Lloyd I. Sederer, MD

Harris Wulfson died July 23, 2008. He had walked for some 10 hours from midtown in New York City to the Riverdale Metro-North train station (north of Manhattan), where he jumped before an oncoming train to his crushing death.

His loss is beyond measure to family and friends who loved...

Why do people of older age seem so incapable of transformation? What circumstances and settings can unleash irresistible forces of change upon human passerbys, regardless of their age?

Conjure up those transformative forces. Aim them at persons of advanced age, entrenched habits and deeply-rooted fears. Throw in the wondrous catalyst...

If you lost a limb, would you think twice about getting a mechanical prosthesis that could be operated with your thoughts? If you lost hearing or vision, you might want a cochlear implant or a visual prosthetic. What if you lost a chunk of memory, or lost your ability to...

Book Review:
Monday Mornings
By Sanjay Gupta, M.D. -- Grand Central Publishing, N.Y., 2012

When this book was released, as a great fan of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, I immediately marched down to my local Barnes and Noble and picked up a copy of his novel. Yes, a...

The debate continues to rage about whether psychiatric medications work. This controversy especially has brewed about antidepressants and antipsychotic medications, some of the most widely used medications in the world. An important study just published in the British Journal of Psychiatry sheds light (not just makes for heat and wind)...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
--Arthur C. Clarke

In fact, advances in neurotechnology are capitalizing on the brain's remarkable sleight of hand.

Neurotechnology refers to the applied science of understanding the brain, consciousness, thought, and higher-order activities of the mind. Neurotech's brainchildren are today's mental...

You might recall the scandalous behavior that led to the 18 million € ($25 million) in reparations ruled earlier this year by the European Union's highest court (The Court of Justice) to be paid by the government of France. No, it was not related to Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK). It was...

Once again, the American Academy of Pediatrics is demonstrating its clinical leadership. Two recent, groundbreaking reports -- "The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress" and "Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician: Translating Developmental Science Into Lifelong Health" --...

The debate rages on about DSM-5, the latest diagnostic manual of psychiatric disorders due for release next year by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Arguments abound about what disorders should be included (and what should be listed within each respective disorder, like autism or psychosis) and what should not...

When we get embarrassed, our faces turn red.

When we get nervous, our hearts pound and our palms sweat.

When we feel really sad, we cry.

Our minds can -- and do -- speak through our bodies. All the time. Yet sometimes it can seem hard to believe....

You can hear the sounds of excitement from afar -- before you see the vast well of games and the legions of children (and adults) swarming around the scores of hyperbolic machines with brilliant flashing lights and swelling sounds that rival modern atonal music. You have arrived at a casino...

Cries for emotional help come in all forms. We witness these cries in ways direct and indirect: from outright requests to help me stay alive to the less direct but no less obvious self-starvation of anorexia or leaving empty pill bottles or illegal drugs in plain sight.

We recently...

Remember these eight words: bus, screwdriver, mango, playground, swallow, sun, couch and rectangle.

Wait a few minutes. How many can you recall?

How many words of three letters or more can you make from the following scrambled letters: A-E-L-S-K

How many did you create? There are 18.

How many times...

'Tis the season of intense emotions and evoked memories.

For some, however, the holiday time can generate feelings of grief, anxiety, loss and pain. Articles in journals and magazines talk about seasonal pathology: holiday blues, "Christmas Neurosis," seasonal mood disorders. We even hear about "Holiday Heart," a form of...

I have had trouble sleeping for about 25 years. I am amongst legions of people who share the same trouble.

Some have difficulty falling asleep. They toss and turn as thoughts race through the brain while infusing the body with neurotransmitters and stress hormones that further rev up our engines....

I am no apologist for either Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung but this film was a petty, if not perverse, rendition of a profound moment in the intellectual and social history of the Western world. What makes the film's treatment (no pun intended) of this era so troubling is that...

We may soon see "How's my doctoring?" stickers in emergency rooms, operating suites and on the bumpers of ambulances. That's because, as of October 2012, the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) requires patient satisfaction scores to be factored into how much Medicare will pay health care providers.

According to...

In another needed response to the obesity epidemic affecting American youth (and the adults they will become), the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the Federal National Institute of Health, has declared that pediatricians should be checking cholesterol when kids reach the age of 9 and before they...

Every 14 minutes a person dies of a drug overdose in the United States. This means more than 35,000 deaths every year, exceeding motor vehicle crashes, homicides and suicides!

The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), R. Gil Kerlikowske, a former police and...

After the movie screening in the Tribeca Cinema in Lower Manhattan as he settled into a stool, microphone in hand for the Q and A, Chris Herren rubbed his left knee -- the knee that hurt too much to continue to play for the Boston Celtics and accelerated his dependence...