Considering the increased efforts to legalize marijuana in many states, greater public awareness of marijuana and its potential medicinal uses, and new research on cannabis and its constituents, it is essential that psychiatrists understand some of its proposed benefits—and fundamental risks.

President of the California Society of Addiction Medicine Itai Danovitch offers an overview of what psychiatrists should know about medical marijuana.

Several past studies have investigated a possible link between infections during pregnancy and psychiatric illness in the offspring. These studies may be biased, however, by poor recall or by a clinical, as opposed to serological, diagnosis of infection in the mother. A recent study attempted to overcome this bias by measuring influenza antibodies—a more precise manner of identifying influenza exposure—drawn from the mothers of bipolar offspring.

Does newspaper coverage of suicide promote copycat suicides? A recent retrospective study examined this question by comparing suicide clusters among teens to isolated suicides, and how local newspapers covered these events.

In mid-May, the FDA released a warning that eszopiclone (Lunesta) can cause next-day impairment when taken at the recommended target dose of 3 mg/day. As a result, the FDA has lowered the recommended starting dose to 1 mg/day.

A new drug is showing rapid, long-lasting results in early rodent studies, according to a paper presented by Jeffrey Talbot of Roseman University of Health Sciences at the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) in April.

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Alongside DSM, another conceptual model has risen, one based on concepts originally developed by Adolf Meyer and Karl Jaspers in the early 20th century. In the 1980s, these ideas were organized and later were described in the book, The Perspectives of Psychiatry, published in 1998 (Johns Hopkins University Press). The Perspectives of Psychiatry’s authors, Paul McHugh and Phillip Slavney, have steadfastly viewed the DSM system as fundamentally flawed and have consistently expressed concern about its negative impact on the field.

DSM-IV task force chair Allen Frances, MD, delves into the details of DSM-5.

Agitation is common in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and while antipsychotics are frequently given for agitation, they can also increase risk for cardiac and cerebrovascular events. What to do? A group of researchers recently investigated the possibility that an antidepressant, citalopram (Celexa), may be an alternative choice.