The charge of this committee is to follow developments in electronic health record issues—more related to policy than to technology—and to serve as a resource for members and for other councils and committees of the APA.

Index and Articles in Volume 9, 2011 TCPR

Over the past decade or so, atypical antipsychotic use has exploded, for both FDA approved indications and off-label treatments.

After reading these articles, you should be able to…

Insomnia is one of the most common comorbidities you’ll see in your depressed and anxious patients. But it is often misunderstood. While the common view is that insomnia is caused by a primary psychiatric or medical condition, it is more accurate to simply say that patients have insomnia and depression at the same time. Insomnia is almost never an isolated problem.

This handy table lists the medications most often used to treat insomnia.

In our study of CBT-I, we assigned participants with chronic and primary insomnia to either CBT-I, temazepam, a combination of the two, or placebo. We found that combination therapy was more effective than either treatment alone—in our study, the percentage reduction of time awake after sleep onset was highest for the combined condition (63.5%), followed by CBT (55%), temazepam (46.5%), and placebo (16.9%).

If patients are stable on olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel), or risperidone (Risperdal) but are experiencing adverse metabolic effects, it might make sense to switch to a medication that has a lower risk of causing such effects. But would such a switch reduce obesity and cholesterol at the risk of a relapse?

The editors at TCPR, as well as many of you, received a notice issued by the FDA on August 24, 2011 warning us that citalopram (Celexa) at doses higher than 40 mg may cause dangerous prolongation of the QT interval, which can increase the risk of cardiac arrhythmias (including the potentially fatal torsade de pointes).

After reading these articles, you should be able to…