Psychiatry Boot Camp

In this season finale of Psychiatry Bootcamp, Dr. Mark Mullen assumes the role of guest as he is interviewed by guest host Dr. Preston Roche, co-host of How to Be a Patient, in a wide-ranging retrospective on Season 4. Drawing on listener questions, critical feedback, and audience-submitted comments curated from Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, and email, the episode revisits the season's most clinical...

In this episode of Psychiatry Bootcamp, Dr. Mark Mullen welcomes Dr. David McDuff, the "grandfather" of sports psychiatry, to examine the origins, clinical framework, and practical application of this rapidly evolving subspecialty. Dr. McDuff brings more than three decades of experience as team psychiatrist for the Baltimore Orioles and Baltimore Ravens, alongside service on the International Olym...

In this profound episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, host Dr. Mark Mullen sits down with world-renowned researcher and clinician Dr. Jonathan Shedler. Moving beyond the "alphabet soup" of modern modalities, Dr. Shedler argues for a return to the foundational psychoanalytic principles that constitute the "trunk and roots" of all effective talk therapy.  The discussion challenges the standard medical m...

In this brief bonus segment of Psychiatry Boot Camp, host Dr. Mark Mullen steps into the feed with a direct request from you...the listenters. As Season Four approaches its conclusion, the platform is shifting its final episode to a peer-responsive format driven entirely by listener inputs. Dr. Mullen notes that the season has featured highly controversial topics and that he frequently abandoned a...

In this episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, host Dr. Mark Mullen is joined by Dr. Justin Romano, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and host of the Millennial Mental Health Channel.  Dr. Romano explores the burgeoning crisis of screen dependence and technology addiction, drawing parallels between cell phone use and traditional substance use disorders. The discussion highlights how addictive design,...

In this provocative episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, Dr. Omar Mirza discusses the limitations and potential harms of the standard Applebaum-Grisso criteria for decisional capacity.  Dr. Mirza argues that the current medicalized focus on cognitive abilities (understanding, appreciation, reasoning) can inadvertently subvert patient autonomy. The conversation traces the legal evolution of informed co...

In this second part of a special double feature, Dr. Awais Aftab, MD, Clinical Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University, presents a rigorous framework for the next iteration of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Dr. Aftab details six specific structural reforms for the DSM-6, beginning with a conceptual clarification of "mental disorder" to distinguish betwee...

In this episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, host Dr. Mark Mullen sits down with Dr. Awais Aftab, MD, a psychiatrist and Clinical Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Aftab, well-known for his "Psychiatry at the Margins" Substack and "Conversations in Critical Psychiatry" series, explores the necessity of "conceptual competence" in modern practice. The discussion delves into the...

In this episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, Dr. Mark Mullen speaks with Dr. Owen Muir, psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and Chief Medical Officer of Radial Health, about the growing role of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in psychiatric treatment. The discussion explores how TMS works as a form of noninvasive neuromodulation, using focused magnetic fields to influence neural circuits implicated in...

In this episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, Dr. Mark Mullen speaks with psychiatrist and medical ethicist Dr. Mark Komrad about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, focusing particularly on their implications for psychiatric practice. The discussion reviews the terminology, legal frameworks, and international trends surrounding assisted death, including developments in Belgium, the Netherlands,...

In this episode of Psychiatry Bootcamp, Dr. Mark Mullen is joined by Dr. Mark Ruffalo for an in-depth examination of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), a construct widely discussed in academic and public discourse, but not currently recognized as a distinct DSM diagnosis. The conversation situates C-PTSD within the historical and theoretical landscape of psychiatry, tracing its origi...

In this episode of Psychiatry Bootcamp, Dr. Mark Mullen speaks with Jesse Bogan, journalist with The Marshall Project, about a profound and often invisible failure at the intersection of psychiatry and the criminal legal system: the prolonged incarceration of individuals found incompetent to stand trial without access to timely psychiatric treatment. Using Missouri as a case study, the conversatio...

In this episode of Psychiatry Bootcamp, Dr. Mark Mullen is joined by Dr. Dinah Miller, psychiatrist, writer, and author of Committed: The Battle Over Involuntary Psychiatric Care, for a rigorous examination of civil commitment and involuntary treatment in modern psychiatry. The conversation explores the legal structures underlying involuntary hospitalization, medication over objection, and outpati...

Psychiatry stands at the threshold of one of its greatest disruptions,  the rise of artificial intelligence. In this episode, Dr. Mark Mullen speaks with Dr. Allen Frances, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of Psychiatry at Duke University and Chair of the DSM-IV Task Force, about the clinical, ethical, and societal implications of AI’s rapid entry into mental health care. Drawing from his recen...

Welcome to Season 4! Join Dr. Mark Mullen and expert guests as we explore AI in psychotherapy, emerging treatments, and the ethical, clinical questions reshaping psychiatric care, and MUCH more. To share topic ideas, ask questions, and get more of the pod, visit psychiatrybootcamp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Nicholas Kontos, Program Director of the Consultation–Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, about one of the field’s most challenging topics: malingering and factitious disorder. We discuss how to move beyond the impulse to “catch deception” and instead adopt a framework of clinical curiosity, empathy, and ethical clarity. Dr. Kontos int...

Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) sits at the crossroads of neurology and psychiatry and for many clinicians, it’s still one of the most challenging diagnoses to understand, explain, and treat. In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Caitlin Adams, psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, for a deep dive into how to recognize, diagnose, and manage FND using a modern, evidence-based, and pat...

Pregnancy and postpartum are times of profound change and nowhere is that complexity more visible than in psychiatry. In this episode, Dr. Christina Wichman, Professor of Psychiatry and Obstetrics & Gynecology, Medical Director of The Periscope Project, and Director of Women’s Mental Health at the Medical College of Wisconsin, joins us for a deep dive into reproductive psychiatry. Co-hosted by Eri...

Eating disorders are among the most lethal conditions in psychiatry and some of the most misunderstood. In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Patricia Westmoreland and Dr. Anne O’Melia, two internationally recognized experts with eight combined board certifications spanning psychiatry, internal medicine, pediatrics, and consultation-liaison psychiatry. Together, we take a deep dive into the medical,...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Mira Zein, clinical associate professor at Stanford and co-author of the APA Resource Document on Decisional Capacity Determinations, to break down one of the most frequent and misunderstood consults in psychiatry. We go deep into the Appelbaum–Grisso criteria and discuss how they apply to real-world cases where the answer isn’t always clear. Dr. Zein walks us...

Organ transplantation isn’t just a medical miracle, it’s a psychological marathon. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Paula Zimbrean, Yale psychiatrist and pioneer in Transplant Psychiatry, about what really happens when mind and medicine intersect at the edge of life and death. We walk through the evolution of psychiatry’s role on transplant teams,  from risk gatekeeping to long-term integration, a...

A season on consultation-liaison psychiatry would not be complete without an episode on suicide risk assessment! Dr. Black: "I say without exaggeration that this podcast, in which Dr. Mullen and I discuss suicide risk assessment, is one of the professional things in life that I am most proud of." WOW! That's quite the claim from one of the world's foremost psychiatrists about a podcast episode. Ta...

In this episode, I talk with Dr. George Grossberg, a pioneer in geriatric psychiatry, about the neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia and what they look like, why they happen, and how to approach them with empathy and strategy. We walk through the most common behavioral disturbances in dementia, including apathy, depression, psychosis, and agitation. Dr. Grossberg shares how to think through these...

Catatonia isn’t just mysterious, it’s one of the most treatable yet misunderstood syndromes in psychiatry. In this episode, I continue my conversation with Dr. Mark Oldham, diving deep into what to actually do when you suspect catatonia. We talk through the Lorazepam challenge, what a “positive” response really means, and why sometimes a single dose can look like a miracle. We also dig into the gr...

When a patient stops moving, stops speaking, or stares through you like you’re not there, it’s easy to miss what’s really happening. In this episode, I’m joined again by Dr. Mark Oldham, one of the leading voices on catatonia, to break down what this strange, often misunderstood syndrome actually looks like in the real world. We walk through the diagnostic features step-by-step, how to assess, wha...