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Biomedical subjects

B S Brown

Publications and source records attributed to B S Brown.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Treatment of cocaine dependence in methadone maintenance clients: a pilot study comparing the efficacy of desipramine and amantadine.

We conducted a pilot study (N = 22) comparing the efficacy of desipramine and amantadine for treatment of cocaine dependence in methadone maintenance clients. The study which lasted 12 weeks, was double-blind, randomly assigned, and placebo-controlled. Subjects met DSM-III-R criteria for active cocaine dependence. All three groups' cocaine use, craving, and depressive symptoms declined significantly, but intergroup differences were not significant. Clients receiving desipramine were significantly more likely to remain in treatment and to be cocaine free at study completion. The results emphasize the importance of delivering comprehensive services to the cocaine user in methadone treatment. Further evaluations of these two medications as adjuncts in the treatment of cocaine dependence are needed.

Adolescent

Program models.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Humans

Hemangioendothelioma of bone with pulmonary metastases: a 25-year course: report of a case.

A unique case of hemangioendothelioma of bone arising in the right scapula of a 15-year-old boy is reported. The patient has been followed for over 25 years. After a symptom-free interval of 15 years, he developed a solitary pulmonary metastasis which was removed by left lower lobectomy. Five years later another metastasis was resected from his left upper lobe. During the subsequent five year period he has remained free of further evidence of metastases, attesting to the indolent course which may be taken occasionally by these malignant vascular tumors.

Adolescent

Chronic response of rat brain norepinephrine and serotonin levels to endurance training.

Norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5-HT) concentrations were determined in three areas of the rat brain following 8 wk exposure to differing physical activity and dietary regimens. Animals were divided into sedentary and exercise groups, and one-half of each received either a normal or atherogenic diet. The exercise consisted of 30 min of treadmill running, 5 days/wk, for 8 wk. Brains were weighed and sectioned into cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and remainder (midbrain), and fluorometrically analyzed for NE and 5-HT content. In most brain areas, NE and 5-HT levels were significantly greater among exercise-normal diet and exercise-fat diet compared to both sedentary groups. In the cerebral cortex, exercise-normal diet rats possessed higher levels of NE and lower concentrations of 5-HT than sedentary animals. The atherogenic diet did not affect amine levels other than 5-HT in the cortex among exercise rats. The NE results are consistent with prior research indicating its control of sympathetic function. Increased levels of 5-HT in the midbrain may be the neurotransmittal adaptation responsible for decreased appetite and enhanced weight loss following chronic endurance exercise.

Animals

Conflict and detente between social issues and clinical practice.

The "dual nature" of the mental health profession--embodied in the differences between advocates of social and clinical approaches to people's problems--is considered. It is suggested that the situation reflects realities of the world we live in, and that it contains both dilemma and opportunity. Areas in which social advocacy and clinical expertise have complemented each other are illustrated, and possibilities for constructive and creative conflict are suggested.

Child Abuse

The crisis in mental health research.

The author states that the mental health research program of the United States is facing a threat to its survival as a force for public health. He describes the antecedents of this crisis, which include the separation of the National Institute of Mental Health from the National Institutes of Health and other organizational changes, the public's disappointment that overly great expectations were not met, and monetary inflation coupled with budgetary cutbacks. He concludes that, because research cannot be separated from the goals of service and training, the success of the total mental health program in the United States depends on resolving the research support crisis.

Economics

Political psychiatry: a post-Watergate perspective or the revolution of falling expectations.

The social contract is a concept equally vital to philosophy and psychology in terms more relevant to this presentation, to politics and psychiatry. From the Hobbesian point of view, the contract has to do with the rights and responsibilities of different components and classes of society vis á vis one another. From the psychodynamic point of view, the social contract has to do with the way individuals relate to each other. Common to both perspectives is the implicit recognition that certain rules will be followed and that penalties will ensue when they are not, or, at the very least, that the prospect of penality will serve as a deterrent. These two notions of social contract converge in the actual regulation of our individual and collective behavior. Governance is impossible without trust in either the rules (more commonly known as the law, or the rule of law) or the people who administer them, whether parent, judge, or senator. Laws that are accepted and a corresponding "care that those laws are failfully executed" both are necessary to a good and just society. Perhaps I can demonstrate these concepts by paraphrasing the nobel Prize winning Japanese novelist who used as a title of his prize winning novel, The Sound of the Mountain. The tearing of the social fabric is the sound of loss of trust in our government, governors, and governance. If that trust is lost, it is but a step to loss of faith in self. For me, the test of these envolving concepts is their usefulness in predicting or at least in coping with the near future. To re-establish trust is our major task. My view may be too narrow and parochial, but I think it is more than coincidental that two of the groups under severest attack as untrustworthy are politicians and psychiatrists. The response of these two groups have some dramatic and meaningful similarities. In politics or, at least, in campaign rhetoric we are seeing fewer promises and more candor; mor emphasis on truthfulness, personal integrity, and character and fewer offers to solve difficult problems. In psychiatry, and somewhat in psychology and the other behavioral and social sciences, we see a demand to reduce the role of scope of the profession, particularly in dealing with "social issues," such as poverty and racism, which commentators and critics consider to be outside the proper sphere of competence and propriety. As a political psychiatrist, I am deeply concerned. In order to avoid the pitfalls of over-promising, we are overreacting; we are movinginto a trap that combines anti-intellectualism and anti-idealism. It can be summarized briefly in what I would call "the revolution of falling expectations." This is wrong. I protest. At the risk of being accused of hubris and hutzpah, I feel that nothing less than the best intellectual capacities and abilities and the deepest and widest experience are needed to deal with our problems in both politics and psychiatry...

Government

Comparison of drug abuse clients in urban and rural settings.

Examination was made of differences between the demographic and drug-using characteristics of 2,262 persons admitted to rural drug abuse units and 8,017 persons admitted to urban drug abuse treatment units in eight states. Rural clients were far more likely to report marijuana and urban clients to report heroin as their primary drugs of abuse; urban clients were also more likely to be older. Rural opiate users were also more likely to report nondaily use of heroin and were more likely to enter treatment at a younger age than their urban heroin-using counterparts. Implications of these findings for treatment are discussed.

Adolescent

The life of psychiatry.

Focusing on the definition, scope, and role of psychiatry today, the author discusses whether psychiatry is primarily medical, whether it is overstepping its boundaries in attempting to treat problems of living, and whether it is too involved with social questions. On the basis of an examination of the current scientific base of psychiatry, he predicts that psychiatry will continue to grow in size and diversity, that it will refocus substantially on biological issues, that it will become more humble about what it can do with regard to social problems, and that it will continue to yield new therapeutic measures and techniques.

Humans

The federal mental health program: past, present, and future.

Dr. Brown traces the history of America's federal mental health program from its beginning in the early 1900s. NIMH, the institute he currently directs, was established in 1946 for the treatment and prevention of mental and emotional illnesses through research,training, and services. It is now one of the institutes of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Dr. Brown describes its continuous progress toward providing high-quality mental health care to the entire population, and discusses priorities for the future that include continuation of research on schizophrenia and depression and research that will benefit children and the elderly.

Community Mental Health Services

The spread of addiction-the role of the "average addict".

A survey of an accidental sample of 100 addict-clients indicates that approximately two-thirds of addicts induct others into the heroin culture. Typically, the number of new users recruited in this way is no more than one or two new users contacted by each experienced addict. The problems of interdicting the transmission process is complicated not only by the large numbers of persons involved in that process, but is further complicated by the fact that new users are recruited relatively early in the experienced users' careers when they are least likely to be known to treatment or law enforcement officials. The work of interdicting the spread of phenomenon is still further complicated by the fact that heroin is transmitted between friends under circumstances the experienced user can characterize, if with some possible exaggeration, as involving an effort to share a pleasurable experience and/or to meet others' requests.

Adult

Characteristics of new admissions to a narcotics treatment program: 1970-1974.

Study was made of the demographic and drug-using characteristics of new admissions to a narcotic treatment program over the course of a 4-year period. Samples were drawn of 100 new admissions during the month of April in each year from 1970 to 1974. Results indicate that the treatment program under study came to be working with caseloads increasingly court referred, increasingly nonminority, and less frequently prepared to volunteer for methadone maintenance treatment. New admissions claimed to have delayed entrance into treatment based on the geographic inaccessibility of treatment programs or the fact that they did not consider themselves ready for treatment. Implications for the provision of treatment to heroin users are discussed.

Adult