For those who are not in the biz, it may surprise you to learn that the FDA does not decide what a drug is indicated for. It only decides if the indication that Pharma chooses to request is approved or not. If Risperdal is approved for bipolar mania but not maintenance, it doesn't mean that it isn't safe and efficacious for maintenance; or that there isn't a huge collection of data affirming this. It means Janssen didn't ask the FDA for the approval. In other words, 95% of the decision for an indication is made by the folks down at Pharma marketing. All the FDA can do is say yes or no.

This is it.

This guy translated Quran fully into Japanese for the first time in a mental hospital. He probably faked his mental illness to escape death sentence in the Japanese war trials.

Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults.

For children during their primary school years

Ehlers & Clark (2000)

The The Egyptian Journal of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery is the official peer-reviewed journal of the Egyptian Society of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery first published in 1960. (Download whole site just in case)

This is like treating Anorexia with an anti-aircraft missile!

The two take-home messages are that very little nicotine is needed to occupy a substantial portion of brain nicotine receptors," Brody said, "and cigarettes with less nicotine than regular cigarettes, such as 'light' cigarettes, still occupy most brain nicotine receptors. Thus, low-nicotine cigarettes function almost the same as regular cigarettes in terms of brain nicotine-receptor occupancy.

NICE Guidelines: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Diagnosis and management of ADHD in children, young people and adults. "Drug treatment is not indicated as the first-line treatment for all

Elyn R. Saks wrote her memoirs about living with schizophrenia and she went to attain "a graduate degree from Oxford, a law degree from Yale, and a tenured professorship at the University of Southern California."

The PDS is a 49-item self-report measure recommended for use in clinical or research settings to measure severity of PTSD symptoms related to a single identified traumatic event. The PDS is unique in that it assesses all of the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD (i.e., Criteria A – F) and inquires about the past month (time frame can be adjusted for different uses). Thus, in addition to measuring the severity of PTSD symptoms (Criteria B, C, & D), it also inquires about the experience of a Criterion A traumatic events, about duration of symptoms (Criterion E), and the effects of symptoms on daily functioning (Criterion F).

PTSD Checklist

Venlafaxine(Effexor) metabolite. Till now no clinical significant difference between it and its parent drug. Approved by FDA this year. Marketed under the name Pristiq. Wyeth trying to get approval for treatment of menopausal hot flushes to help sales.

From 1965 to 1973, when the Arab-Israeli conflict was at its peak in Egypt, he worked in psychiatry in military hospitals, serving at front line posts in Sinai and producing a thesis on the effects of the stress of military service on young men.

The mental health services in Egypt today are described, and transcultural studies carried out in Egypt of the prevalence and phenomenology of anxiety, schizophrenia, depression, suicide, conversion and obsessive compulsive disorders are reviewed. The psychiatric services for children are in their infancy. Since 1983 the common and semi-accepted use of hashish has been joined by abuse by heroin and other substances.

Zen meditation can help bring persons to not thinking about anything quicker than control. Better than pink elephants? Also evidence that an experience/activity like meditation has neuropsychiatric effect.

Psychosocial intervention in mass violence and disasters

Fluent aphasia, neologisms, paraphasia and paragrammatism (via MindHacks). Amazing! ... ah, and hilarious.

Methylene blue will be marketed by the name Rember. Supposedly it disentangles tau protein that suppresses normal neuronal functioning in Alzheimer's. Will be first drug to reverse the course of disease. Research still by pharma only.

blog intended to rapidly disseminate the latest scientific findings related to the nature, causes, & treatments of autism spectrum disorders.

A special feature about post traumatic stress disorder, which is very timely after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader. It's an extraordinary story of the lessons learned from the war in Bosnia, treating the psychological trauma in adolescence.

Bipolar mood shifts that occur at frequencies faster than once per 24 hours. Must be a nightmare.

When your friends are your references.

A-Z of Hallucinations and hallucinosis. Psychiatric, neurological and physiological.