Telemental health for our soldiers: a brief review and a new pilot program.

This small but significant telemental health clinical pilot could easily serve as a "best practice" model for resource utilization between the nation's VHA/DOD institutions that wish to form partnerships and capitalize on resources. It demonstrates several potential areas of collaboration for TMH projects. For example, this study also points out requisite preparation needs, e.

Management of schizophrenia with medical disorders: cardiovascular, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal.

Medical illnesses are particularly common in patients who have schizophrenia and one of the major tasks for consultation-liaison psychiatrists, and others, is to determine which medications are safest in which co-morbid condition. The authors review the relative risks for various antipsychotics, especially focusing on cardiovascular, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal co-morbid illnesses. The authors further review the atypical antipsychotics' cardiovascular risks, especially for prolonging QT intervals, in trying to avoid the risk for torsades de pointes.

Hepatitis C treatment eligibility and outcomes among patients with psychiatric illness.

Objective: This study characterized the utilization and outcomes of hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment among patients with psychiatric illness.

Methods: HCV treatment evaluations were tracked among 360 patients with HCV infection and psychiatric illness (substance use disorders, anxiety disorders, affective disorders, or psychotic disorders).

Results: Two-thirds of patients did not receive HCV treatment, 11 percent of patients died during the study period, and 42 percent were excluded from HCV treatment because of nonadherence to the evaluation process or diagnoses of psychiatric and substance use disorders.