Nicholas Freudenberg, MD and Peter M. Yellowlees, MBBS, MD
Ideally, telepsychiatry treatment should include collaboration with patients’ primary care physicians. One way to facilitate the collaboration is for patients to have videoconference appointments with their psychiatrists in the primary care clinic.
Chromosomal microarray analysis reveals many gene variants of unknown significance. The uncertainty about these variants—might they be deleterious or are they benign?—complicates genetic counseling.
There is evidence that children who are unaware of their life-threatening diagnoses do not experience any less distress and anxiety than those who are told, and in some cases they may actually experience more.
In treating children with autism, physicians should focus on involving parents in a shared decision making partnership and seeking safe, evidence-based, and medically and cost-effective treatments.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):310-317. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.ecas3-1504.
The harms of communicating autism risk can be avoided by helping families to understand risk and to distinguish between poor and good sources of scientific information, which should take families’ interests into account.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):323-327. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.nlit1-1504.