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