Robert Klitzman, MD, professor of psychiatry, addresses the ethical and health concerns that must be considered in tackling the obesity epidemic and broader public health challenges.
A Columbia study shows a simple smell test and memory exam can predict cognitive decline as accurately as costly brain imaging, offering a more affordable and accessible way to assess dementia.
Dr. Paul Appelbaum said that “it is so easy to assume that people who behave badly in one way or another can’t help themselves when it may only be the case that they don’t want to help themselves.”
Some consider mental health care reform critical in reducing mass shootings. Dr. Paul Appelbaum said that such statements often come as willful misdirection from politicians and members of the NRA.
Dr. Franklin Schneier warned that Kick’s plan to repackage propranolol like Altoids “trivializes both the condition of social anxiety and the treatment of propranolol.”
Users’ chances of becoming addicted [to opioids] increase if they are white, male, young and unemployed and if they have co-occurring psychiatric disorder, says Dr. Carl Hart.
On this podcast in which Dr. Paul Appelbaum is interviewed, the conversation ranged from the history of current settled ethical positions to hot issues in ethics and law in psychiatry today.
Heroin use in the United States has always been relatively low, Dr. Carl Hart said. He estimated 500,000 heroin users nationwide, compared to 22 million marijuana smokers and 2 million cocaine users.
Psychiatrists can't point to a brain scan, a genetic test, or other biomarker and say what depression looks like. "That's the dream," says Dr. David Hellerstein.