Clinical and ethical dilemmas in the psychiatric care of patients who border on the edge of being able to live safely and independently.

In the current economic environment and era of health care finance reform, mental health budgets have faced cutbacks across the nation, and they may face even deeper reductions in the future. Diminished funding for care of patients with severe psychiatric illness creates significant ethical and clinical dilemmas. Throughout medicine, physicians' professional virtues and obligations of beneficence may conflict with the need to balance respect for patient autonomy and deliver clinically appropriate, humane, and ethical care within a limited budget.

Nicotine reduces antisaccade errors in task impaired schizophrenic subjects.

Nicotine and/or smoking have been shown to reduce various cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia. Here, we examine the effects of nicotine gum on repeated performance on a simple eye movement task. Eight schizophrenic subjects and eight controls participated in three days of testing on saccade (S) and antisaccade (AS) tasks.