Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder subset in which people who typically have normal mental health throughout most of the year exhibit depressive symptoms at the same time each year. It is commonly, but not always, associated with the reductions or increases in total daily sunlight hours that occur during the summer or winter.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 38,000 members who are involved in psychiatric practice, research, and academia representing a diverse population of patients in more than 100 countries. The association publishes various journals and pamphlets, as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM codifies psychiatric conditions and is used mostly in the United States as a guide for diagnosing mental disorders.
Jeffrey H. Meyer is a scientist and professor working with mood and anxiety disorders using neuroimaging at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. He is currently the head of the Neurochemical Imaging Program in Mood and Anxiety Disorders in the Brain Health Imaging Centre at the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute and is working as a Senior Scientist in the General and Health Systems Psychiatry Division at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He has also been awarded with the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Neurochemistry of Major Depression.
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of deleterious mental conditions. These include various matters related to mood, behaviour, cognition, perceptions, and emotions.
Late-life depression refers to depression occurring in older adults and has diverse presentations, including as a recurrence of early-onset depression, a new diagnosis of late-onset depression, and a mood disorder resulting from a separate medical condition, substance use, or medication regimen. Research regarding late-life depression often focuses on late-onset depression, which is defined as a major depressive episode occurring for the first time in an older person.
Depression, one of the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorders, is being diagnosed in increasing numbers in various segments of the population worldwide. Depression in the United States alone affects 17.6 million Americans each year or 1 in 6 people. Depressed patients are at increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and suicide. Within the next twenty years depression is expected to become the second leading cause of disability worldwide and the leading cause in high-income nations, including the United States. In approximately 75% of suicides, the individuals had seen a physician within the prior year before their death, 45–66% within the prior month. About a third of those who died by suicide had contact with mental health services in the prior year, a fifth within the preceding month.
The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease is a 2010 book by the psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, and published by Beacon Press, covering the history of the 1960s Ionia State Hospital, located in Ionia, Michigan, and converted into the Ionia Correctional Facility in 1986. The book describes the facility as one of America's largest and most notorious state psychiatric hospitals in the era before deinstitutionalization.
Michael Terman is an American psychologist best known for his work in applying the biological principles of the circadian timing system to psychiatric treatments for depression and sleep disorders. This subspecialty is known as Chronotherapeutics.
Start School Later, aka Healthy Hours, is a non-profit organization in the United States. Founded in 2011 after Maryland-based science writer Terra Ziporyn Snider started an online petition via We the People that brought together grassroots advocates, sleep researchers, pediatricians, social workers, and educators, the coalition aims to help communities delay school starting times; ensure safe, healthy school hours; and provide sleep education programs for students and school communities.
Psychiatry is, and has historically been, viewed as controversial by those under its care, as well as sociologists and psychiatrists themselves. There are a variety of reasons cited for this controversy, including the subjectivity of diagnosis, the use of diagnosis and treatment for social and political control including detaining citizens and treating them without consent, the side effects of treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy, antipsychotics and historical procedures like the lobotomy and other forms of psychosurgery or insulin shock therapy, and the history of racism within the profession in the United States.
The Psychiatry Innovation Lab is an incubator at the American Psychiatric Association that catalyzes the formation of innovative ventures to transform mental healthcare. It was founded by American psychiatrist and author Dr. Nina Vasan in 2015. The Lab nurtures early-stage ideas and ventures by investing in them with mentorship, education, funding, and collaboration opportunities with a community of mental health innovators.
Ellen Frank is a psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is known in the field of Psychotherapy as one of the developers of Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy, which aims to treat bipolar disorder by correcting disruptions in the circadian rhythm while promoting increased regularity of daily social routines. Frank is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of HealthRhythms, a company that uses mobile technology to monitor the health and mental health of clients, facilitate the detection of changes in their status, and better manage mental health conditions.
Michael Smolensky is an American chronobiologist working in hypertension and pathophysiology.
Myrna Milgram Weissman is Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Chief of the Division of Translational Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is an epidemiologist known for her research on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and psychiatric epidemiology, as it pertains to rates and risks of anxiety and mood disorders across generations. Among her many influential works are longitudinal studies of the impact of parental depression on their children.
Lawrence Hartmann is a child and adult psychiatrist, social-psychiatric activist, clinician, professor, and former President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Hartmann played a central role in the APA's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality as a diagnosis of mental illness from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This change decisively changed the modern era of LGBTQ rights by providing support for the overturning of laws and prejudices against homosexuals and by advancing gay civil rights, including the right to immigrate, to adopt, to buy a home, to teach, to marry, and to be left alone.
Psychiatric News is the official newspaper of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
Rosalind Dymond Cartwright (1922–2021) was a neuroscientist and professor emerita in the Department of Psychology and in the Neuroscience Division of the Graduate College of Rush University. She was known to her peers as "Queen of Dreams". In 2004 she was named Distinguished Scientist of the Year by the Sleep Research Society.
Terra Ziporyn is an American science writer, novelist, playwright, and public health advocate whose books include The New Harvard Guide to Women's Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases. She has written extensively on a wide range of health and medical issues for both medical professionals and the general public in publications including The Harvard Health Letter, JAMA, Consumer Reports, CNN, Education Week, Weight Watchers Magazine, Business Week, The Missouri Review, and The Huffington Post. As Terra Ziporyn Snider, her married name, she co-founded and became executive director of Start School Later, a public-health non-profit organization. She lives in Severna Park, Maryland with her husband J.H. Snider. She is the sister of Brook Ziporyn and Evan Ziporyn.
Theresa M. Miskimen Rivera is a Puerto Rican psychiatrist who is the chair and medical director of the psychiatric department at the Hunterdon Medical Center. She is the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.
