http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summaryTue, 09 Jan 2007 00:12:44 +0000http://www.jamesbakermd.commentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)Blogger115http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116960266166719962Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:32:00 +00002007-01-23T19:37:41.683-06:00Georgia: "...mental health groups on Tuesday called on the Legislature to begin a complete overhaul of how the state delivers services to the mentally ill. The call...comes after reports of insufficient staffing and neglect that have led to dozens of escapes and deaths at Georgia's mental hospitals.The Army: "Mental health screening isn't consistent for U.S. troops returning from war, and if http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/worldwide-epidemic.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116952032762367518Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:38:00 +00002007-01-22T20:45:27.623-06:00When I first looked up this post, I was hopeful that a bunch of drug reps were moonlighting, given the lay-offs and such in the industry lately. Alas (according to the post), it's actually the other way around: "pharmaceutical companies are systematically recruiting from cheerleading squads"...http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/drug-rep-cheerleaders.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116943761902802119Mon, 22 Jan 2007 03:44:00 +00002007-01-22T20:29:29.510-06:00A study in the November issue of Biological Psychiatry sheds a little more light on how Ritalin helps people with attention deficit. (It's surprising how little is still know about its mechanism of action.) In this study, improvements in attention were noted after Ritalin increased the amount of two natural chemicals in the brain: dopamine and norepinephrine. The increases were noted in the http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/how-does-ritalin-work.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116948967971293881Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:12:00 +00002007-01-22T12:14:39.723-06:00...caused the bird deaths in Austin, they say.http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/parasites-not-terrorists.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116932842237057813Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:32:00 +00002007-01-20T21:33:35.686-06:00Zyprexa (olanzapine) is right up there at the top of the evidence-based practice algorithms for treating psychiatric disorders, most notably this one for schizophrenia, and this one for bipolar disorder. It's also right up there at the top of the front page of the newspaper, in a series of articles from New York Times (including one today) alleging all sorts of conspiracies to increase Zyprexa http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/are-evidence-based-practices-really.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116932913984574711Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:30:00 +00002007-01-20T15:38:59.856-06:00In England, a woman who managed to get her partner's psychiatrist picked up on rape charges, threatened his fiancee, and burglarized his home is going to jail for it all, for nine years. Must've been something he said about her to his patient, ya reckon?....http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/careful-who-you-treat.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116908533836339575Thu, 18 Jan 2007 01:27:00 +00002007-01-17T19:55:38.376-06:00...at least in Canada. But the new study from Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health also shows that never-married mothers had lower rates of psychiatric and substance use disorders. Couple this information with data showing that children of depressed moms are at higher risk for severe emotional and behavioral problems, and it argues for effective screening to http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/divorced-moms-at-greater-risk-for.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116905274107052741Wed, 17 Jan 2007 03:41:00 +00002007-01-17T10:52:21.096-06:00Even in the midst of publishing practice parameters for juvenile bipolar disorder, the controversy about its existence continues: "...The debate and controversy over juvenile bipolar disorder are not whether there are a significant number of youths who are explosive, dysregulated, and emotionally labile... The debate is whether these problems in youths are best characterized as bipolar disorder..http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/diagnosis-of-juvenile-bipolar-disorder.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116889852766876641Tue, 16 Jan 2007 01:50:00 +00002007-01-15T16:02:07.683-06:00"The pragmatic question...is not whether psychotherapy works, but how it compares with drug treatment, since we have drugs that are proven effective..." says Dr Arthur Rifkin in examining three psychotherapy research studies in the latest American Journal of Psychiatry. Of course, he is talking about "effective" for core symptoms of major psychiatric diseases. Medication, by itself, is not as http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/does-psychotherapy-workor-is-that-even.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116889775567979911Mon, 15 Jan 2007 01:42:00 +00002007-01-15T15:49:15.693-06:00In my early days in private practice I was fortunate to be able to screen virtually all of my patients for various learning disorders. I was struck, anecdotally, with the large number of them -- especially boys -- who had significant problems with reading or with speech. It seemed to me that disruptive behavior, in particular, was a way for children to show their frustration when their verbal http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/reading-problems-and-behavior-problems.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116874534380004664Sun, 14 Jan 2007 03:18:00 +00002007-01-13T21:43:34.453-06:00A recent article in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine looked at depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance abuse in almost 15,000 men with diabetes. Eight percent of the patients with diabetes had PTSD, too, and more than half of those were also depressed. Depression, in particular, was problematic for this group of diabetics. It correlated to poor glycemic control, poorhttp://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/ptsd-depression-and-diabetes-outcomes.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116874603954561954Sat, 13 Jan 2007 02:25:00 +00002007-01-13T21:40:39.746-06:00In an article in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr Horowitz visits the revenge fantasies that are not uncommon in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Feelings of rage at perpetrators leads to these fantasies. He mentions that: "In the context of war, the notion of revenge is more socially sanctioned than in the context of peacetime civilian trauma..."I got to http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/is-there-such-thing-as-collective.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116847970636122862Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:21:00 +00002007-01-11T19:22:40.850-06:0063 dead birds in Austin, 19 people overcome by eau de New York City, 10 people to the hospital after a chemical leak near Houston, and a false alarm in Miami. "U.S. jitters" - that's the way that the China Post put it all together. Maybe in Taiwan they have the perspective of a little distance... But in Austin, "We certainly take these kinds of things seriously, especially following 9/11," http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/vigilance-hypervigilance-and-paranoia.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116848068690275727Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:50:00 +00002007-01-10T20:03:53.926-06:00 Yesterday, I compared the treatment of the mentally ill in prison to the treatment of the mentally ill in a war-torn country. Here's some data from a new Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report: - one in five state inmates with mental health problems had received treatment in the year before arrest - inmates with mental health problems were twice as likely to have been homeless - http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/pay-now-or-later.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7594514/posts/summary/116848019900963672Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:43:00 +00002007-01-10T19:49:59.020-06:00In North Carolina, a consultant has a fix for that state's ailing mental health system: $2.7 billion... That's an increase of $8000 per person-served in North Carolina, based upon the 2005 data in the new article...http://www.jamesbakermd.com/2007/01/cost-of-mental-health.htmlmentalnotes@jamesbakermd.com (Doc)