It was the 1950s: "I like Ike," peace, post-war prosperity, and families that appeared, at least on the surface, as All-American. Television, though still new, had taken over our culture, capturing the attention of our country, me no exception.

I had my favorite TV shows, but at the top...

June is PTSD Awareness Month, so declares the Veterans Administration. Hundreds of thousands of war returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan have or will develop post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a condition that induces suffering in veterans -- and their families, who can be repeatedly separated from their loved one, live...

The debris are all too visible from the tornadoes that visited catastrophe on Oklahoma this past week. Lives were lost, property irrevocably destroyed and neighborhoods razed. The tornado might as well have been a load of thousand-pound bombs from above, looking at the destruction it rained. The damage, however, will...

Now that The Diagnostic Manual of Mishegas (The DMOM) has been released, we authors have graciously provided what we consider to be a Charlie Rose(nberg)-type interview about the genesis of their manual.

Why? Because the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 -- the "Bible of...

A person who has undergone a trauma is someone who has experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event involving actual or threatened death (or serious injury) to self or others.

At the time of the trauma, that person felt intense fear, helplessness, or horror. However, responses to these...

I recently attended a conference on Preparing for Dirty Bombs, Nuclear Disaster and Other Radiological Emergencies. Scary stuff. A subject that is about the last thing we want to consider -- yet in the "new normal" it has become inescapable.

Disaster, especially terrorism, notwithstanding its horrific initial impact on...

Nearly 1 percent of people suffer from bipolar disorder (sometimes referred to as "manic depression"). Bipolar disorder is a mental illness major mood swings of mania (bipolar I) or hypomania (a less intense form of mania called bipolar II) and depression.

We see in the press that...

Psychiatric medications are among the most frequently-prescribed medications in this country and throughout the world. One in 10 Americans takes an anti-depressant. Yet despite the incessant barrage of multi-media drug promotions, you may not have the answers to the questions you most want answered.

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Narcissism is normal if we don't get carried away with it.

A healthy self respect and expectation to be treated fairly is normal narcissism. It helps...

As the boy in Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 book, The Painted Bird, wanders about Eastern Europe fleeing the Nazis who have entrapped his Polish parents, he witnesses an event that is apocryphal in its depiction of stigma. He comes upon a professional bird catcher who paints a captured bird with many...

From up on high, as the helicopter cameras open this documentary film, peering down on amber fields of grain, from sea to shining sea, the United States appears prosperous, abundant in its produce, rich in its plentitude of space and foodstuffs. T. Bone Burnett's music soars, adding to the grandeur....

I scanned the table of contents of the British online journal BMC Medicine soon after it appeared in my email. A title caught my eye: "Depression Pathogenesis and Treatment: What Can We Learn From Blood mRNA Expression?" I thought about the many families that have asked me about...

Watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroscientist whose life was transformed -- first by illness, and then by illumination -- as she beautifully conveys with wisdom and pathos in this TEDTalk, which has been viewed over ten...

As a psychiatrist, I don't know much about gas fracking, but I have learned some things about human nature, including how the conscience -- even if temporarily contained -- will, in time, have its moment of reckoning. How that happens for Steve Butler, the "All-American" advance man for a global...

"Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?"

The lyrics in...

The world has been shocked by the terrible tragedy in Newtown, Conn., where a shooting in a primary school has resulted in the loss of 20 young children and six adults, in addition to the shooter and his mother. Our thoughts and hearts go out to their families, friends, and...

On a recent Friday, a psychiatrist and a team of medical students traveled to the Far Rockaways in Queens to provide mental health assistance to survivors of Hurricane Sandy. Their work did not involve psychotherapy sessions and diagnoses but rather tending to the immediate needs of survivors.

The medical team...

The recent release of the film Anna Karenina has reminded many of Tolstoy's wry comment, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Little has changed in the over a century since it was penned: Each troubled family does seem to have its own...

I screened Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, an epic biography of a man, politics, a nation at war, and the timeless battle to dismantle the structures of inequity less than a day after Barack Obama was reelected president of the United States of America. The two presidents, separated in time but not...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, opinions -- some reliable, some misleading -- about the storm's potential mental health impact have proliferated. When media channels act responsibly, they engage experienced experts as spokespeople; when that does not happen, wrong information adds to the public's anxiety and can foster inappropriate clinical...