Much has been written about the need to modify psychotherapeutic techniques to suit the cultural context of the Indian patient. Even the most ardent advocates of the need to make psychotherapy culturally relevant, often forget that similar modifications may also be necessary in the pharmacotherapy of psychiatric disorders. We often assume that a drug which is effective in one group of patients ...

The marketing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in the psychopharmacological industry presents a serious moral problem for the corporate model of medicine. In this paper I examine ethical issues relating to the efficacy and safety of these drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to disclose all information in their possession bearing on the true risks and benefits of th...

Psychiatrists and historians owe a debt to David Healy. Over the years he has conducted interviews with all the leading figures in psychopharmacology. The resultant three volumes of The Psychopharmacologists (Healy, 1996, 1998, 2000) captured a crucial period in the history of psychiatry. Drawing on these interviews and his wide reading of the scholarly literature, Healy has now constructed a s...

Over the past 20 years, the previously frowned upon combination of pharmacotherapy and psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapy has become common practice because of both findings from the neurosciences that demonstrate hardwired brain development from chronic early stress and trauma and from efficacy studies that show the superiority of combined therapy over either psychotherapy or medication a...

to inquire more about their origins. When I first began reading, I eagerly anticipated acquiring new skills that would sharpen my diagnostic acumen or learning new insights about cutaneous morphogenesis. I was disappointed in both expectations. The majority of the studies presented show statistical trends in the quantitative or qualitative examination of ridges in different populations. Thus, t...