Welcome to PsychEd, the psychiatry podcast for medical learners, by medical learners. This short episode is about counselling patients on antidepressant medications.

Hosts: Matthew Cho and Angad Singh

Audio editing: Angad Singh

Time Stamps:

2:03 - Steps to antidepressant counselling

7:31 - Frequently asked questions about antidepressants

Related Episodes:

PsychEd Episode 1: Diagnosis of Depression with Dr. Ilana Shawn

PsychEd Episode 2: Treatment of Depression with Dr. Sidney Kennedy

PsychEd Episode 58: Depression in Children and Adolescents with Dr. Darren Courtney

Patient Education:

UpToDate resource on ‘Medicines for Depression’: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/medicines-for-depression-the-basics

CAMH resource on ‘Antidepressant Medications’:

https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-illness-and-addiction-index/antidepressant-medications

Kelty Mental Health resource on ‘Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors’: https://keltymentalhealth.ca/sites/default/files/resources/SSRI_MedicationSheet2022.pdf,

References:

PsychDB. (2024, January 11). Introduction to Antidepressants. https://www.psychdb.com/meds/antidepressants/home

Lam RW, Kennedy SH, Adams C, Bahji A, Beaulieu S, Bhat V, Blier P, Blumberger DM, Brietzke E, Chakrabarty T, Do A. Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) 2023 Update on Clinical Guidelines for Management of Major Depressive Disorder in Adults: Réseau canadien pour les traitements de l'humeur et de l'anxiété (CANMAT) 2023: Mise à jour des lignes directrices cliniques pour la prise en charge du trouble dépressif majeur chez les adultes. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 2024 Sep;69(9):641-87.

Contact:

For more about PsychEd follow us on Instagram (@psyched.podcast), Facebook (PsychEd Podcast), and X (@psychedpodcast). You can email us at psychedpodcast@gmail.com and visit our website at psychedpodcast.org.

Welcome to PsychEd, the psychiatry podcast for medical learners, by medical learners. This is our inaugural book club episode centred around the book Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington.

Mind Fixers is by the Harvard historian Anne Harrington, and came out from Norton in 2022. It reframes the “biological turn” in later twentieth century psychiatry with a history of the discipline from the later nineteenth century forward. Harrington argues that the biological turn had relatively little to do with new scientific advances, and came instead from a need to separate psychiatry from the increasingly unpopular public image of the discipline’s previous, “Freudian” age.

To make this argument, she starts with the anatomic research of turn-of-the-century figures like Kraepelin, and how this generally failed to explain important mental illnesses. She traces the emergence of “Freudian” or psychological approaches to mental illness to the high point of their dominance in the mid twentieth century, and then their decline, as their inadequacy with respect to things like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia became increasingly clear, and their emphasis on childhood experience stigmatized families. Biological psychiatry is then a way to restore the fields’s respectability as as branch of medicine, but according to Harrington, there is not much transformative innovation to go along with this rebrand; and she emphasizes that the psychopharmacology revolution which gave us the first antipsychotics, MAOIS, tricyclics, and the receptor model of mental illness, actually happened during the heyday of psychoanalysis.

The members of our team involved in this discussion are:

Sara Abrahamson - MS2 at the University of Toronto

Dr. Kate Braithwaite - Medical Doctor from South Africa

Dr. Wendy MacMillan-Wang - PGY4 psychiatry resident at the University of Manitoba

Dr. Alastair Morrison - PGY1 psychiatry resident at McMaster University

Dr. Gaurav Sharma - Staff psychiatrist working in Nunavut, Canada

This episode was edited by Dr. Angad Singh - PGY1 psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto

Our discussion was structured around four themes:

(03:15) - Psychiatry and Economic Incentives

(19:33) - Psychiatry and Parenting

(28:40) - Biological Psychiatry and its Alternatives

(52:05) - Psychiatry and Social Control

If you enjoyed this episode, consider listening to our episodes about:

History of Psychiatry with Dr. David Castle

Critical Psychiatry with Dr. Elia Abi-Jaoude and Lucy Costa

For more PsychEd, follow us on Instagram (⁠@psyched.podcast⁠), X (⁠@psychedpodcast⁠), and Facebook (⁠⁠PsychEd Podcast⁠⁠). You can provide feedback by email at ⁠psychedpodcast@gmail.com⁠. For more information, visit our website at ⁠psychedpodcast.org⁠.

Welcome to PsychEd, the psychiatry podcast for medical learners, by medical learners.

This primer covers the differential diagnosis of dementia.

Hosts: Dr. Alastair Morrison (PGY-1) and Dr. Angad Singh (PGY-1)

Audio editing by: Dr. Angad Singh (PGY-1)

Resources:

• MoCA: https://dementia.talkbank.org/protocol/materials/MOCA.pdf
• MMSE: https://meded.temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/sites/default/files/assets/resource/document/mini-mental-state-examinationmmse.pdf
• Beers Criteria: American Geriatrics Society 2023 updated AGS Beers Criteria® for potentially inappropriate medication use in older adults
• PsychEd Episode 49: Dementia Assessment with Dr. Lesley Wiesenfeld

References:

• American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596
  
• Francis, J. & Young, B. (2022). Diagnosis of delirium and confusional states. UpToDate. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.uptodate.com/contents/delirium-and-acute-confusional-states-prevention-treatment-and-prognosis
• Larson, E. B. (2022). Evaluation of cognitive impairment and dementia. UpToDate. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.uptodate.com/contents/evaluation-of-cognitive-impairment-and-dementia
• PsychDB. (2022, Oct 3). Introduction to Dementia. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.psychdb.com/geri/dementia/home
• PsychDB. (2024, Feb 1). Delirium. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.psychdb.com/cl/1-delirium
• PsychDB. (2024, Feb 9). Alzheimer’s Disease. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.psychdb.com/geri/dementia/alzheimers
• PsychDB. (2023, Oct 12). Vascular Dementia. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.psychdb.com/geri/dementia/vascular
• PsychDB. (2024, Jan 23). Frontotemporal Dementia. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.psychdb.com/geri/dementia/frontotemporal
• PsychDB. (2024, Feb 5). Dementia with Lewy Bodies. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from https://www.psychdb.com/geri/dementia/lewy-body

For more PsychEd, follow us on Instagram (@psyched.podcast), Facebook (PsychEd Podcast), and X (@psychedpodcast). You can email us at psychedpodcast@gmail.com and visit our website at psychedpodcast.org.