Home | The Psychiatry Letter

Home | The Psychiatry Letter

Welcome to The Psychiatry Letter, the source for independent, scientifically sound psychiatric education. PL was published as a monthly newsletter on mental health and psychopharmacology from 2016-2019. This site provides new content on clinical cases and studies, as well as access to shopping for e-books and other resources (click Shop above). Visit the original newsletter site here to read all archived issues for free and use the index there to get access to topics of interest.

Search

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Mar 7
5 min

What did Kraepelin teach? Was he wrong?

Psychiatric clinicians don't tend to know their history, or if they do, it's often superficial. A classic example is the work of Emil Kraepelin, who gave us...

117 viewsWrite a comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Feb 6
1 min

Tylenol: Avoid it in pregnancy?

A new study was just published in JAMA Psychiatry providing prospective evidence of an an association between tylenol (acetaminophen) use during pregnancy an...

191 viewsWrite a comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Jan 14
3 min

Becoming a psychiatrist: Harvard residency notes

Back in 1991-1994, I attended my psychiatry residency at McLean Hospital, the preeminent training program in the Harvard system at the time. I took extensi...

205 viewsWrite a comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Dec 14, 2019
1 min

PL Reflections

In the PL newsletter, aphorisms or brief comments were included as PL Reflections. Here in this column, the new PL website will continue this tradition with ...

149 views1 comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Dec 11, 2019
4 min

Curbside Questions: Brief answers to clinical queries

12/10/19 Question: I wanted to ask about the first confrontation of the patient with a depressive condition (not related to the subtype of depression), but...

258 views6 comments

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Nov 5, 2019
3 min

Chronic fatigue: What causes it?

A 37 year-old man with hypertension reports fatigue since mid-adolescence, and a depressive episode one year earlier. He did not do well with serotonin reput...

130 viewsWrite a comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Oct 22, 2019
2 min

Polypharmacy after post-stroke depression

One way of understanding brain laterality and mood is that when one side is disabled, the other side becomes more active. In general, activity of the right b...

86 views2 comments

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Oct 7, 2019
3 min

Was Kraepelin right?

The classic diagnostic validators in psychiatry are symptoms, course of illness, genetics, and biological markers. Treatment response or pathophysiology ofte...

200 views2 comments

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Sep 28, 2019
2 min

Gynecomastia with antipsychotics

Question: A 33 year old male patient with autism spectrum disorder has developed mild gynecomastia (without galactorrhea, but with slightly elevated prolacti...

86 viewsWrite a comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Sep 27, 2019
1 min

Suicide prevention with lithium or clozapine?

Question: A colleague told me that lithium only prevents suicide in bipolar illness, while clozapine prevents suicide in schizophrenia. Is that true? PL: Lit...

99 viewsWrite a comment

Nassir Ghaemi MD

Sep 27, 2019
3 min

Agitation with mirtazapine

Question: A patient in his early 60s who is a university professional had depression, anxiety and associated irritable bowel syndrome. As you can see, he did...

117 views2 comments

Contact

The Psychiatry Letter