In a special symposium on bipolar disorder at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, researcher Mike Bauer reviewed a new meta-analysis that showed lithium not only has significant effects in preventing manias, but also depressions. Mike Bauer is currently the Director and Executive Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, and the Physician-in-Chief, at the Psychiatric Hospital …
Simple Test May Predict Which Antidepressant Will Work
A simple laboratory test may predict which antidepressant will work best. This is the result of a study reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry by a team of Canadian and European researchers. The study was part of larger research program (Genome-Based Therapeutic Drugs for Depression – an effort to find biomarkers to guide medication selection) and it identified C-reactive …
Antidepressants are not Effective for Bipolar Depression
Mark Frye, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, gave a lecture on antidepressants in bipolar illness at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. The newest data from meta-analyses indicate that traditional antidepressants that are effective in unipolar depression are not effective in bipolar depression. Some patient groups, especially those with very early onset depression …
Questions and Answers about Cognitive Therapy from Judith Beck
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D. Director, Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research Q: What is cognitive therapy? A: Cognitive therapy is one of the few forms of psychotherapy that has been scientifically tested and found to be effective in over three hundred clinical trials for many different disorders. In contrast to other forms of psychotherapy, cognitive therapy is usually more …
Vortioxetine a New Antidepressant
Vortioxetine (Brintellix) is a new antidepressant that has a range of effects on serotonin receptors, making it different from selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most common type of antidepressants, which work only on the serotonin transporter. Researcher Johan Areberg et al. reported at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association that the drug is an antagonist at receptors …
Lithium versus Quetiapine for Bipolar Disorder
In a recent study comparing the efficacy of lithium and the second-generation antipsychotic quetiapine, the drugs had remarkably similar results. Researcher Andrew Nierenberg et al. presented the results at the 2014 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology. By the end of the 6-month study period, most patients had improved substantially, but only about a quarter of each group became …
Neurobiological Bases for Mood Disorders
The last couple of years have seen some quite significant advances in our understanding of brain function and mood disorders. New tools for measuring what’s going on and for guiding treatment and entirely new approaches to treatment. We’ve started using a genetic screening tool that in about 1/3 of patients with treatment resistant depression, yields insights about the most effective …
Gateway Psychiatric Blog
Welcome to the Gateway Psychiatric Blog. We plan on posting information about what is going on in the clinic and about changes to this website. This is also a place for readers to make requests (simply attach a “Comment” to this post). The website is a work in progress right now (July 2014) and we have lots of plans to …