When a patient tells you that she has fibromyalgia, what should you, a psychiatrist, do? Should the diagnosis alter your treatment in any way?

Although heroin-then known as diacetylmorphine-was first derived from morphine in England in 1874, it was the Bayer company in Germany that saw its commercial value as a cough remedy and pain reliever.

Roll up your sleeves; this is a no-nonsense article, in which we will lay out for you all the neuroimaging modalities currently available, with a little explanation on how each works, and a tidbit or two on how it can (or can't) be used in psychiatry.

If you haven't had patients asking you to order them a PET scan to diagnose Alzheimer's disease yet, brace yourself. It's only a matter of time.

Five of the last six covers of the American Journal of Psychiatry have been chock-full of brains.

In 1977, Raymond Damadian and a team of graduate students put together the first whole-body MRI scanner, which they dubbed the "Indomitable." Damadian volunteered himself as the first guinea pig.

The very first issue of The Carlat Report (TCR 1:1) featured an article on St. John’s Wort for the treatment of depression. While this may be the most famous of the “natural” antidepressants, we are hearing more and more about others, including those surveyed in this article.

Any of you who choose to do an informal survey of your patients will be surprised how many are taking a non-prescribed sleeping aid. Often this is an antihistamine, but patients are increasingly turning to natural alternatives.

Strangely enough, there are only two medications FDA-approved for PTSD--Zoloft (sertraline) and Paxil (paroxetine). This is despite the fact that PTSD is a common problem, with a lifetime prevalence of between 5 and 10%, and can be extremely debilitating.

As you can see from this issue's lead article, SSRIs help alleviate core PTSD symptoms, but hardly roar by the placebo response rate in clinical trials. And anytime the placebo effect is this robust, you can predict that psychotherapy will be very effective. This is certainly true in the world of PTSD.