Tag: disclosure

Reading of the Week: Psychiatric Care in 21 Countries – The JAMA Psych Study; Also, Industry Payments to Psychiatrists and Batterman on Relating

From the Editor

Our patients often struggle to access care. But what is the global experience? What percentage of patients in other countries receive care that meets basic standards?

In the first selection, Dr. Daniel V. Vigo (of the University of British Columbia) and his co-authors attempt to answer these questions in a new paper for JAMA Psychiatry. They analyzed effective treatment and its key components for nine mental disorders drawing on the World Mental Health surveys which included structured interviews. Vigo et al. cover familiar ground, but the study stands out due to its unusually robust dataset which includes almost 57 000 people in 21 countries. “The proportion of 12-month person-disorders receiving effective treatment was 6.9%.” We consider the paper and its implications.

In the second selection, Dr. John L. Havlik (of Stanford University) and his co-authors weigh in on industry payment to US psychiatrists. In this Psychiatric Services paper, they analyzed six years of data covering nearly 60 000 physicians, drawing on government databases, finding: “a small number of psychiatrists (<600 psychiatrists per year) received approximately 75% of industry’s compensation to psychiatrists each year.”

And, in the third selection, medical student Alexander I. Batterman (of Rowan University) writes about a patient encounter for Academic Psychiatry. He notes the challenges of connecting with a patient who has psychosis and is dismissive. Batterman persists – and understands. “As a former epilepsy patient who is intimately aware of what it is like to be questioned and observed by clinicians and students in the emergency department, as if I were an animal at the zoo on display, I could relate to the human experience of being judged.”

DG

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Reading of the Week: Physician, Heal Thyself? The Gold et al. Study on Docs and Disclosure (and Mental Illness)

From the Editor

If you had depression, would you tell people?

This week’s Reading is a paper from General Hospital Psychiatry that considers just this question. In it, the authors surveyed American female physicians, asking about mental disorders and why they would or wouldn’t choose to get help – and to tell people.

Would you share your mental health history?

This paper is paired with an essay written by Dr. Nathaniel P. Morris, a Stanford resident of psychiatry, who mulls mental illness and disclosure – and has a big disclosure of his own.

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