Lucy J. King

Changing Characteristics of Drug Use Between Two Older Adult Cohorts: Small Sample Speculations on Baby Boomer Trends to Come

ABSTRACT This retrospective chart review of 2 cohorts of individuals 55 years and older (n = 116) suggests that the aging population entering addiction treatment today may no longer be a homogenous group of mostly alcohol-dependent individuals. Whereas the 1992 cohort is primarily alcoholic, the 2002 cohort of baby boomers included individuals with illicit drug use, prescription drug abuse and dependence, and co-occurring disorders.

A brief history of psychiatry: millennia past and present.

As a new millennium dawns, it is worth looking at where we have been and where we are going. In an age in which the only constant is change, the only new thing, in fact, is technology. In psychiatry there are promises of advances in diagnosis with search of the human genome, in the development of newer pharmacological agents through molecular biology, and in better understanding of psychosocial treatment using sophisticated contemporary research techniques. These represent extensions of theories about mind, disease, and treatment reaching back into antiquity. Many excellent books and a multiplicity of articles have been published in the 1990s about the history of all of these areas. This series of four articles will provide a selective summary of that literature and an up-to-date guide to the history of psychiatry.

Health Care Reform: Historical and Current Perspectives

Health care in America, criticized today by patients and physicians alike, developed incrementally throughout the twentieth century into a system unique to the United States. Each effort to change it led to unintended consequences. There are many current proposals by presidential candidates and members of Congress for reform of the fragmentation of payment for, access to, and quality of care. There is increasing pressure from many sources to provide a solution. Will 2004 be the year we find it?

The Best Possible Means of Benefiting the Incurable: Walter Bruetsch and the Malaria Treatment of Paresis

The first effective treatment for a specific psychiatric disorder was not developed until the early 20th century. The promise of discovery of causes of and cures for specific diseases had come with the development of laboratory science, especially the study of infectious diseases, in the last half of the 19th century. The introduction of malaria treatment of paresis in the 1920s was a landmark in psychiatry and was possible because, in this particular disorder, the knowledge gained from the study of infectious disease could be applied to the treatment of a psychiatric disease that had resulted from an earlier infection.