Early on in my psychiatry career, I would often lament about the lack of innovative treatments in psychiatry. While it was true new medications were always coming out, it seemed to me most of the time that they very similar to the ones that were already being used. However, in the last decade, that has been changing with the introduction of brain stimulation.
Over the years, I have worked with many patients who are afraid of dying and of death, and with how that fear complicates both the healthy consideration of their own death as well as their grieving process when someone close dies. In this article, I will discuss what I believe is behind these fears as well as a grassroots movement that offers a change in how we prepare for death, personally and collectively.
Grief is not a mental illness, but rather a normal, healthy and pretty rational reaction to extreme loss. Under normal circumstances, grief or bereavement does not require formal treatment with a therapist. In this next article, I will discuss how to distinguish between normal grief and complicated grief and at what point treatment might be useful.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a disorder marked by an obsessive idea of perceived defects or flaws in one’s appearance. A flaw that to others, is considered minor or not observable. In this next article, I will provide awareness and knowledge of BDD in the hopes of bringing people with BDD out of hiding and increase access to treatment as BDD does not go away on its own.
The first thing I learned when I started my psychiatry training in the early 1990s was how to test for tardive dyskinesia (TD), one of the most important side effects of psychiatric medications. Tardive dyskinesia is an abnormal movement disorder that can develop from long term antipsychotic medication use and can ultimately become disabling. In this article, I will review what to look for in recognizing abnormal movements and the challenges of using telehealth to find and treat TD.
This is a question I’ve asked myself since genetic testing first came available around 2011. I will highlight a few cases in my private practice where genetic testing gave surprisingly helpful results that I otherwise would have never known and using that information has led to improved quality of life for patients as well as new lessons for me.
In the aftermath of recent police brutality incidents, there has been much discussion and protesting over the past year about achieving racial justice in the external world. But there has not been as much discussion about racial healing with each other and within oneself. In my own work with patients, this issue has come up in new ways this past year. In this article, I will highlight the case of a 17-year-old white male who sought my help with feeling emotionally overwhelmed about his “white privilege,” which was triggered by what he had been learning about Critical Race Theory at school.
