Although it seems like nothing more than common sense, we were very pleased to see that the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which is the major organization responsible for guidelines for public health interventions in the United States, added depression screening for adults, in particular for pregnant women and women who recently given birth, to its short list of …
Pregnancy and Mental Health
This past week, a colleague at UCSF, Dr. Anna Glezer, wrote to let me know about a new patient-centered informational website she is launching focused on issues related to pregnancy and mental health. It’s called Mind Body Pregnancy, and she started it because in her reproductive psychiatry practice she was finding many patients asking similar questions. She wanted to reach beyond just those she is able to see in clinic and …
Bright Light for Non-Seasonal Depression
Bright light may work for non-seasonal depression. This is the conclusion of a study published in the prestigious psychiatric journal JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia in Canada conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo- and sham-controlled, 8-week trial in adults (aged 19-60 years) with major depression of at least moderate severity. 122 patients were …
TMS Cost Effectiveness
“Is TMS Cost-Effective?” His provocative title of an article just published in psychiatric times which summarizes an Australian pharmaco-economic study. In case you don’t want to read through the rest of this article, here is the summary: “Australian researchers compared the cost-effectiveness of rTMS with pharmacotherapy in treatment-resistant patients with MDD (ie, those who have failed at least 2 courses …
Antidepressants Update
I just wanted to make a quick note that I recently posted a major update of the information on this site about antidepressants. This follows the recent introduction of a few interesting new antidepressant medications. I hope to expand that by adding a page talking about atypical antipsychotics and perhaps other classes of medications routinely used in this practice. Since …
SAMe – S-adenosyl-methionine
S-adenosylmethionine, or SAM-e for short, is one of the few nutritional supplements that has good clinical research to support its safety and effectiveness. Although SAM-e is used for many purposes, we are particularly interested in it as a compound that may have antidepressant properties. S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) is involved in many reactions that involve methylating chemicals (transferring a methyl group to the …
Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy
I have just posted another page on the site devoted to orienting patients to types of psychotherapy that we may recommend for them. This most recent page talks about Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy, an approach to the treatment of patients with chronic depression that many people have benefitted from during the course of their treatment at Gateway Psychiatric. …
Ketamine for Depression Update
Probably the most exciting development in psychopharmacology in years is the discovery of the dramatic effects of ketamine on depression. However, a recent report from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Task Force on Novel Biomarkers and Treatments highlights not only the reason for the excitement about ketamine but also the significant areas of uncertainty that make it not yet ready to …
Self Injury is the 8th Leading Cause of Death
Self injury (including suicide) is the 8th leading cause of death in this country. It is time to do something about it. An article just published online in the prestigious journal JAMA Psychiatry makes us drawn case that our fascination with trying to come up with clear answers to questions that may ultimately be impossible to answer (what a person’s …
Another Blood Test for Depression
We ran across a recent article that promised a “blood test for depression” and thought how strange it was that this article was being republished in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. After all we wrote about a blood test for depression based on an article that appeared in translational psychiatry just a few months ago. Imagine my surprise when I …