UTHealth Psychiatry Blog

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is best known for something immediate: it can produce rapid and substantial improvement in severe depression, including illness accompanied by suicidality, psychosis, catatonia, or treatment resistance. But could its benefits extend beyond symptom relief? A 2026 review…

Psychiatry is changing. For much of modern psychiatric practice, the psychiatrist’s therapeutic toolkit has been organized around two major domains: psychotherapy and medication. Yet over the past several decades, a growing group of treatments has changed what psychiatrists can directly…

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is one of the most effective treatments available for severe, treatment-resistant depression, particularly when depression is accompanied by suicidality, psychosis, catatonia, or marked functional decline. But what happens when a patient who may benefit from ECT also…

Bipolar disorder is defined clinically by changes in mood, energy, activity, cognition, and behavior. Yet beneath these recognizable symptoms lies a much more difficult question: What biological processes cause the brain to shift between different mood states? This question has…

For years, psychedelic-assisted therapy has generated excitement because of the possibility that a single treatment session might produce meaningful antidepressant effects lasting for weeks or longer. But an important question remains: Can psychedelic therapy move beyond highly specialized research environments…

Bipolar disorder presents clinicians with an unusual treatment challenge: the same diagnosis can require fundamentally different treatment strategies at different moments in a patient’s life. A medication that is effective during acute mania may not be the best treatment for…

For families of people with Down syndrome, a sudden loss of previously acquired abilities can be frightening and confusing. A young person who had been socially engaged and relatively independent may begin withdrawing from family and school. Speech may diminish….

When the Treatment Is Effective, but Getting to Treatment Is the Challenge Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) can be a critical treatment for severe catatonia. But in some patients, one of the greatest challenges is not deciding whether to use ECT; it…

Depression and epilepsy have traditionally been treated as conditions belonging to different areas of medicine. Epilepsy is managed primarily within neurology, while depression is generally considered the domain of psychiatry. Biology, however, does not follow the organizational boundaries of medical…

Bipolar Depression Remains a Major Therapeutic Challenge When people think about bipolar disorder, mania often receives much of the attention. Yet for many patients, depression represents the dominant burden of the illness. People with bipolar disorder spend substantially more time…