Articles of Interest - March 24, 2010

Hi, All,



How about for this week some Clinical Guidelines for Schizophrenia? These guidelines discuss pharmacotherapy and interventions for Schizophrenia, and also touch on refractory cases. Once you click on the link, it's free to save to your desktop.


Are you interested in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment? Well Dialogues of Neuroscience has a whole issue devoted to this topic which you can download for free. Go here: http://www.dialogues-cns.org/brochures/41/html/41_3.asp and click on the Adobe icon on the top right.

Do your patients have substance abuse problems? Don't forget the TIPS (Treatment Improvement Protocols) provided by SAMSHA! For example, here's one on Addressing Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors in Substance Abuse Treatment.

Okay, without further ado, here are this week's articles:

"How to select pharmocological treatments to manage recidivism risk in sex offenders", Current Psychiatry, vol. 8(10), 60-66, 2009.

Provides different pharmacological treatment recommendations for sex offenders depending on their individual "patient factors" as well as the severity of their offense. Considers both hormonal and nonhormonal medications. Discusses the different drugs that can be used to manage such offenders. Finally, this article briefly touches on how to gauge the risk of re-offense.


If you are interested in receiving this article, send me an e-mail. Or, alternatively, you can go to Current Psychiatry Online and register and look at the articles there. Registration is free--no credit card no. is asked for, just your name and e-mail address for the most part.

"Management of Schizophrenia with Suicide Risk", Psychiatric Clinics of North America, vol. 32(4), 863-884.


Abstract: "Suicidal behavior remains a major source of morbidity and mortality among schizophrenics. The National Institute of Mental Health Longitudinal Study of Chronic Schizophrenia found that over a mean of 6 years, 38% of the patients had at least one suicide attempt and 57% admitted to substantial suicidal ideation. Suicide is also a major issue among inpatients with serious implications for clinical practice and patient-doctor relationships. The management of schizophrenic patients with suicide risk remains a difficult area for clinicians despite attempts to better understand it by gathering experts in the field. This article discusses the frequency of suicidal behavior in schizophrenia, offers a model for understanding it, and discusses various aspects of the management of the at-risk schizophrenic patient."


If you are interested in this article, send me an e-mail.

Articles of Interest - March 3, 2010

Hi, All,

Here are a few articles of interest for this week.

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury and Motivational Interviewing: Enhancing Readiness for Change
(after clicking on the link, you can read the whole article by looking at the leftmost column of the page)
Journal of Mental Health Counseling, vol. 30(4), Oct. 2008, pgs. 311-329

Abstract: "The authors advance motivational interviewing and the transtheoretical model of change as a conceptual framework for counseling clients who engage in nonsuicidal self-injurious behaviors. The major principles of motivational interviewing are applied in a case study of a client who self-injures. Recommendations are made for mental health counseling practice."

Cognitive therapy for violence: reaching the parts that anger management doesn't reach
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, v. 20(2), Apr. 2009, pgs. 174-201.
(NSH staff interested in reading the full-text of this article can e-mail me (Carl Seele))

Abstract: "In forensic clinical settings, the most popular model for working with violence has been anger management, which uses a cognitive behavioural approach to explain how stimuli may cause anger via a series of information processing biases. There seem to be a variety of cognitions and thinking processes that are either more common or more extreme in individuals who behave violently. Despite concerns about meta-analytic reviews of treatment effectiveness, and reservations about the relevance of anger management for reducing violence and reoffending, its use is widely advocated in prison and secure settings. We have suggested that low self-esteem is central to violence rather than high self-esteem, but that self-esteem may appear high. Combining cognitive behavioural and psychodynamic approaches produces a formulation that can be used for treatment incorporating not only emotional and behavioural work but also reconstruction of core beliefs and dysfunctional assumptions (rules). It is proposed that because important cognitions relating to violence also relate to self-esteem and the protection of (false inflated) low self-esteem in the face of humiliation, any intervention for violence must also account for a fragile inner sense of self-esteem which, it is proposed, has a causal relationship (along with other factors) with violence. The approach presented here includes a number of core therapeutic tasks. A case study is described to demonstrate its application. It offers a structured but flexible and individually tailored approach to working clinically with violence. "