light exposure that allays the symptoms of winter depression. The later the sun rises, the more likely we are to get depressed." 3/7/2007 Are Anxiety Disorders Common?A small study of patients visiting their family doctor found nearly 20% had at least one kind of anxiety disorder and many had more than one type. But 41% of these patients who met the criteria for the disorder were not being treated. Joining us for insight into this is Dr. Blair Simpson, Director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University Medical Center. Are Anxiety Disorders Common? 2/27/2007 When Believing You’re Ill Becomes a Serious SicknessFor 24-year old Sevan, college life was full of promise. He was having fun, about to graduate from one of the nation''s most prestigious academic institutions, and on track to fulfill his dream of becoming an engineer. After dozens of doctor visits, four trips to the emergency room in two days, and a series of invasive diagnostic procedures, no one could find anything wrong with him physically. "This is a huge public health problem. About one out of 20 people who walk through a doctor''s door has symptoms of hypochondria," said Dr. Kelli Harding, who studies people with hypochondria. 2/13/2007 Parents seek meaning to tragic loss Nicole Schiffman''s white Honda Accord sits in the family driveway -- a strange reminder that the college life she had been living is over. Now her parents, only weeks after the burial and the memorials, are trying to make sense of the senseless by trying to raise awareness of troubled young people such as Joshua Mendel, the 22-year-old man who killed their daughter and her friend, Carol Kestenbaum, on Feb. 18 in Tempe, Ariz. Experts say it''s virtually impossible to predict who will kill, no matter how apparent the signs of disturbance. "Postdiction is often as difficult as prediction," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. "Violence is a final common pathway for many grievances," he said, adding that violence is so difficult to control "because we can''t even identify people at risk." 2/13/2007 Survey Puts New Focus on Binge Eating as a DiagnosisThe first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States, a nationwide survey of more than 2,900 men and women, was published by Harvard researchers in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. It found a prevalence in the general population of 0.6 percent for anorexia, 1 percent for bulimia and 2.8 percent for binge-eating disorder. Experts not involved in the study called it significant. “This is probably the best study yet conducted of the frequencies of eating disorders in American households,” said Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, director of the eating disorders research unit of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center. 2/10/2007 Long-Term Therapy Effective in Bipolar DepressionPsychotherapy for as long as nine months is significantly more effective than short-term treatment for alleviating depression associated with bipolar disease, new research suggests. “This is a monumental study,” said Myrna M. Weissman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] who was not involved in the work. “There are no pharmaceutical companies willing to pay for research in psychotherapy, so we don’t have many clinical trials.” But, she added: “Psychosocial treatment for bipolar illness is not an alternative to medication. It’s a supplement.” 2/8/2007 Looking Beyond the Runway for Answers on Underweight Models Skinny models became a hot-button topic when the global news media got hold of the public relations mess the industry stumbled into after two models in South America died of anorexia nervosa last year. Suddenly trade groups around the world started wringing their hands about eating disorders. “It’s hard, with obesity being so urgent a health issue for such a large population, not to encourage thinness,’ Dr. Attia [of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute]said. "But with it comes a vulnerability, probably for a small group, but an important group, with a mortality rate as high as that of any psychiatric disorder.” 2/2/2007 Eating Disorder ''''''''Census'''''''' Finds Binging ProblemsFrequent and unrestrained binge eating is the country''''''''s most common eating disorder, far outpacing the better-known weight control diseases anorexia and bulimia, according to a national survey conducted by researchers at Harvard University Medical School. Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, director of the eating disorders research unit at the New York State Psychiatric Hospital at Columbia University Medical Center, said the study confirms a widespread belief that the population of binge eaters is growing. He said if binge eating is a cause of obesity, psychiatrists could give more effective treatment to many overweight people. 2/1/2007 Columbia Department of Psychiatry/New York State Psychiatric Institute Launch Clinical Trials WebsiteHoping to increase recruitment and enhance its ability to track research participants in the system, the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) announced the creation of a new clinical trials website. The system boasts a sophisticated search mechanism where potential participants can access information about studies ideal for them. Dr. David Hellerstein, the site’s developer as well as a psychiatrist at Columbia and NYSPI, believes that no other psychiatry department has a site with the capacity to link participants to currently active studies rather than the list of usually outdated research protocols web searches typically generate. 1/23/2007 Study Questions ''Off-Label'' Use of Antipsychotics Newer antipsychotic medications are being used widely for a variety of psychiatric disorders for which they were not initially approved. The drugs are also used widely in children for off-label purposes, said Dr. Cheryl Corcoran, assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and a researcher in schizophrenia at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. "There are very few clinical trials in children, but there''s enough information from other sources to show that these medications can be very problematic for children, with side effects such as weight gain, insulin resistance and changes in cholesterol," she said. 1/23/2007 Psychotherapy for BPD Gets Growing Evidence Base Psychotherapy is emerging in randomized, controlled trials within the last year as the most effective treatment for borderline^ personality disorder (BPD). Schema therapy founder Jeffrey Young, Ph.D., who is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, was one of the first students of Aaron Beck, M.D., the founder of cognitive therapy. "I found that cognitive therapy was extremely effective with many Axis I disorders, as research has since substantiated, but was much less effective by itself with Axis II personality^ disorders," he told Psychiatric News. "I began to look for ways^ to expand cognitive-behavior therapy to work with Axis II issues by integrating elements drawn from other approaches as well as CBT, including psychodynamic therapies such as object relations,emotion-focused/gestalt therapies, and attachment theory." 1/23/2007 Taken: Children Lost and FoundShawn Hornbeck was allowed to basically come and go as he pleased while being held captive but many believed that he didn't leave because he was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Columbia University Chairman of Psychiatry [and Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute], talks about Hornbeck while he was being held captive. 1/13/2007 Survey Puts New Focus on Binge Eating as a DiagnosisThe first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States, a nationwide survey of more than 2,900 men and women, was published by Harvard researchers in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. It found a prevalence in the general population of 0.6 percent for anorexia, 1 percent for bulimia and 2.8 percent for binge-eating disorder. Experts not involved in the study called it significant. “This is probably the best study yet conducted of the frequencies of eating disorders in American households,” said Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, director of the eating disorders research unit of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center. 1/12/2007 Researchers to Create Autism Databank, DNA samples for the databank will be collected from autism patients by scientists at Yale University, Harvard University, Columbia University, Emory University, McGill University, Boston University, Washington University, the University of Washington, the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. 1/9/2007 JAMA Review: Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and MedicineIf one were to believe the popular media, the efficacy of faith-based therapies is well established. Even in the professional medical literature, there are those who assert the health benefits of prayer, attendance at religious services, and other religious activities. Richard P. Sloan, PhD, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University [and the New York State Psychiatric Institute], has written extensively on the relationship of medicine and religion and takes issue with this current trend. 1/4/2007 Dawn simulator curbs wintertime bluesFor people who suffer from winter depression triggered largely by reduced sunlight, a bedside device that simulates the rising of the sun may provide relief, a study shows. "Negative air ionization," also delivered at the bedside, seems to be effective as well. "Dawn simulation and negative air ionization are two naturalistic, non-pharmaceutical environmental enhancements now verified superior to placebo and remarkably effective in the treatment of winter depression," Dr. Michael Terman told Reuters Health. 12/29/2006 Vanda Insiders Cashed Out After Shares SoaredVanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., a four- year-old drug company with no marketed products, on Dec. 7 reported a successful study of an experimental schizophrenia drug. Its shares jumped 69 percent, the most ever. "This is at best a me-too drug,",/i> said Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at New York's Columbia University, about Vanda's iloperidone. "I assume they picked Geodon because it was one of the weaker antipsychotics." Lieberman said he doesn't take consulting fees from competing drugmakers. 12/29/2006 Intense Light Still Best Treatment for Winter BluesPart of the problem with seasonal depression is that people sleep too long. The dawn simulation sends a signal to the brain. "We''re talking about light''s input into the base of the brain, where the internal clock gets reset each day," says Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University. "So you can sleep through it, but your brain is definitely seeing the signal." 12/14/2006 Panel Wants Broader Antidepressant Labeling Strong warning labels about the suicide risk associated with antidepressants, which now include children and adolescents, should be extended to adults under 25, a federal advisory panel concluded Wednesday. Several psychiatric researchers at the hearing argued that, in effect, the agency’s previous warning for children had led to the deaths of people who were scared away from treatment. “I recommend that the committee reverse its previous warning for children and adolescents and instead encourage careful monitoring” of side effects, said Dr. John Mann, a professor of psychiatry and radiology at Columbia University and director of psychiatric research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. 12/6/2006 New moms at risk for variety of mental problems, large study finds In the months following the birth of a first child, new mothers may be at risk for a variety of mental problems, not just postpartum depression, according to a large study carried out on almost 2,000 men and women in Denmark. "Postpartum depression can be very serious," added Myrna Weissman, a professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She was not involved in the study. Childbirth and the months following are usually considered "a time of great happiness. For many, this is not the case," Weissman said. "Some of the mood problems can be avoided by planning and good social support," she added. 12/6/2006 Study Finds Medication Raises Suicide Risks in Young Adults In a long-awaited analysis, health officials reported yesterday that antidepressant medications appeared to increase significantly the risk of suicide attempts and related behaviors in adults under 25, while reducing such risks in older people. Dr. Kelly Posner, an assistant professor of child psychiatry at Columbia, who helped the F.D.A. analyze the data, said the findings should be treated with caution, because the drug trials studied were not designed to evaluate suicide risk. 12/5/2006 Physics Meets The BrainTerry Sejnowski, today a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who joined the Salk Institute and UCSD in 1988, never abandoned his training in physics. By weaving together theory and experimentation, Sejnowski effectively launched the field of computational neuroscience. "Prior to his arrival on the scene, every generation of neurobiologists felt that computation had done nothing in the previous 10 years, but that it would be extremely important in the next 10 years. And after that 10 years was over, one was exactly where one started," notes Columbia University''''''''s Eric Kandel. 12/5/2006 Getting a Grip on the Winter Blues It is that time of year again, when despite the ratcheting up of festivities for the holidays, fully one person in five in the United States ratchets down. The cause is a now well-known but still infrequently treated disorder, winter blues or SAD, for seasonal affective disorder. There are several remedies to help those affected by SAD escape an affliction that leaves many wanting to climb into bed, put their heads under the covers and not come out until spring. For those who remain in northern latitudes, Michael and Jiuan Su Terman of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University, who have conducted pioneering studies of SAD remedies, suggest considering a “dawn simulator.” This device gradually turns on a bedroom light every morning while you are still asleep, helping ease SAD symptoms by making the body think that it is experiencing the early sunrises of summer. 12/1/2006 Cost Benefits of New Schizophrenia Drugs Doubted Older Medication, Considered Equally Effective, Can Be as Much as $600 a Month Cheaper, Study FindsTreating schizophrenia with an older, cheaper drug, rather than with heavily promoted newer medications, reduces the cost by as much as 30 percent with no apparent difference in safety and effectiveness, according to the first study to examine the economic implications of ntipsychotic drug prescribing practices in the United States. While Rosenheck and CATIE lead scientist Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia University disagreed with the authors of the editorial on how to interpret several aspects of the study, everyone agreed that the trial provides the best window in the country to date on the treatment of schizophrenia. The editorial said the study highlighted the need for new and better treatments -- and perhaps a new and better mechanism of financial rewards to spur their development. 11/21/2006 Antidepressant debated for winter''''''''s SAD people For approximately 20 percent of the population, lack of sunlight can lead to a form of clinical depression called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, which can last as long as six months. The first specific drug treatment for the disorder is now available since the FDA''''''''s approval in June of a medication commonly used to treat depression and help people stop smoking. The antidepressant, Wellbutrin XL, has been found to prevent SAD episodes before they start, studies show. Although that''''''''s raising hopes among long-term sufferers, doctors don''''''''t agree on whether the medication''''''''s risks outweigh its benefits. Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan, isn''''''''t as optimistic [as other scientists]. "Historically, medications are given after you become depressed," he said. "There is no guarantee that a person is going to develop a clinically significant major depression, so there is a chance that you are taking the drug unnecessarily." 11/15/2006 New information on treating depressionLook around you at the next dinner or party you go to. One out of every five of the people there have had or will have a serious depression sometime in their lives. But there is hope for people with this illness says a new report in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The new study found that a four step plan of treatment could put the majority of them into remission. Dr. Jonathan Stewart, New York State Psychiatric Institute: "Two thirds of patients remitted, which meaned they were depression free." 11/15/2006 Troubled Children: What’s Wrong With a Child? Psychiatrists Often DisagreeAt the playground, in the gym, standing in line at the grocery store, parents swap horror stories about diagnoses, medications or special education classes. Their children are often as fluent in psychiatric jargon as their mothers and fathers are. “The change in attitude is enormous,” said Christina Hoven, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Columbia University. “Not long ago people did all they could to hide problems like these.” 11/9/2006 The Morning Person SolutionIf you’re not a morning person, you might be missing a chance to boost your mood. Researchers are making a solid case for how brightening your morning routine can help chase away depression. “Our brain needs to see a sunrise signal in order to stay in sync with the world,” says Michael Terman, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and director for the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at New York Presbyterian Hospital. “As the sun rises later we become less of a morning type, and the idea is to trick the brain into thinking it is spring or summer.” 11/1/2006 Nine Innings From Ground Zero, A Community EventThe Patient and Family Library and Learning Center at New York State Psychiatric Institute marks the 5th anniversary of September 11th with a screening of the documentary film "Nine Innings from Ground Zero". This documentary film is an unusual look at the way the city of New York coped in the aftermath of 9/11, and how baseball became a symbol of strength and resilience. Everyone is welcome to attend and participate in this free event. Although the film is specific to September 11, we hope that the discussion will also touch on other traumatic events, such as the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, in which a community''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''s capacity of resilience has helped its members to cope with the trauma and loss. 11/1/2006 David B. Merrill Among Psychiatry Residents Awarded Prestigious Laughlin FellowshipThe American College of Psychiatrists announced the 2007 recipients of its prestigious Laughlin Fellowships today. The ten new Laughlin Fellows will be honored at The College’s Annual Meeting, to be held February 21-25 in Palm Springs, Calif. Named after College founder, Henry P. Laughlin, M.D., the Fellowship program was launched in 1976 to recognize outstanding accomplishments by psychiatry residents in the United States and Canada. Each year, The College selects ten residents deemed most likely to make a significant future contribution to the field of psychiatry. The College provides a stipend for the Laughlin Fellows to attend The College’s Annual Meeting and participate in all educational functions, allowing them to interact with College Members, as well as their peers in other residency programs. 10/30/2006 Lawrence C. Kolb, 95, Leader in Mental Health Movement, DiesDr. Lawrence C. Kolb, a prominent mental health administrator and researcher who helped create the community mental health movement and became the public face of psychiatry for a generation of New Yorkers, died on Oct. 20 in Orlando, Fla. He was 95. Dr. Kolb became a public figure in the 1960s and 1970s as chairman of the psychiatry department of Columbia University Medical Center and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He not only helped expand the psychiatric practice, and made it an integral part of the medical school, but also worked with politicians and patient advocates to establish mental health clinics in Harlem and other neighborhoods. Mental health officials around the country modeled their efforts on Dr. Kolb’s. 10/30/2006 CBS''s 48 Hours: Scientology, A Question of FaithThis edition of the show featured an investigation into the Church of Scientology, and begins by recounting the tragic death of Scientologist Elli Perkins. Perkins was killed in 2003 by her son, who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia but was mostly treated in accordance with Scientology protocols. The program asks the question "Did A Mother''s Faith Contribute To Her Murder?" and then delves into broader issues, including Scientology''s opposition to psychiatry. Producers consulted with Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, Director of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Insitute/Columbia University Medical Center and; Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Director of the New York State Psychiatric Insitute and Chairman of the Department of Pyschiatry at Columbia University. 10/24/2006 Researchers Earn Top Awards From NARSADDr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research Dr. Lieberman, director of the Psychiatric Institute and chair of the department, was awarded the Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research. The $50,000 prize honors a scientist who has made distinguished contributions to the understanding of schizophrenia. 10/23/2006 The Bridge of Death: A Controversial New Film Documents Suicides in Their Final Moments on the Golden Gate BridgeAfter reading about the number of self-inflicted deaths from the Golden Gate, Eric Steel, a documentary filmmaker, saw a story in the bridge''s morbid allure. "There are times that suicide is presented as mysterious, as appealing and as inevitable, and those are messages that we absolutely do not want anyone to share," said Dr. Madelyn Gould, a professor of psychiatry and public health at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute... "I would have liked to have seen him go the next step of talking about the real causes, and then the solutions," she said. 10/10/2006 Instant Messages Raise ''Red Flag'' In explaining how he responded to warnings of possible sexual misconduct by Rep. Mark Foley, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has suggested that the "over friendly" e-mails Foley sent to a former page were not explicit enough to alert him to the problem''s seriousness. But the e-mails were classic examples of the tactics predatory adults use to approach young persons and called for immediate examination, psychiatrists and other clinical experts on sexual misconduct said Wednesday..."They represent the kind of preliminary grooming that sexual predators often engage in before approaching a victim more directly for a sexual relationship, and hence should have been a warning," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, law and ethics expert. 10/4/2006 Underweight Infants at Risk As Teens: Study Children born underweight but not disabled are still more likely to have physical and mental problems as teen-agers, researchers said on Monday. Low birth weight is a known risk factor for mental retardation and cerebral palsy, but subtler brain injuries inflicted by an undersized head may afflict others born underweight, especially boys, it said. "One possibility is that hormonal differences between the sexes affect acute response to and long-term recovery from brain injury," wrote study author Agnes Whitaker of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. 9/30/2006 Efficacy of ADHD Drug As a Smoking Cessation Tool: Columbia U & Psychiatric Institute Researchers Launch New Study...The Smoking Cessation Program at Columbia University Medical Center is seeking participants aged 18 to 55 years for a new study targeting smokers with ADHD. The purpose of the study is to see if methylphenidate will be an effective smoking cessation aid for this group. 9/11/2006 New Law Could Help Depression Sufferers Get Health Care They NeedNearly 20 million American suffer from depression, but for many roadblocks to insurance coverage can make getting the right treatment virtually impossible. That seems to be the case for some patients seeking a device—the Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS)— that treats patients for a form of depression once deemed untreatable. [But a new state law may change all that.] Dr. Sarah Lisanby of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University says she has waiting lists of patients trying to get VNS Therapy, mostly due to issues with access to coverage. 9/7/2006 Learning to deal with 9/11 trauma... Dr. Randall Marshall, a trauma expert, said that there is good news, even for those still suffering five years later.Doctors at Cornell are using computer-generated virtual reality treatment to help 9/11 trauma patients. Scientists at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons have been treating survivors of 9/11 with psychotherapy and medicine, and studying the benefits of the treatment. Dr. Randall Marshall, a trauma expert at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, said that there is good news, even for those still suffering five years later. People are finding relief when the right treatment is offered. 9/2/2006 In Treating Depression, Persistence Can Pay Off... Dr. Patrick J. McGrath and his colleagues reported in this month''s American Journal of Psychiatry that the drugs produced modest and comparable benefits, with remission rates of 7% and 14% respectively.Researchers find that in some cases a fourth drug regimen can succeed where others failed. Some patients who have failed three courses of drug treatment for depression may still derive benefit from a fourth set of drugs, according to the largest study of treatment-resistant depression, the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression or STAR*D trial. Dr. Patrick J. McGrath of the Columbia University Medical Center and his colleagues reported in this month''s American Journal of Psychiatry that the drugs produced modest and comparable benefits, with remission rates of 7% and 14% respectively. 8/18/2006 The Psychological Risks of Vietnam for U.S. Veterans: A Revisit with New Data and Methods... Drs. Bruce P. Dohrenwend, Randall Marshall and collegues report...Drs. Bruce P. Dohrenwend, Randall Marshall and collegues report... 8/10/2006 What Drives People to Want to Be Amputees? People with Body Integrity Identity Disorder Say...Karl is a double amputee, but not by accident, birth or disease. He is an amputee by choice. Six years ago, Karl sat alone in a parked car with 100 pounds of dry ice and an obsession to destroy his legs. Dr. Michael First, a psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University in New York, is one of the few researchers to study patients with this strange obsession to lose one or more of their limbs. The rare condition is called body integrity identity disorder, or BIID. "When these people see an amputee, they see … a person of strength being able to overcome hardship, someone to be admired," First said. 8/8/2006 New Depression Findings Could Alter TreatmentThe results of two new studies may signal a substantial shift in the way psychiatrists and researchers think about treatment for severely depressed patients... Psychiatrists in New York found evidence that antidepressant drugs significantly increased the risk that some children and adolescents would attempt or commit suicide. Doctors have debated this risk for years, but the authors of the study were skeptical of it, and their report may sway others. The study of suicide risk, led by Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, was based on an analysis of Medicaid records of more than 4,400 people who were hospitalized for depression in 1999 and 2000. “I was surprised by what we found,” Dr. Olfson said. “I set out thinking we’d find that the drugs” significantly reduced suicide risk. 7/25/2006 Inmate Drug Rehab Key to Less CrimeFederal drug officials published a report yesterday showing that treatment for drug addiction in the criminal justice system is key to reducing the prison population and keeping the nation''s streets safer. Dr. Herbert Kleber, director of the division on substance abuse at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, said the key to any successful program is to make sure treatment continues once a person leaves the system. A growing number of prisons have therapeutic communities, but having programs in place when someone is ready to leave reduces the likelihood they will commit another crime, Kleber said. 7/25/2006 Review Sees No Advantage in 12-Step ProgramsWhen Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are examined in controlled studies, a new review reports, scientists find no proof that they are superior to any other intervention in reducing alcohol dependence or alcohol-related problems. [But] Dr. Edward V. Nunes, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia, said research had demonstrated that certain elements of A.A. were effective. "Some of the wisdom embodied in A.A., such as the notion of persons, places and things that trigger drinking, are very much a part of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is a scientifically driven, empirically validated treatment." 7/25/2006 Commentary: Correcting the Errors of DisclosureIn recent weeks, two top medical journals have been in the news for failing to disclose the financial ties of the academic authors of published papers, one involving antidepressant drugs, the other a medical device approved to treat depression. Harold Sackeim, a professor of psychiatry and radiology at Columbia, said that if device makers could not hire the field''s top experts, effective new devices would never be approved. "This is not like pharmaceuticals, where the companies are much bigger and have their own experts," he said. He added that he and other academic doctors advising the company "are a pretty small group, we all know each other, and the gestalt in the group carries a lot of weight. 7/18/2006 The Science of AddictionMidmorning (Minnesota Public Radio) discusses the latest advances and new ideas in drug addiction research and treatment. Herbert Kleber, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Substance Abuse at New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University Med. Ctr. joins Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 7/17/2006 Sweet Forgetting: A Pill to Ease Painful MemoriesNobel Prize winner Eric Kandel, who studies memory at Columbia University in New York, has warned that drugs could be used to wipe away guilt and remorse. 7/13/2006 US News & World Report Releases Its List of Best Hospitals 2006The department of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell secured a place among the top 5, coming in third among the nation''''''''s best. This year''''''''s annual guide reports results of a survey of a hospital''''''''s reputation in 16 medical specialties among a national sample of certified doctors. Rounding out the top three in psychiatry were Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital. 7/11/2006 Magic Mushrooms Really Cause "Spiritual" Experiences"Magic" mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus''''s active ingredient. About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a "complete" mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes. However, psilocybin use has been associated with side effects such as severe paranoia, nervousness and unwanted flashbacks and so experts warn against experimentation. "Once you''''ve started down the path, you might not like where it ends," comments Herbert Kleber, director of the substance abuse division at the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia. "These are powerful agents that are just as likely to do harm as to do good." 7/5/2006 Pediatricians Urged to Focus on Moms, TooJust two simple questions--about whether a mother has lost interest and pleasure in doing things lately, and whether she has been feeling down--can quickly and easily start the process of getting the estimated 10 percent of mothers who are depressed the help they need...The research is so convincing it practically "screams" for pediatricians to get involved in treating parents' depression, said Dr. Myrna Weissman 7/5/2006 Procedure Uses Magnetic Therapy to Relieve SymptomsResearchers have been exploring TMS for two decades, using a technique that can sound bizarre to the uninitiated. The test subject sits in a chair while a scientist places a magnet on his head, then sends magnetic pulses through his skull to "light up" various areas of the brain. "It sounds like sci-fi, doesn''t it? But I think this is big news," said Dr. Sarah H. Lisanby, a TMS researcher who is director of brain stimulation at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. 6/27/2006 A Triumphant Journey, a Hard-Won RecoveryIn this week''s segment of "Cases" in the Science Times, Dr. David Hellerstein writes, "In the successful treatment of mood and anxiety disorders, it is not uncommon, I find, for patients to take a trip. Not a harried business overnighter, not an obligatory weekend visiting parents. Instead, they book a trip that they''ve always dreamed about...Recent research by Dr. Michael Rogan at Columbia shows that the brain also has a safety center. This center, in the region called the dorsal striatum, communicates a sense of security." 6/16/2006 Suicide-Risk Tests for Teens Debated One screening program, TeenScreen, developed by Columbia University, has been administered to more than 150,000 children in 42 states and the District [of Columbia]. One parent interviewed by the Washington Post said "Without any doubt, had TeenScreen been available to us as Garrett's parents, I am convinced we would have been empowered to save his life." ...Because suicide victims often turn out to have had mental disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder, David Shaffer of Columbia University, who developed the TeenScreen questionnaire, and other specialists say identifying and treating youngsters with such disorders may reduce the number of suicides. 6/14/2006 Study finds Prozac no help for anorexia relapses...The anti-depressant Prozac and its generic equivalents, often prescribed for patients struggling with anorexia, do not help prevent relapses of the life-threatening eating disorder, a study [led by Dr. Timothy Walsh] said on Tuesday. 6/12/2006 In Diabetes, One More Burden for the Mentally Ill... In fact, among the mentally ill, roughly one in every five appear to develop diabetes — about double the rate of the general population... "It''''s bad enough that these people have mental illness, and then they take treatments and they bring on diabetes," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman... Or as Dr. David Hellerstein, noted, "Instead of having the patient lie down and you say, ''''So tell me why you fight with your brother,'''' you could say to the patient, ''''Let''''s take a walk around the block while you tell me about why you fight with your brother.''''" 6/9/2006 *Click on "read more"(below) to listen * NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday” Prescribing Psychiatric Drugs for Young People...Doctors are treating more young people with anti-psychotic drugs, according to a new study. Guests: Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, director, New York State Psychiatric Institute; chairman, Psychiatry Department, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons...*Click on "read more"(below)to listen * 6/6/2006 Sharp Rise in Young Patients Treated With Antipsychotics... ... these second-generation antipsychotics, which had a sixfold rise in their pediatric use from 1993 to 2002, are not FDA-approved for these young patients, Mark Olfson, M.D., of Columbia University, and colleagues, reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry. They found the long-term safety of these agents a cause for concern... 5/15/2006 The Influentials - The people whose ideas, power and sheer will are changing New York. Madelyn Gould, Maria A. Oquendo, and Kelly Posner are among them. Gould, Oquendo, and Posner broke the logjam by creating standards for defining “suicidal behavior.” That led to the placement of “black-box” warnings, the most serious FDA alert, on antidepressant labels and a heightened awareness of the effects of potent drugs on children. The same standards can now be applied when vetting other drugs. 5/3/2006 May 3, 2006 -- Neurologic Problems May Boost PTSD Risk...A study of Vietnam veterans and their identical twins suggests that minor neurologic problems may make people more susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."This study is another important step in clarifying one of the most basic and difficult questions to answer in PTSD -- that is, of the many biological findings now documented in PTSD, which are caused by PTSD and which cause PTSD?" said Dr. Randall D. Marshall, director of Trauma Studies and Services at New York State Psychiatric Institute and an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. 5/2/2006 May 2, 2006--A last resort for depression... But insurers are hesitant on this use of vagus nerve stimulators... "Every treatment has failed these patients," said Dr. Sarah Lisanby, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and head of the division on brain stimulation and neuromodulation. So far, three of her patients have had the vagus nerve stimulator implanted. Her office has submitted 30 other requests that were all denied. "Now, we are asking these very depressed patients to go through a long, drawn-out insurance fight," she said. "It''s very difficult." 4/30/2006 April 30, 2006 -- Theory links ''''winter blues'''' to out-of-sync sleep cycle...Dr. Michael Terman says, "said low-dose melatonin therapy in the afternoon or evening coupled with early morning bright light will probably provide a powerful, two-pronged treatment for many patients."[Some] scientists greeted the research cautiously. "The study shows nicely that there is circadian rhythm involvement in winter depression, but it is not the exclusive determinant of treatment response," said Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at the Columbia University Medical Center. Nevertheless, Terman said low-dose melatonin therapy in the afternoon or evening coupled with early morning bright light will probably provide a powerful, two-pronged treatment for many patients. 4/25/2006 April 25, 2006 -- Melatonin may lighten winter blues..."The study shows nicely that there is circadian rhythm involvement in winter depression, but it is not the exclusive determinant of treatment response," said Michael Terman... 4/24/2006 April 24, 2006 -- Not Always the Happiest Time Pregnancy and depression: a new understanding of a difficult—and often hidden—problem...Treating a pregnant woman for depression is a delicate balancing act, a constant weighing of risks and benefits to the mother and to the fetus. But intervention is critical: a recent study by Columbia''''''''s Myrna Weissman shows that a mother''''''''s mental health directly affects the mental health of her children. 4/17/2006 April 17, 2006 -- Witnesses testify about Moussaoui’s upbringing, mental state... Dr. Xavier Amador diagnosed him...Columbia University psychologist Xavier Amador testified that he has diagnosed Moussaoui with "paranoid schizophrenia" _ a mental illness characterized by delusions that is similar to that suffered by both of Moussaoui’s sisters. 4/13/2006 April 13, 2006 -- FDA OKs alcohol-dependence drug... "Vivitrol is the first once-a-month medication for alcohol dependence that ensures patients get the benefit of medication over the entire month," said Richard Rosenthal..."Vivitrol is the first once-a-month medication for alcohol dependence that ensures patients get the benefit of medication over the entire month," said Richard Rosenthal, Chairman of psychiatry at St. Luke''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York and professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. 4/5/2006 April 5, 2006 -- What Drives People to Want to Be Amputees? Karl is a double amputee, but not by accident, birth or disease. He is an amputee by choice... There are others like him, who believe their bodies don’t match the picture of themselves they have in their minds. Dr. Michael First, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York, is one of the few researchers to study patients with this strange obsession to lose one or more of their limbs. The rare condition is called body integrity identity disorder, or BIID. 3/29/2006 March 29, 2006 -- A Conversation With Nobel Laureate and Neuroscientist Eric Kandel... Eric Kandel is a Nobel Prize winner in medicine and the university professor at Columbia University here in New York. He is one of the world`s leading neuroscientist, and has dedicated his life to the study of the brain. His new book is called, "In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind." It’s both an autobiography and at the same time a history of the field of neuroscience. 3/27/2006 March 27, 2006 -- "Does it make sense to add a second antidepressant?"...Read article by researchers including Columbia''''s late Frederic Quitkin, MDAlthough clinicians frequently add a second medication to an initial, ineffective antidepressant drug, no randomized controlled trial has compared the efficacy of this approach. 3/27/2006 March 27, 2006 -- Switching antidepressants? Read article by researchers including Columbia’s Jonathan Stewart, MDAfter unsuccessful treatment for depression with a selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), it is not known whether switching to one antidepressant is more effective than switching to another... 3/24/2006 The therapist as a scientist... Before inventing psychoanalysis, Freud dissected fish and studied the anatomy of the human brainstem...Long before the Oedipus complex, Sigmund Freud was a hard-core scientist. "He was very prescient about how mental processes could work," says Dr. Eric Kandel of Columbia University. "He developed the notion that the neuron is the element of the brain and that contacts between neurons can be modified by learning." 3/23/2006 Different Drug Often Works in Depression, Study Finds... Dr. Donald F. Klein, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said that the study provided important data but that it would probably not change practice much. "Most doctors are already convinced that you don’t stop after just one failed treatment," Dr. Klein said. "One major question has been whether it’s better to give adjunctive treatment or to switch drugs, and the hope was that this trial would answer that definitively. But unfortunately it didn’t." 3/21/2006 Moms pass depression on to kids... Dr. Myrna Weissman and her collegues lead study...Successfully treating a mother’s depression can alleviate or even prevent psychiatric problems in her children, a study reports today. "We know that depression and other disorders are brought on by strong environmental stresses," says lead author Myrna Weissman, a psychologist at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "Having a parent with an illness is a big environmental stress." 3/3/2006 Collecting can be fun, or border on disturbing...The coffin-shaped cookie jar was just what Joni Tosil had been looking for. "It was like something in my life had been fulfilled," says Tosil, also known as the Coffin Queen, who spent 10 months combing through markets, e-mail boards and Web sites for the piece, made by the glass company Whitefriars…… "When this hobby takes on obsessional qualities, it becomes a problem," says Robert Glick, director of the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research at Columbia University.” 2/28/2006 Sweet news for choccy lovers...Chocoholics can thank medical researchers for evidence that a sweet tooth could actually be good for the body.... But at the Columbia University Medical Center, Director of Nutrition Doctor Wahida Karmally warned people that too much of a good thing, can still be a bad thing. She said: "Chocolate provides the fat, the saturated fat that raises your bad cholesterol. So it can be bad for you heart if you don''t choose the right chocolate". 2/24/2006 Cell and Molecular Biological Studies of Memory Storage...Eric Kandel''''''''s lab is studying selected examples of several major forms of memory storage. The lab is studying explicit memory storage (the conscious recall of information about people, places, and objects) in mice and implicit memory storage (the unconscious recall of perceptual and motor skills) in the snail Aplysia... 2/24/2006 Columbia To Institute Mandatory Training For Child Research...Columbia University says it will institute mandatory training for faculty members whose research involves children so it complies with federal rules protecting vulnerable youths. The training plan was filed with the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which determined last year that Columbia researchers had tested AIDS drugs on foster children without providing the children with independent advocates to protect their interests. 2/24/2006 Behavior med. boon for pharma?...A group of experts say behavioral medicine -- psychological treatments that can significantly reduce the need for certain drug treatments and cut health system costs…..Philip Muskin, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, disagreed that pharmaceutical companies are the culprit. ... 2/22/2006 Depression, anxiety linked to allergies... Personality traits may affect severity of symptoms...Dr. Renee D. Goodwin of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, in New York, led the study, which is published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. More research, according to Goodwin's team, is needed better understand the connections between depression and allergies, and between neuroticism and allergies -- as well as why there are sex differences. 2/20/2006 Engineered Mouse Mimics Cognitive Aspects of Schizophrenia...Researchers have developed a mouse strain in which the abnormal activity of the dopamine machinery in a specific part of the brain causes cognitive and behavioral impairments mimicking those in human schizophrenics. [Columbia University Medical Center] Drs. Christoph Kellendonk, Eleanor H. Simpson, Eric R. Kandel and colleagues reported their development of the mouse model in an article in the February 16, 2006, issue of Neuron. 2/16/2006 The secret to losing weight could be a good night''s sleep.....At Columbia University a study found people who slept four hours or less a night were 73 per cent more likely to be obese than those who slept between seven and nine hours a night... 2/12/2006 Early response to anti-bulimia drug a good sign..."Numerous trials have demonstrated the efficacy of antidepressant medications for the treatment of bulimia nervosa," Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, of Columbia University, New York, and colleagues point out in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. 2/10/2006 Promising new treatments for SAD... Light therapy improves symptoms in about half of seasonal affective disorder patients. Emerging research suggests that other modalities may help too. 2/6/2006 Trick or treatment? A spate of recent studies reinforces the idea that what we think about our medical care really can affect our health. 2/3/2006 When thinking can hurt... Research shows relaying information between cells in ailing brain creates harmful, damaging substance... The process of thinking may actually be harmful to people with chronic brain diseases such as HIV dementia and Alzheimer''''s... 1/27/2006 DHEA may reduce depression symptoms in HIV patients... The dietary supplement DHEA seems to relieve the symptoms of minor depression in patients infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a new report... 1/26/2006 Problem gamblers can bet on losing more than they bargained for at Superbowl XL... Whether it is the thrill-seeker in people or a distorted sense of their own ability to beat the odds, individuals with a gambling problem may find themselves drawn to high-risk behaviors like betting on this year’s Super Bowl even though they may have suffered dearly for their behavior in the past. 1/24/2006 January 24th, clinically considered the worst day of the year...Columbia university psychologist Michael Terman says the trick lies in administering the treatment at just the right time. He adds, "we''re not talking about an optimum time in terms of the clock on the wall. We''re talking about an optimum time in terms of the clock in the brain." 1/5/2006 Findings of Pivotal Study of Malnutrition’s Link to Schizophrenia Risk is Replicated by Chinese Researchers 11/29/2005 November 29, 2005 -- World AIDS Day Is Thurs, Dec. 1: A Study of College Students in South Africa Aims To Increase Use of the Female Condom... 11/23/2005 Task Force Led By John Mann Issues Report On SSRI’s And Suicidal Behavior In Youth... “Given that untreated major depression is the main cause of suicide in children and adolescents, and that suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15-to-24 year-olds, there is an urgent need for effective antidepressant treatments,” explained John Mann, MD, Task Force Co-Chair and lead author, Professor of Translational Neuroscience in Psychiatry and Radiology, and Chief of the Department of Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center. “Although many medications have been tested, only one has proven effective in testing done to date.” 10/28/2005 A Review of Antidepressants Concludes That Patients Just Aren’t Getting the Dose They Need... Your antidepressant may be more effective than you think. Though the most effective treatment for moderately severe depression, many patients often receive a treatment regimen that fails to alleviate their symptoms sufficiently. There is a great opportunity to rethink the issue of treatment, according to a review by Dr. John Mann, Director of the Department of Neuroscience at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center... 10/3/2005 Changes in the Risk for Major Depression Seen in Landmark Study...The largest study ever done on major depressive disorder and co-occurring disorders provides the most definitive information, to date, of major depressive disorder (MDD) in specific population subgroups, and of the relationship of MDD to alcohol use disorders, drug disorders and other mental health conditions. 9/19/2005 NIMH Study [Led by Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D.] To Guide Treatment Choices for Schizophrenia... A large study funded by NIH''s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provides, for the first time, detailed information comparing the effectiveness and side effects of five medications — both new and older medications — that are currently used to treat people with schizophrenia. 8/15/2005 ANXIOUS KIDS? MUST MEAN IT’S BACK TO SCHOOL TIME...As summer draws to a close, some parents may notice the tell-tale signs of school-induced anxiety in their kids. 8/5/2005 LATEST RESEARCH SHOWS MARIJUANA USE MAY BE A GATEWAY TO RELAPSE... 8/3/2005 Findings of Pivotal Study of Malnutrition’s Link to Schizophrenia Risk is Replicated by Chinese Researchers... Researchers in the NYS Psychiatric Institute’s Epidemiology of Developmental Brain Disorders Department were the first to demonstrate a link between severe maternal nutritional deficiency and risk for schizophrenia in offspring. 11/1/2004 Jeffrey Lieberman to chair Psychaitry at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons; Head NYS Psychiatric Institute... Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., will join Columbia University Medical Center in January as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. At that time, he also will join the New York State Office of Mental Health, serving as director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) and head of the Lieber Center for Schizophrenia Research, housed on the Columbia campus. 1/23/2002 Sylvia Nasar Discusses Her Book, 'A Beautiful Mind;' Psychiatrist Roberto Gil: Schizophrenia and Recovery..."Cases like Nash's help us know that people may have a mental illness but still have a lot to contribute to society," says Roberto Gil, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and head of the Schizophrenic Research Unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. "I'm encouraged by the general public awareness [created by Nash's story]. 10/9/2000 Eric Kandel Wins Nobel Prize in Medicine..."This is a marvelous and exciting moment for Eric Kandel and for Columbia University," says Dr. David I. Hirsh, interim dean for research, Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. "Dr. Kandel is a superb human being whose lifelong journey to understand the molecular basis of memory is one of the finest examples of what can result when true scholarship and dedication are combined with scientific brilliance."   View archive by year:   All 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004

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