The ethical questions surrounding the recruitment of patients for clinical trials become more complicated when the recruiting physicians receive financial benefits for each patient enrolled.

Professional medical organizations need to educate physicians about depression and suicide in medical school and continuing education programs, develop policies that encourage physicians to seek help, and impose an accountability system for detecting depression in patients.

Although recent studies have shown a correlation between clinical depression and heart disease in males, proper management with antidepressants can help prevent cardiovascular diseases.

Electroconvulsive therapy is not a good treatment option because numerous alternative, less harmful interventions are available for the treatment of depressed or severely depressed patients.

Electroconvulsive is an effective treatment option that should remain available for use, with proper ethical safeguards, for the treatment of severe clinical depression.

A physician outlines the criteria for diagnosing clinical depression and the principle modes for treating the mental illness.

The Internet has changed the patient-physician relationship but may actually help that relationship become more equally balanced in terms of information flow.

Two doctrines are proposed for electronic medical records: one, to regulate the storage and exchange of data, and the other, to empower patients to choose who has access to their medical information.

Although there is a strong tendency to medicate children and adolescents for all types of behavioral problems, physicians must be prudent in also using nonpharmaceutical treatments.

Dr Thaddeus M. Pope joins Health By Law to discuss updates to the Uniform Law Commission’s Health-Care Decisions Act.