Our Blog:  Reflections on Psychiatry & Psychology

AI is reshaping mental health care by expanding access, improving diagnosis, and enabling personalized treatment. While early results are promising, concerns remain about safety, bias, privacy, and loss of human connection. Experts emphasize AI should augment—not replace—clinicians.

A clinical case study on how integrated ketamine therapy and psychiatric care at Point Loma Clinic enabled early detection of a shift from depression to bipolar disorder. Patient Background: Treatment-Resistant Depression and a History of Mood Instability Joe is in his mid-fifties, an accomplished attorney who has been suffering from recurrent depression since his early adulthood. The depression was difficult to treat; many different medications have been tried, including mo

Researchers found that amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s brains trap lithium, creating early lithium deficiency that may contribute to disease onset. In mice, low lithium worsened plaques and memory loss, while low-dose lithium orotate improved them. Human studies are still needed.

Bipolar II disorder alternates between depression and hypomania but is hard to diagnose because patients often enjoy or fail to recognize hypomania and seek help only during depression. Recollections may be distorted, so collateral history from others is often crucial for accurate diagnosis.

One of the advantages of Ketamine being administered in a general psychiatric practice is that it is easy to catch changes in the clinical presentation, changes that may necessitate reevaluating the feasibility of the Ketamine treatment on the spot.