Overview Of all human experience, pain is, as long as it lasts, the most absorbing; it is the only human experience that when it comes to an end, automatically confers a sense of relief and joy. Moreover, by its very…
Overview Eating disorders are serious psychiatric illnesses, with high rates of morbidity and mortality. They are most common in young women, but affect people of all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses. Individuals with eating disorders can develop serious…
Overview The 2003 approval by the American Board of Medical Specialties of “Psychosomatic Medicine” as a certified subspecialty of psychiatry evokes the obvious question of what this name means. Despite high-minded ideas about its referring to clinical and scientific attention…
Overview Without a doubt, substance use disorders (SUDs) present one of the gravest difficulties currently facing the United States healthcare system. Over the past two decades, the number of patients treated for substance use-related problems in the United States has…
Overview Alcohol remains one of the most prevalent and clinically relevant drugs of abuse, with an estimated 75 million people worldwide meeting criteria for an alcohol use disorder (AUD) in 2004. In the United States, two-thirds of all adults consume…
Overview Clinical challenges in the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety are abundant in the general hospital setting: discerning normal from pathologic anxiety, differentiating medical from psychiatric causes, and choosing effective therapeutic approaches. In addition to a knowledge of medical and…
Psychosis , broadly defined, is a gross impairment of reality testing. Psychosis can result from a wide range of psychiatric and medical disturbances and may take several forms. The elderly woman, who lies quietly in bed listening to Satan whisper,…
As life expectancy extends and the baby boomer generation begins to reach geriatric age, we will confront an epidemic of neurocognitive disorders (NCDs) in general hospitals. The number of cases of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of NCD,…
Delirium has probably replaced syphilis as “the great imitator” because its varied presentations have led to misdiagnoses among almost every major category of mental illness. Delirium is a syndrome caused by an underlying physiologic disturbance and marked by a fluctuating…
Overview A major depressive disorder (MDD) serious enough to warrant professional care affects approximately 16% of the general population during their life-time. Both the Epidemiological Catchment Area (ECA) study and the National Comorbidity Survey study have found that MDD is…