Part 2: Upcoming Schizophrenia Insights at APA Annual Meeting With Dr Citrome

Psych Congress Network Schizophrenia Section Editor, Leslie Citrome, MD, MPH, continues with "what to expect" preview for year's American Psychiatric Association 2022 Annual Meeting in the schizophrenia space, including sessions on interdisciplinary approaches to clozapine, ethnopharmacology, and clinical guidance for treating patients experiencing a first episode. Dr Citrome, who is also a consultant to the Psych Congress annual meeting, will be participating in the exhibit hall and invites you to stop by.

Watch Part 1, with more insights and previews, here!

Read the Transcript: 

Dr Leslie Citrome:

Now, in addition to clozapine 101, there's also a session called “Clozapine Clinics and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Best Practices, Successes, and Challenges.” And this is geared towards those who practice in a setting that offers a multitude of opportunities to engage many members of the treatment team and think through a clozapine clinic. This is a little different than an individual practitioner providing clozapine to their individual patients, and this may be terrific resource to learn from successful implementations of clozapine clinics what to do where you work.

A session is entitled here. I love this title: “They Have No Insight and Won't Take Meds”—how often have we heard that complaint—"Rethinking Insight and Engagement in Early Psychosis” is the topic of this session here. The chair actually includes people--there's lots of names here that I'm reading here—but I got to tell you, Lisa Dixon is one of them and she's the Editor-In-Chief of Psychiatric Services and has lots of experience with a population that's very difficult to treat and the presenters themselves will talk about how to deal with the perceived or actual lack of insight that we commonly encounter in our patients with schizophrenia. Talk about how we can manage them better medication nonadherence and making better decisions for our patients.

Along the lines of the clozapine story, there's another session regarding “The Ethno-Psychopharmacology of Clozapine.” And this is actually on Monday. I'm not saying consistently when these different events are occurring. Perhaps when this is posted, we'll give a full schedule as an appended text to this presentation I'm giving here now.

But basically the ethno psycho-pharmacology of clozapine is of incredible importance, especially now that we understand there may be some significant issues with ANC, and whether ANC is important or not, depending on this existence of benign ethnic neutropenia. This whole concept wasn't really around when I started prescribing clozapine, but it became immediately obvious that we were dealing with benign ethnic neutropenia in our state hospital system. Now it's more formalized and we have guidance related to that.

There's a master course on “First-Episode Psychosis for the Practicing Psychiatrist.” This is on Tuesday, May 24th, “Keys to Providing Quality Psychiatric Care” with this emerging concept. I have not had the good fortune of working in a first-episode clinic, they are few in number, but for those of you who have access to one, they can provide a really good resource, especially when confronted with the situation of someone in their first episode. They need some tender, loving care and special attention in order to enhance their prospects for the future. And there are some communities that have these first-episode clinics available.

I urge you to look into these sessions that I've mentioned, and it'll help you really figure out what's new and what's different and what's next in the treatment of schizophrenia in our settings and in the United States and elsewhere. So I hope to see you at the APA and if you happen to run into me, come and say hello.

Leslie Citrome, MD, MPH, is clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, and has a private practice in Pomona, New York. He graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine in Montreal, Canada and completed a Residency and Chief Residency in Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He also went on to complete a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University. 

Dr Citrome is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Clinical Practice. He has authored or co-authored over 500 published research reports, reviews, and book chapters within the biomedical literature. He is the author of the textbook, Handbook of Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia, published in 2013 by Springer Healthcare.