For a number of years after I first got started in psychiatry I wrestled with the dilemma of what to do when someone with severe, disabling depression came in for an evaluation, seemed to be an excellent candidate for treatment with an anti-depressant, but was completely preoccupied with potential adverse effects and focused almost entirely on all of the negative …
Rousseau and Nature’s Way: Realistically Thinking about Treatment and Medication
We’ve been thinking about people who come to our clinic, say that they are not sure that they have a mood disorder, and they want to try get off of their medications and use dietary supplements to cope with their ups and downs. We have a lot of interest in the idea of using various non-medication options for managing moods. …
Marijuana: Reefer Madness
Psychosis Risks with Marijuana Use This article is taken from Bipolar Network News. “At a recent conference Robin Murray, a researcher based in London, gave a talk about the potential adverse effects of tetrahydrocanabinol (THC). Considerable data indicate that chronic long-term smoking of marijuana is associated with the doubling of the risk of psychosis. Moreover, if a marijuana user has a …
Parenting and Oxytocin
Those of us who have been parents probably remember moments of incredible attachment to our children. Times when we were happy to just hold them while they were sleeping, and nothing else in the world seemed important. It is a state that is somewhat like the experience of new love. Recent research suggests that part of what creates that state …
NAC (n-acetyl-cysteine)
We were impressed by a recent study of n-acetyl cysteine as a treatment for marijuana dependence. It was a well designed study from a very reputable research group and the results were significant: the number of clean urines in the group getting NAC was twice as high as in the placebo group. It got us more interested in the agent …
Medications
Getting the right medicine, medication side effects, fear of being dependent on a medication, medications that stop working mysteriously… psychiatric medications evoke in us as many reactions as do psychiatric disorders… and psychiatrists. What we propose to do on this page is to try to collect and organize information that we have found helpful in thinking about psychiatric medications. As …
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is one of the fat soluble vitamins, and along with other fat soluble vitamins, it is possible to take too little, but it is also possible to take too much. And taking too much can have negative health effects, just as taking too little can. For many of us we get enough vitamin D naturally from exposure to …
Supplements – Overview
Supplements are drugs that are found in nature (note: supplements don’t have to be any more “natural” in terms of how they are made than prescription drugs). Because they are found in nature they are not, in the United States, subject to review and approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Also, because they are found in nature, they tend …
Smoking (Marijuana)
Lots of folks with depression and bipolar use marijuana to help feel more stable. We like to keep an open mind but we have to say we are not impressed with marijuana as a mood stabilizer. In fact, the closest thing that we can think of in terms of prescribed medications to marijuana (gabapentin or Neurontin) is a medication which …
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