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Stress affects daily activities, influences the way symptoms are perceived, and detracts from quality of life; it plays a role in everyone’s life and is a component of every illness. The responsibility of the primary care physician is to help manage the stress and recognize when specific therapeutic measures are needed. The fourth edition of The Fifteen Minute Hour presents biopsychosocial approach concepts from the earlier editions of the book and provides new material to make the principles and techniques more useful to primary care health professionals.

Primary care physicians are often the first to see patients with mental health problems and they provide 70% of metal health care to patients. They also write a majority of the prescriptions for antidepressant and antianxiety medications in the United States. This is understandable in light of the fact that physical and mental ailments are often comorbid. But, there may be more to treating a patient who presents with depression than prescribing a pill.

Diastematomyelia

A 42-year-old woman had a "life-long" history of mild to moderate low back pain, without radiation, anesthesia, weakness, or incontinence. She denied recent trauma or an inciting event. The pain was constant and worse at the end of the day and with prolonged activity. Physical therapy, NSAIDs, tramadol, opioids, and manipulation provided minimal relief.

A 26-year-old woman at 30 weeks’ gestation presented to the emergency department with a throbbing frontal headache of 1 month’s duration. She had also had peripheral blurred vision for the past 2 weeks. Acetaminophen initially decreased her pain but was no longer effective. She had had a previous miscarriage.

Doctors, especially primary care doctors, love stories. We love hearing them from patients and telling them to one another. “Anecdotal learning” it’s called by some (somewhat derisively because it’s not science).

Several days earlier, a 69-year-old man had a mild headache, fatigue, and tingling and prickly facial sensations. Shortly afterward, this painful, “weepy” rash developed on his forehead, upper cheek, and nasolabial folds and vision in the right eye became blurry. The patient’s history included type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and childhood varicella.

Did Pablo Picasso suffer from migraine? And did these episodes influence his artwork? Not likely, said Joost Haan, MD, PhD, a member of the department of neurology at Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands. He discussed migraine and the works of master painters at the 14th annual International Headache Congress in Philadelphia.

It is only within the past 40 years that the term "migraine art" was introduced; yet artists may have been creating works inspired by migraine aura since the Stone Age. Early depictions of migraine continue to influence newer artists with this illness. This is a natural progression that is common in all types of art, according to Klaus Podoll, MD, senior physician in the department of psychiatry and psychotherapy, University Hospital Aachen, RWTH Aachen University, Germany. But Dr Podoll has found that artists with migraine are often particularly attracted to the works of other artists who share their migraine experiences. These shared experiences "act like a filter," contributing to the an artist's perspective and leading to "elective affinities between migraine-inspired artists," he said.

Progressively worsening nasal congestion and headaches with diplopia and left proptosis for 2 months prompted an ophthalmology consultation for a 67-year-old woman. She had been evaluated multiple times for allergic rhinitis and recurrent sinusitis.

For a month, an obese 50-year-old woman with type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension had blurry vision in both eyes. During this time, she also had ataxia and right-sided numbness. For the past 2 days, she had had horizontal, binocular diplopia with right gaze.

A 35-year-old woman presented to the emergency department (ED) with 2 black eyes, facial swelling, and other injuries (Figure 1). She said that she had been in an all-terrain vehicle accident the day before, in which she hit her face on the handlebar. She said she had lost consciousness for an unknown period and since the accident had experienced headache, dizziness, nausea, and pain over much of her body.

During a routine physical examination, multiple, randomly distributed, fleshcolored nodules were noted on the trunk, arms, and face of a 62-year-old man. The lesions measured 0.5 to 1.0 cm and appeared slightly pedunculated. The patient had had the lesions since he was a teenager; they were not painful. He also had hypertension, for which he was taking lisinopril (20 mg once daily).

A 37-year-old man was brought to the emergency department (ED) after he had 2 near-syncopal events. The first occurred in the morning and rapidly resolved; the second occurred later in the day at work. The night before he had a headache and neck pain. In the ED, he reported left arm and leg weakness and was noted to have left facial droop.