Overview The mental health professional in the general medical setting faces many challenges posed by co-morbid medical disorders and concurrent medications that hinder the detection of psychiatric symptoms and alter the effectiveness, tolerability, and safety of psychiatric drug treatment. In…
Overview Treatment options in neuropsychiatry include psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and neuromodulation. This chapter focuses on neuromodulation, a group of device-based interventions able to modulate pathologically altered brain regions and circuits using electromagnetic energy or surgical ablation. Neuromodulation therapies (also known as…
Management of psychiatric illness in medically ill individuals requires knowledge of medicine and psychiatry as well as specialized psychotherapeutic techniques. In inpatient settings, challenges to compassionate psychological care are abundant (e.g., decreasing length of stays, severe medical and surgical illnesses,…
Overview Genetic syndromes are disorders with a characteristic set of features that are due to an underlying common genetic mechanism, either an individual genetic mutation or a chromosomal abnormality. This chapter provides a brief overview of the genetics of major…
Including a chapter on the psychiatric care of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) runs the risk of suggesting that the evaluation and treatment of patients differ depending on patients' location in the general hospital. Such a risk evokes…
Overview Most of us take our ability to function physically (e.g., to open a tube of toothpaste, answer the telephone, tie our shoelaces, use the toilet, or comb our hair) and cognitively for granted. However, these capabilities can be lost…
Overview Burn injuries are as ancient as fire itself. All afflicted individuals need help and many require psychiatric consultation; their psychiatric care may be as challenging as their surgical care. Depending on their experience, physicians, nurses, and trainees new to…
Overview The seriousness of the diagnosis of cancer challenges the capacity to survive, sets a course in life, and dashes hopes and dreams. Over the 20th century, even as cancer treatments improved and some patients were cured, psychiatrists in the…
Overview Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) are prevalent in disenfranchised populations, including substance users, men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM), sex workers, ethnic minorities, and the seriously mentally ill, who all have particular difficulty advocating for and accessing…
Overview Solid organ transplantation is an accepted, successful, and commonly employed treatment option for patients with end-organ failure. Transplantation recipients of a heart, liver, kidney, lung(s), pancreas, or small intestine now live longer with an overall improved quality of life.…