NEW YORK, NY – Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), New York State Psychiatric Institute, and NewYork-Presbyterian reported that an odor identification test may prove useful in predicting cognitive decline and detecting early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Their two studies, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association’s International Conference in Toronto, Canada, suggest that the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) may offer a practical, low-cost alternative to other tests.

NEW YORK, NY—What do we really know about the relationship between the experience of pain and risk of developing opioid use disorder? Results from a recent study—the first to directly address this question—show that people with moderate or more severe pain had a 41 percent higher risk of developing prescription opioid use disorders than those without, independent of other demographic and clinical factors.

These results, from researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, were published today in American Journal of Psychiatry.

Joshua A. Gordon, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), has been appointed Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He will begin his new position in September 2016.

...Most of the time, people don’t actively track the way one thought flows into the next. But in psychiatry, much attention is paid to such intricacies of thinking. For instance, disorganized thought, evidenced by disjointed patterns in speech, is considered a hallmark characteristic of schizophrenia. Several studies of at-risk youths have found that doctors are able to guess with impressive accuracy—the best predictive models hover around 79 percent—whether a person will develop psychosis based on tracking that person’s speech patterns in interviews.

You spot a familiar face on the street and rack your brain over where you might have seen him. And then it dawns on you. That is an old high school friend you haven't seen in years.

But how does the brain manage to make this connection from a crowd of strangers walking past?

Consider that one in four people on our planet suffer from depression, anxiety or some other mental illness over their lifetimes. In 15 minutes—the time it might take you to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks—25 people will end their suffering by taking their own lives.

...Complicated or prolonged grief can assail anyone, but it is a particular problem for older adults, because they suffer so many losses—spouses, parents, siblings, friends.

It comes with bereavement,” said Dr. Katherine Shear, the psychiatrist who led the Columbia University study. “And the prevalence of important losses is so much greater in people over 65.”