Talking about Suicide

Earlier this week my friend Steve Moffic wrote a powerful post  about his experience as a psychiatrist dealing with suicide. He presents a m...

Learning about Aging from Patients and their Children

Last month I wrote  about how 13 years after the death of Emily Lublin, a patient with whom I'd had a very warm and constructive relatio...

Contact with Families after a Patient's Death

On April 28 I wrote a post to report that the New York Times E thicist column had taken a quote about doctor-patient sex from this site. T...

Keep Sound Minds

In 2008 I blogged  about how after Marci Thibault, in a state of psychosis, walked into New Hampshire traffic with her twin sister Danielle...

The Bias Towards Drugs in Psychiatry

Two days ago I posted about the bias towards drugs in treating depressed older patients. The next day the New York Times published a heartb...

The Bias Towards Drugs in Treating Depressed Older Patients

I recently read an article on " How to adapt cognitive-behavioral therapy for older adults " that came to me in Current Psychiatry...

Using the Web to Improve Care for Depression

I've imagined that if I were starting my career in psychiatry now I'd work at the intersection of clinical care and the web. A rece...

Ignoring Families Can be Fatal

Yesterday in Heathrow Airport on my way home from Singapore  I wrote a post about how US medical ethics ignores families and overemphasizes...

No Treatment as the Treatment of Choice

In the October 3 issue of JAMA, Allen Detsky and Amol Verma offered " A New Model for Medical Education: Celebrating Restraint ." ...

Is it OK for GP's to have sex with their patients?

For anyone interested in the ethics of doctor-patient sex and the relationship between ethics and law, the recent 5-1 decision of the Supre...

Bereavement, Depression and DSM-V

In January I criticized the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for planning to drop the "bereavement exclusion" from the defi...

Gay Liberation and Psychiatric Arrogance

Last month at the Lyric Stage in Boston I saw The Temperamentals , a docudrama about the founding of the Mattachine Society , the first sust...

"By Blood" by Ellen Ullman

I've just finished reading a remarkable novel: By Blood by Ellen Ullman. I'd read in a review that the story is told by a disgraced...

Autism, Access to Services, and Social Justice

Yesterday the CDC released a  report on the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that demonstrates a continuing increase in ASD di...

Patient Autonomy after Death - the Case of Anne Sexton

I hadn't thought about the controversy surrounding Diane Middlebrook's biography of Anne Sexton since its publication in 1991 until ...

The ethics of writing about children with mental illness

I was recently asked about the ethics of writing about children and adolescents with mental illness. I've edited the actual question to ...

Kristin Barker, a sociologist at Oregon State University, has a fascinating, fun to read article in a recent issue of Social Science & M...

Bereavement is Sad, but it's not a Depressive Illness

The status of bereavement in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diso...

Should 14 Year Olds be Sentenced to Life in Prison?

Rachel Aviv , who wrote a superb New Yorker article  about a woman in New Hampshire who - guided by psychotic delusions - starved to death, ...

The Role of Will Power in Medical Care

I've made a belated New Year's resolution - to read " Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength " - a book abou...