Mental Health

A physician says she has lied on job applications about treatment for postpartum depression. Is that really necessary?

"Primary care docs should be paid more, specialists less. More reimbursement for talking...less for testing and procedures." And, there's more.

New research suggests that depression and stroke share common cumulative etiologic mechanisms.

What brings patients to your office-and not the specialty office down the street? Insights in this slideshow.

The merging of primary psychiatric care with primary medical care is urgently needed. Here’s why.

A new study shows that social interaction may offer protection against this leading cause of death among men in the United States.

Outside the field, the statistics on physician suicide may elicit surprise. Here, physicians and students who have thought about it write not about surprise but about disbelief that so little help is available.

As science and innovation breed new developments in medical care, we’ll be faced again and again with the same question. Who's working on the answer?

Being emotionally available and accessible is healing. Are you open to that part of medicine with your patients?

If it feels like you are drowning at work, you need way more than a few breaths at the surface to give yourself any kind of meaningful recovery.

“My mother was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. I made a comic strip about it.” The idea: combine the art with the medicine.

Women who have post-traumatic stress disorder gain weight more rapidly than women who do not and are more likely to be overweight or obese.

Four inpatient detentions in 4 months, but Jennifer happily caught a bus to head home. Was this case another crisis averted? Or just another flagrant waste of limited funds?

This just in: Medicare reimburses physicians 3 to 5 times more for common procedural care than for cognitive care.

Clipping the hardened toenails of a mentally ill patient made me wonder whose hands care for the feet of countless others who can't care for themselves.

One simple addition, basketball, is doing more for health and mental health in this community than months or years of therapy or any number of medications or office visits with me.

Most doctors are burned out, overworked, or exhausted. Physicians rarely ask for help.

My first patient had so many things wrong; he left before I could examine his heart and lungs, ask about chest pain, or reconcile his medication list. After his visit, veteran clinic staff noted they hadn’t seen Jim for years and were surprised he had come in at all. I felt the totality of my medical education had been squandered. They kindly reminded me it had just begun.

Does this look like melanoma? Which is not true of Löfgren syndrome? Yoga and Afib; what cause of mental confusion? Skin lesions and HIV.. . . See if you can answer this week's quiz questions.

Primary care physicians can take the lead in helping address these additional comorbidities in their patients with asthma.

Primary care physicians need to be aware of the relationship, especially because the incidence in older women is high.

After a cardiac event, many patients experience psychiatric symptoms, including depression, but more recent studies have paid attention to anxiety.

If physicians know how well their patients tolerate uncertainty about health before providing feedback during a consultation, they can improve their patients' care dramatically.

First-line agents include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and venlafaxine.

Many patients clearly would benefit from help from clinicians, but two-thirds of patients have never sought medical care for this disorder.

October 11th is National Depression Screening Day. But how do you screen, diagnose, and treat effectively given the time constraints of busy office practice?

When counting sheep fails as first line therapy, what measures can you recommend to help your patient get some sleep?

Psychiatrist Sidney Zisook, MD-a guest speaker at the recent American College of Physicians meeting in San Diego

Primary care is demanding for a host of reasons, not the least of which is the daunting breadth of issues practitioners grapple with. One issue is evaluating the risk of suicide. Two recent studies provide some intriguing data that may change the way we practice.

Primary care physicians treat the majority of patients in this country who have mental health disorders. But how well prepared are we for these patients when they present to our offices?