Summary: October 08, 2007: Just Do It * Crisis in the Treatment of Incompetence to Proceed to Trial. In the recent Online AAPL Journal, an article by Wortzel about problems with assessing defendants who are not competent to stand trial and restoring them to competence. [hmm, wonder whose topic this one is] At any given time, these people occupy about 10% of our nation's state psychiatric hospital beds. A complicated discussion ensues about who pays for forensic mental health care and how the system results in decreasing access to care for uninsured non-forensic patients. * We respond to a question to the NYT Ethicist column, by Randy Cohen, which you can read here (as well as his answer). [Note: we last saw Randy when he stopped by to respond to a discussion about a previous column of his about suicidal people making wills.] The question involves whether it is okay for a physician, who is a psychiatrist, to prescribe a stimulant (Adderall) to his college kid for the purpose of improving test-taking performance. (We discussed the practice of treating family members in a prior post, My Patient, Myself.) A secondary question involves that kid sharing the medication with a friend. We also discuss the issue of using performance-enhancing amphetamines for non-illnesses, in addition to the potential for a performance-reducing effect due to side effects (which is also taken up on Gawker's Unethicist). (We also ask for help from any DEA agent listeners.) * Clink celebrates her 25th Running Anniversary. She's been just doing it for a quarter century. * Price Transparency for Psychotropic Drugs. Dinah discusses her post about the list of prices for antidepressants. Roy unsuccessfully looks for the prices of these drugs on the Maryland Medicaid website. Coming up in Podcast #37... SSRI Poop-out (aka tachyphylaxis) and other good stuff. Oh, and here's a pic from my Vegas conference trip. Yummy!Send us your general questions at mythreeshrinksATgmailDOTcom.Go to http://mythreeshrinks.com for show notes with links.
