For ten years or more, doctors have been debating whether the new antidepressants, those that alter the way the body handles serotonin, are associated with gastrointestinal bleeding.

What leads to death from suicide: mental illness, or opportunity? An article in the New York Times Magazine suggests that it’s firearms and poorly designed high bridges — easy and effective means — that kill.

"You sound like Tom Cruise" a child psychiatrist told me after a lecture. I wished he had said that I looked like Tom Cruise, but oh well.... Since then, I've continued to talk to medical audiences, and with my patients, about what I think are some underappreciated risks with amphetamine stimulants. As a new blog writer, I knew I could not avoid writing about this topic too though I hoped to delay the moment. It didn't take long.

The New York Times reports that " One in five adults in Europe have used marijuana or related drugs like hashish, the European Union’s drug agency said." As per their usual ignorant fear-mongering, recent reports from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy warning of the new, stronger strains of marijuana being produced get things not just wrong, but 180-degrees wrong.

Antipsychotics were long considered the most dangerous medications used in psychiatry. Then their reputation got worse.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that a mentally ill person may be competent to stand trial and yet not competent enough to represent him- or herself without the assistance of an attorney.

Yesterday, I discussed a concept that is arousing increasing interest in medicine, the number of patients a doctor needs to treat in order to help one person who would not get better on his or her own. In that context, I took a quick glance at psychopharmacology and psychotherapy.

Another mainstream article makes the press about corrupt doctors taking pharmaceutical industry money. The June 8 New York Times reported on a US Senate investigation into poor disclosure of millions of dollars in income provided by pharmaceutical companies to Harvard child psychiatry researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Like Dr. Peter Kramer ("In Practice" blog), I too have carefully followed the work of the MGH research group, both for their research on childhood bipolar disorder (with which I agree in large part) and their research on ADHD in adults (with with I disagree in general). Regarding treatment, my own experience and research has tended to be opposite to theirs: I have found amphetamine stimulants (especially methylphenidate) and antipsychotics to be less effective and more harmful than they have reported. Has their optimism about medications been biased by their profits? Perhaps; perhaps not. There are plenty of profits to go around, and just as much can be made these days bashing medications as marketing them.

How many people do you need to treat to help one person?

Most parents have never heard of him but Joseph Biederman, head of Harvard's Massachusetts General Child Psychopharmacology Clinic, may be the most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether or not children are normal or mentally ill in America.

For a medical researcher, the failure to report income from drug companies is a serious ethical lapse.

If schizophrenia is simply harmful, if it offers no benefits for survival, how has it persisted over generations? This question is especially puzzling since sufferers have severe problems in social functioning and tend to produce relatively few children.

I have not known National Public Radio (NPR) to closely follow the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Maybe I just missed it, but I haven't noticed Carl Kasell roaming around the 15 conventions I've attended. Hence my surprise to hear a report on May 6, 2008 entitled "Study: Doctors overdiagnosing bipolar disorder."

My beloved former producer from “The Infinite Mind, ” Mary Carmichael, has the cover story in the current Newsweek. “Welcome to Max’s World” represents a landmark, a major magazine devoting its cover — the banner reads “Growing Up Bipolar” — to a child who has not otherwise made news.

Justin Timberlake took "sexy back". Whose got "crazy back"? Mad Pride, empathy, and responsibility.

On April 21st, the American Heart Association (AHA) shocked families and professionals alike when it recommended that all kids that take or may take Ritalin should have an electrocardiogram (ECG). Stimulant drugs like Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall have been used in children for ADHD for 70 years. Why this recommendation now -- and should you get one for your child if he/she takes one of these drugs?

Bullet points noted down in the airport waiting lounge, en route home from the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting.

What do doctors actually do at the big psychiatric convention?

Suppose you learned that someone had committed a horrible rape. And now suppose you find out that he is suffering from a neurological condition. Would you still hold him responsible for what he had done?

For most men in long-term sexually monogamous relationships, a steady decrease in libido is inevitable, regardless of the particular woman in their lives. That’s right. The sexually-monogamous husband of the hottest woman on earth will start to lose interest at a certain point. Uma, it’s not your fault!

You want an inconvenient truth? Try this one: human beings are clearly evolved for sex lives featuring multiple simultaneous sexual relationships.