Faculty Bibliography

Introduces the articles in this special issue of Psychiatric Quarterly. The topics of the articles include the early diagnosis and treatment of children; gender differences in psychiatric diagnosis; new treatment models for felony offenders with co-occuring disorders; and the use of evidence-based medicine in psychiatry in general and for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) specifically. (PsycIN

Introduces this special issue of Psychiatric Quarterly, which is devoted to articles presented at the fourteenth annual meeting of the New York State Office of Mental Health Research Conference. The selected papers represent some of the important psychiatric research into the biological, pharmacological, neuropsychological, technological, and sociological aspects of mental illness presented at the aforementioned conference. (PsycIN

The prolactin response to dl-fenfluramine (an indirect central serotonin agonist) challenge has been used to assess serotonergic function and appears to be blunted in depressed patients. We used this method to determine whether the serotonergic deficit in depressed patients is corrected by treatment with paroxetine. Prior to treatment with paroxetine sixteen depressed patients received a placebo challenge followed by a dl-fenfluramine challenge the next day. The same two challenges were repeated after treatment. Prolactin baseline levels were measured before pill administration, and then hourly for 5 hours. Fenfluramine/norfenfluramine levels were assayed at each time point after drug administration. Treatment with paroxetine significantly increased the baseline prolactin level independently of treatment response but positively correlated with paroxetine dose. We found that pre-treatment prolactin response to dl-fenfluramine challenge did not predict clinical response to paroxetine, nor did the prolactin response change significantly after treatment. There was no significant difference in the post-treatment prolactin response between treatment responders and treatment non-responders. We found evidence of increased prolactin levels that may reflect effects of paroxetine in enhancing serotonin levels. Acute release of serotonin as measured by the prolactin response to fenfluramine is not altered by paroxetine treatment