Topic Ideas

This topic list is necessarily limited. The Editorial Committee will always be open to new and innovative issue exploration.

Addictions

• Drug treatment, tobacco policies, injection centres
• Alcoholism: illness vs choice; harm reduction & dependence
• Social regulation

Alternative/Complementary Therapies

• regulation, safety, evidence, training

Brain Science

• Translation of discovery to clinical domain
• Biology: disease models, quantum physics and self, imaging, brain mapping

Caregivers

• Family systems
• Social supports

Children

• Service provision, competence, guardianship, decision making, medication use

Clinical Decision Making

• Diagnostic issues
• Consent and capacity
• Restraints
• Diagnostic categories: DSM evolution, concept of a disorder

Clinician Health/Well-being

• Difficult patients
• Drug, alcohol abuse
• Isolation, support options
• Stress: burnout, “jaded”

Clinical Training

• Supervision
• Role definition / development
• Program development
• Education: training, quality, bias, power relationships, modeling, coercion, complicity
• Qualifications: credentialing, maintenance of certification, discipline/penalties

Community Psychiatry

• Rural vs urban: resources, supports, skilled care
• Community agencies: governance, access, staff qualifications, services, funding
• Mental illness: family burden, social values, cultural norms, myths, stigma, sexism, bigotry, discrimination, racism, media portrayals
• Poverty: impact on mental health, child/family, literacy, housing
• Deinstitutionalization: “through the cracks and on the streets”; specialty services, program monitoring, supportive/group homes

Culture

• ethnic/religious groups, culture bound syndromes, codes of ethics variations, translation

Ethics

• Codes of ethics in psychiatry
• Philosophical bases of psychiatric ethics
• Distinguishing features of psychiatric ethics
• Psychiatry as a profession
• Principals of care, free will, autonomy, insanity, irrationality, irresponsibility, trust, respect, informed consent, necessary harm, cognitive science
• Ethical traditions and systems
• Ethics committees
• Sexual rights, sexual abuse
• Suicide: legislation, morality, rational, assisted

Forensics

• violence, risk assessment/prediction, criminal responsibility, managing sexual offenders/predators, confinement, insanity defense, ‘chemical sanity’, police interrogation, false confession

Genetics

• gene identification, counseling, risk assessment, testing, screening, gene therapy

Geriatrics

• Cognitive impairment
• Special vulnerability

History of Psychiatry

• Remembering and learning from the past

Information

• Confidentiality, truth telling, safeguards, third parties, uses of information, information management, storage, sharing/disclosure
• Sources: internet, credibility, quality assurance

Insurance

• Information disclosure, refusal, independent medical exams, coercion, medico-legal reports, genetic risk factors

Law

• Case law, liability concerns, legislation, confinement, forced treatment, capacity, competence, confidentiality, safeguards, oversight, whistle-blowing, jurisdictional differences, future directions

Politics and Policy

• Policy: studies, commissions, reviews, implementation, resource projections, policy developed in response to tragedy or crisis
• Politics: funding, prioritization, communication, cooperation, being heard, under serviced areas, lobbying, pressures, barriers
• Resource allocation: underdeveloped countries, wealthier nations/systems
• Global mental health standards
• Advocacy
• Human rights

Power

• Use / abuse
• Corporate / institutional culture
• Political

Professional Roles

• Boundary maintenance / violations
• Discipline specific roles, self regulation, professional organizations / colleges
• Duties to patients, colleagues, organizations, systems, societies
• Mental health culture/norms: models, warning and reporting, incompetent/dangerous colleagues, intimidation by patients, mistakes

Rehabilitation

• Goals, supports, assistance, maintenance

Relationships

• Conflicts of interest, competing interests
• Industry sponsorship: individual, institutional, non-teaching centers, unreported studies, impact on research directions/reporting

Research

• Critical appraisal: nature of evidence
• Use of vulnerable subjects
• Oversight
• Consent, assent, social good, acceptable risk, coercion

Special Populations

• HIV/AIDS
• Cognitive impairment: mental retardation, brain injury, dementia
• Chronic pain
• Chronic illness
• Psycho-oncology
• End of life care
• Torture/war: PTSD, societal wounds, genocide, tribalism, nationalism

Spirituality

• Role of spirituality in health and healing
• Psychosis or grace?
• Denomination specific psychotherapy

Systems of Care

• Consumer representation, impact, lobbying, bias
• Mental Health Care Management: models, implementation, change
• Quality control
• Quackery
• Government / private insurance plan coverage for psychotherapy, drugs
• Psychologists prescribing medications?

Treatment

• Psychotherapies: appropriate type, adequate training, adequate funding and provision
• Physical manipulation of the brain: ECT, psychosurgery, vagus nerve implant, deep brain stimulation
• Hypnosis
• Inpatient treatment: privileges, confinement, restraints, returning illicit drugs, violence, assault, sexual activity, staff assault, staff abuse, coercion, infantilization, smoking
• Medication risk/benefit: TD, newer antipsychotics, depot formulations, quick dissolve, drug approval process, costs/pharmacare
• Novel treatments: transcranial magnetic stimulation
• Outpatient treatment: ACT teams, termination of care, risk of abuse/assault/false allegation
• Patient/Client: refusing medications/treatment, variable competence, consent, substitute decision making, lack of insight, compliance
• Peer support
• Placebo effect