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If you are interested in part-time correctional work, the best place to start is often the local jail—as opposed to a prison. What’s the difference between the two? A jail is a criminal justice facility operated by a city or county. It houses people who are awaiting trial or who...

There is a high demand for psychiatric care in U.S. correctional facilities. At any given time, about 1% of the adult population is incarcerated, and many of them have a psychiatric disorder of some sort.

Dr. Patrick Gariety shares his experiences as a treatment clinician working in a facility with about 300 psychiatric patients, staffed with five psychiatrists and eight psychologists. The psychiatric population was extremely mixed, with most of the patients suffering from some form of chronic mental illness, and/or severe personality disorders.

Second-generation antipsychotics (SGA) are used for a variety of psychiatric conditions, but even though they’ve been around for 20 years, we know little about what impact they have on the developing fetus. These medications are widely considered to be relatively safe during pregnancy, but this assumption is based on scant evidence. In this paper, researchers tapped into the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) National Pregnancy Registry of Atypical Antipsychotics and reported some reassuring results.

Prescribing two antipsychotics to a single patient is a common practice in clinical settings. Increasingly, we are being scolded for this practice. If possible, stick with a single antipsychotic. But if the situation seems to call for polypharmacy, here are some factors to guide your decision-making.

On September 17, the FDA approved cariprazine (Vraylar) for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. There’s already some buzz about whether this medication has advantages over other atypicals for treating negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

Nearly one in three foster children have significant psychiatric problems during their time in foster care—especially those related to trauma and neglect that brought them into the system. This article is a brief primer on how foster care works, and how psychiatrists get involved.

In response to the rising use of psychotropic medications in Medicaid and foster care populations, some states, including California, have implemented specific guidelines. This article covers those guidelines with case examples.