Don't underestimate how much the weather can affect your mood. The American Academy of Family Physicians has estimated roughly half a million Americans suffer from seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression that typically begins as winter approaches. Daylight Savings Time just passed, and people are noticing that there is less and... Read more
The treatments for schizophrenia have improved significantly over the past few decades, but many patients and their families are frustrated by having to pay a higher copay for seeing a psychiatrist than for seeing any other specialist. This is in part due to a long history of distinction between mental and physical health in many insurance... Read more
People who have schizophrenia are often very concerned that they have passed the illness on to their children. Even when their children are very young, the thought of their child experiencing a psychotic episode fills many parents with fear and dread. As a child psychiatrist in training, I am often asked to evaluate children of people with... Read more
About a year ago I wrote about some of the issues surrounding smoking and schizophrenia; how the rate of smoking in people with this illness is almost double the general population and how nicotine may actually impact how antipsychotic medications work. Well, recently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a partnership with New York Mayor... Read more
It's been long known that marijuana use can cause certain symptoms of psychosis. Among the most commonly reported are paranoia, auditory and visual hallucinations. I regularly talk to patients with schizophrenia about the dangers of using marijuana for just this reason; patients have told me that marijuana has elicited the very symptoms we were... Read more