The first ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), was performed by an Italian psychiatrist, Ugo Cerletti, who had initially assessed the safety of the treatment with dogs. He performed the first treatment on a human on April 18, 1938.

In case you haven't noticed, antidepressants are under attack. Articles such as "The Emperor's New Drugs" and popular books like "Prozac Backlash" point to a growing public sentiment that psychiatrists need to shed a little hubris.

Throughout every issue of The Carlat Report, you, poor reader, have been subjected to citations of multiple research studies, and to terms such as "controlled," "open-label", "statistically significant." In this article, TCR dives head-first into research methodology, with the aim of helping you to become smarter consumers of statistical trickery.

What a bind we seem to be in. On the one hand, we are short several thousand child psychiatrists in the United States, and parents are beating down our (generalist) doors to get their children medicated. On the other hand, every other piece of news about childhood psychopharmacology seems either bad or lukewarm.

Just when we thought we could finally dismiss the notion that SSRIs cause suicidal ideation, along came the Brits!

Every so often the stars align themselves in such a way that you will be referred an "easy" adolescent. This is a teenager who looks and dresses like you, who is seeking help on his or her own urging, who describes depressive or anxiety symptoms articulately, and who responds well to standard treatment.

John Watson (1878-1958) was one of the more colorful figures in the history of American psychology. The poor son of violent, drinking man in South Carolina, Watson managed to gain admission to a local college, and then studied psychology at University of Chicago.

If you were in TCR's editorial offices, surrounded by boxes of articles about acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEI’s), you would quickly develop a sinking sensation. Not because the articles are so boring (though, in fact, they are); rather, because the pharmaceutical hype-sters are back on parade once again.

Plaques and Tangles, Amyloid deposits and Apo-E: Who can keep them straight? Unless you are a researcher, all you really need to know is how to diagnose dementia, and how to dose the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor du jour.

We'd all like to escape dementia in our old age. Over the past decade, numerous large scale epidemiological studies have been published singing the praises of a variety of agents that might prevent or delay dementia.