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In the last episode, Dr. O'Leary interviewed the creator and host of the Psychiatry Bootcamp Podcast, Dr. Mark Mullen, who is currently a psychiatry clerkship director at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He created this podcast after discovering a dearth of resources available for medical students and junior psychiatry residents to prepare them for their transition to practice.

He graciously allowed PsyDactic to include a couple of his episodes in this feed as a way to spread the good news about Psychiatry Boot Camp. This is his introductory episode where he sets the tone of PBC by interviewing Dr. Awais Aftab, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western University, and Dr. Allen Frances, Chair of the DSM-4 Task Force and Chair Emeritus at Duke.

Check out Psychiatry Boot Camp!

https://linktr.ee/psychbootcamp

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38724723/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/psychiatry-boot-camp/id1671902940

https://open.spotify.com/show/4Vjlz4CO0G5D6nGo74O0jE

https://www.audible.com/podcast/Psychiatry-Boot-Camp/B0BVK4HYLW

https://x.com/markrmullen

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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Dr. O'Leary is excited to introduce you to Psychiatry Boot Camp (PBC), a podcast created by Dr. Mark Mullen to help prepare medical students for psychiatry residency. It covers fundamental topics in psychiatry and inspires young psychiatrists to think critically about their approach to the field. The curriculum is based on published literature on psychiatry crash courses and boot camps, and features interviews with experts in the field. Some specific PBC episodes that are discussed include those introducing students to psychiatry as a discipline with unique challenges, including interviews with Dr. Awais Aftab, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western University, and Dr. Allen Frances, Chair of the DSM-4 Task Force and Chair Emeritus at Duke. We also discuss Dr. Mullen's eye-opening interview with Dr. Tyler Black, a suicidologist and child psychiatrist at British Columbia Children's Hospital who provides the best foundational discussion of the suicide assessment that Dr. O'Leary has ever encountered.

Enjoy this interview and afterward, please check out Psychiatry Boot Camp.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38724723/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/psychiatry-boot-camp/id1671902940

https://open.spotify.com/show/4Vjlz4CO0G5D6nGo74O0jE

https://www.audible.com/podcast/Psychiatry-Boot-Camp/B0BVK4HYLW

https://x.com/markrmullen

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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--In today's episode, Dr. O'Leary explores agonists, inverse agonists, partial agonists, and antagonists. These terms describe how molecules bind to receptors and either increase, decrease, or prevent changes in receptor signaling. Agonists increase receptor activity, with full agonists like dopamine and serotonin raising activity to its maximum. Partial agonists can increase activity in the absence of full agonists but decrease it in their presence. Inverse agonists reduce the baseline activity of receptors. Antagonists block receptor activity without changing the baseline rate. We also discussed the complex interactions between these molecules and how their effects can vary depending on the presence of other molecules and the specific receptors involved.

Below are a couple of helpful references:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2804881/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00023210-199605050-00007

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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--Dr. O'Leary discusses the term Transference, and if you listen until the end, he relates it to some computational neuroscience. Transference is a historically loaded term. Transference is supposed to be an unconscious process, so it can not really be observed, only inferred, so this means that both the definition of transference and any instance of it in psychotherapy is dependent upon the therapist’s model and their particular way of interpreting that model. But what exactly is this elusive but data rich unconscious process?

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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-- More recently I have faced the diagnostic conundrum of catatonia in autism, and that is what I want to explore in more excruciating detail today. There is surprisingly little literature on the subject, and that is concerning because being able to identify and treat catatonia can be life-saving, not to mention life-altering for patients and their caretakers. Misidentifying catatonia as mere aggression or highly limited interests in autism can result in exactly the wrong medication being given or no medication being given and a worsening of the condition. --

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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-- Dr. O’Leary interviews forensic psychiatrist and author Dr. Michael Schirripa about his career as a forensic psychiatrist, the release of his first thriller, Mindhunt, and his podcast Mindhunting. Dr. Shirripa explores how his love of literature influenced his decision to pursue forensic psychiatry and ultimately resulted in his creation of an international thriller with an ambitious forensic psychiatrist as the main character. We explore topics like medical ethics, medical education, popular culture, mental health stigma, Australian football, and how people react when we tell them we are psychiatrists. Learn more about Michael at https://michaelschirripa.com/.

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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- - In the world of psychotropic medication, the question is not just whether it works or not, but whether it works better than a placebo and whether the effect size is clinically significant and the benefits outweigh the risks. In the case of MDMA (aka molly or ecstasy), the effect size for improving post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms reported by researchers has been very large. Often it is found to be two to three times higher than is often found for serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are currently the first line therapy for PTSD. On the surface this is super exciting. A deeper look will reveal why excitement may need to be tempered, and why an independent panel recommended that the FDA not approve this medication.

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.

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The Narrative Fallacy describes our tendency to find meaning, connections, and causal relationships where they do not necessarily exist. In this episode, Dr. O'Leary had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky.

He recently published a paper called “Narrative fallacy and other limitations of psychodynamic case formulation.” Dr. Tolchenski did not invent the idea of the Narrative Fallacy, but he is working to apply this idea to his own clinical practice. We could all benefit from recognizing the ways that Narrative Fallacy plays out in our lives. The great thing about these ideas is that they are so generalizable. The Narrative fallacy is not limited to medicine or science, but can be applied, for example in how we explain to ourselves why our neighbor seems to hate us.

Tolchinsky, A. (2023). Narrative fallacy and other limitations of psychodynamic case formulation. Practice Innovations.

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/znxs5

Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.

References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.