Ketamine infusions at a lower rate than previously reported have demonstrated similar efficacy and excellent tolerability and may be more practically available for routine clinical care. Serial ketamine infusions appear to be more effective than a single infusion. Further research to test relapse prevention strategies with continuation ketamine infusions is indicated.

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Previously restricted primarily to Hawaii and California, methamphetamine abuse has reached epidemic proportions throughout the United States during the past decade, specifically in rural and semirural areas. Particular characteristics of methamphetamine production and use create conditions for a "perfect storm" of medical and social complications. Unlike imported recreational drugs such as heroin and cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured locally from commonly available household ingredients according to simple recipes readily available on the Internet. Methamphetamine users and producers are frequently one and the same, resulting in both physical and environmental consequences. Users experience emergent, acute, subacute, and chronic injuries to neurologic, cardiac, pulmonary, dental, and other systems. Producers can sustain life-threatening injuries in the frequent fires and explosions that result when volatile chemicals are combined. Partners and children of producers, as well as unsuspecting first responders to a crisis, are exposed to toxic by-products of methamphetamine manufacture that contaminate the places that serve simultaneously as "lab" and home. From the vantage point of a local emergency department, this article reviews the range of medical and social consequences that radiate from a single hypothetical methamphetamine-associated incident.

Suicide is a public health problem and a leading cause of death. The number of people thinking seriously about suicide, making plans, and attempting suicide is surprisingly high. In total, primary care clinicians write more prescriptions for antidepressants than mental health clinicians and see patients more often in the month before their death by suicide. Treatment of depression by primary care physicians is improving, but opportunities remain in addressing suicide-related treatment variables. Collaborative care models for treating depression have the potential both to improve depression outcomes and decrease suicide risk. Alcohol use disorders and anxiety symptoms are important comorbid conditions to identify and treat. Management of suicide risk includes understanding the difference between risk factors and warning signs, developing a suicide risk assessment, and practically managing suicidal crises. Mayo Clin © 2011 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and ResearchOn completion of this article, you should be able to (1) [3][4][5] These worries are based on population-level effects of the persistent increased unemployment rate due to the severe recession. [3][4][5] Serious thoughts of suicide, plans for suicide, and suicide attempts are surprisingly common in the general population (Table 1). 6 Despite that frequency, death by suicide is still a low base-rate occurrence and impossible to predict accurately. 7,8 Although a relatively uncommon event, suicide has a lifelong and profound effect personally on the families, friends, and physicians of the person committing suicide.In this concise review, we provide a pragmatic and clinically relevant background on suicide risk management for nonpsychiatrists. We will use frequently asked questions based on our clinical experiences and review key principles of depression treatment as they relate to suicide risk management. We will update and synthesize information gained from research into concerns associated with the antidepressant black box warnings (BBWs) for suicidality and highlight their 2009 revisions. 9 We will then close by describing basic principles in identifying those at risk of suicide, assessing them, and devising practical patient management strategies. IMporTAnCE To prIMAry CArETwo practice realities have spurred interventions to improve primary care recognition and treatment of depression as a public health suicide prevention strategy. 10,11 First, patients dying by suicide visit primary care physicians more than twice as often as mental health clinicians. 10 A review of studies analyzing this clinical scenario estimated 45% of those dying by suicide saw their primary care physician in the month before their death. 10 Only 20% saw a mental health professional 10 in the preceding month. Women and older patients are more likely to have sought care in the month before suicide 10 than men and younger patients. Second, generalists (internists, pediatricians, family physicians) write most antidepressant prescriptions (62%) in the United States. 11 When...

We investigated the psychometric validity and reliability of the Suicide Status Form-II (SSF-II) developed by Jobes, Jacoby, Cimbolic, and Hustead (1997). Participants were 149 psychiatric inpatients (108 suicidal; 41 nonsuicidal) at the Mayo Clinic. Each participant completed assessment measures within 24 hours of admission and 48-72 hours later. Factor analyses of the SSF core assessment produced a robust two-factor solution reflecting chronic and acute response styles. The SSF core assessment had good to excellent convergent and criterion validity; pre-post SSF ratings also demonstrated moderate test-retest reliability. The results replicated previous research and show that the SSF-II is psychometrically sound with a high-risk suicidal inpatient sample.

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In the United States, psychoactive prescription medications rank second only to marijuana as drugs of abuse (if tobacco and alcohol are discounted). Physician shopping--visiting multiple physicians simply to procure prescriptions--has been a traditional method for acquiring drugs illicitly. As community-based efforts to curtail physician shopping have expanded, drug abusers have turned increasingly to the Internet. Illegal Internet pharmacies, increasing rapidly in number during the past decade and requiring neither prescription nor physician oversight, offer minimal interference to obtaining drugs. With no physician involved, patients cease to be patients. Instead, they become consumers able to buy prescription medications, even controlled substances, from anonymous providers offering no ongoing treatment relationship and taking no responsibility for the drugs dispensed. When complications occur, these consumers become patients, turning back to the traditional medical system to manage overdoses, addictions, and drug adverse effects and interactions. We present a case series illustrating some of the medical problems that resulted from drugs bought on-line illegally.