Stigma Toward Bipolar Disorder Among Psychiatry Residents: A Pilot Study Utilizing Narrative Medicine and a Video Vignette.

Objective: Stigma toward mental illness has been extensively described among health care professionals and has important implications with respect to quality of care. Narrative medicine has the potential to bring about positive impacts on the practitioner-patient relationship and on patient outcomes. The authors carried out a pilot study investigating the impact of narrative medicine on residents' stigma toward bipolar disorder.

Moving pharmacoepigenetics tools for depression toward clinical use.

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide, and over half of patients do not achieve symptom remission following an initial antidepressant course. Despite evidence implicating a strong genetic basis for the pathophysiology of MDD, there are no adequately validated biomarkers of treatment response routinely used in clinical practice. Pharmacoepigenetics is an emerging field that has the potential to combine both genetic and environmental information into treatment selection and further the goal of precision psychiatry.

Effects of escitalopram on attentional bias to cocaine-related stimuli and inhibitory control in cocaine-dependent subjects.

Key characteristics of cocaine dependence include attentional bias to cocaine cues and impaired inhibitory control. Studies suggest that serotonin modulates both cocaine cue reactivity and inhibitory control. We investigated effects of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor escitalopram on cocaine cue reactivity and inhibitory processes in cocaine-dependent subjects.