A ride through recent studies on anxiety, highlighting the playful and the practical. Why anxious people prefer to worry than relax. City parks lift mood, and a bike helmet changes the perception of risk. Anxious triggers are less distracting as we get older, and for a select group of patients...

Neuroticism is not in the DSM, but it's a common cause of anxiety and may predict thether a patient respond to an SSRI. We talk with Nassir Ghaemi and bring you practical insights into this personality trait. How to recognize it, how to treat it, and how to avoid over-treating...

Trintellix looks like a natural fit for anxiety disorders, with a serotonergic mechanism that overlaps with buspirone (5HT1a agonism). But things are not always as they seem in psychiatry. In this second installment of our anxiety series we delve into the failure of Trintellix in generalized anxiety disorder, and uncover...

Is Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) an anxious temperament, a symptom of another disorder, or a valid disorder on its own? In Part One of our November series on anxiety, we trace the history of GAD from Sigmund Freud to DSM-5.  With over two dozen choices, it isn't easy to pick...

Why does the top-selling psychiatric textbook base its recommendations on the lowest grade of medical evidence? Psychiatric practice is often mislead by expert opinion, practice trends, and neurotransmitter theories. In the case of paroxetine (Paxil), venlafaxine (Effexor), and mirtazapine (Remeron), this misinformation has created some popular myths that don't hold...

There are some ways to help you assess the type of anxiety that leads to inattention. Consider the following tips, which we’ve excerpted from an article from The Carlat Child Psychiatry Report newsletter:Catalog. Work with the child to develop a list of activities in which the child is calm and...

Although there’s been a lot of discussion about gabapentin’s abuse potential, gabapentin substance use disorders are pretty rare, with one study finding that only 2% of 44,148 patients using gabapentin alone met criteria for sustained overuse (Peckham et al, Pharmacotherapy, in press). The one area where you should show caution,...