Yearly Archives: 2012
PLoS Medicine Series: Global Studies of “Practice-Based Evidence”
The Public Library of Science calls for "case studies that can help broaden our understanding of global mental health in 'real-life' contexts." The series...
The History and Effectiveness of Peer Support from 18th-Century France to Today
Yale's Program for Recovery and Community Health will publish in World Psychiatry's June issue a review the history of peer support, from its roots...
Nothing About Us Without Us!
As we prepared for our regular monthly Board meeting, a casually dressed middle-aged man entered the room.Ā I didnāt recognize him.Ā I was struck...
Heaven, Hell, and Psychosis
While the mental health system identifies psychosis as being about suffering, or āhellishā experiences, if you actually listen to individual stories, it is obvious...
Stress Sensitivity and Tolerance Associated With Psychosis
Researchers from Columbia and NYU found that stress sensitivity and impaired stress tolerance was greater in a cohort of 65 individuals deemed at high...
Premature Births Linked to Various Psychiatric Diagnoses
In one of the first, and the largest, studies of relationships between premature births and severe psychiatric disorders, researchers from Sweden and England examined...
Microfinance Loans for People With Mental Health Diagnoses
The Toronto Globe & Mail reports on a project to provide "microfinance" loans of $3,000 up to $25,000 to people diagnosed with mental illness...
The Mystery is Solved, and Now I’m Undoing the Harm (With Strength and a...
Iād like you to get to know me as you read this.Ā I think I have an important personal story to tell.Ā Frankly, I...
I Know With a Sane Mind When I’m Going Insane
This was my sonās answer when I was questioning him, trying desperately to find out what was going on in his mind. Why did...
SSRIs May Cause Bone Loss
An Israeli study of 10,621 women found that those taking an SSRI more than 80% of the time were 1.4 times more likely to...
Vertex Pharmaceutical Executives Cash in on False Hopes
Senior executives at Vertex Pharmaceuticals made millions of dollars each by selling company stock in the days after the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical reported promising clinical...
3 minutes to Create Medication Optimization for the Whole US
My last blog on this site was about how our federal and state governments are looking to make huge changes to our health care...
DBT and Psychiatry for Borderline; Equally Poor at 2 years, But Long-Term Remission is...
A prospective study in the American Journal of Psychiatry compares Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) with psychiatric management for borderline personality disorder, founding that outcomes...
Bipolar Disorder and Goal-Setting
Researchers at the UCs Berkley and San Francisco, and the University of Miami, suggest in a paper in Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy that bipolar...
Dialogical Recovery of our Minds
I think that our mind and our capacity to use it to think clearly depends on our inner and outer dialogue. When we become...
Does Anyone Want a Genetically Modified Brain? – Anti-Psychotic Medications May Have Been Causing...
Move over outdated chemical imbalance theory, now it is claimed that genetic misregulation underliesĀ psychiatric disease, and that psychiatric drugs themselves can fix the genetic...
Self-Understanding is Key for Caregivers
Norwegian and Swedish researchers studied the experiences of 67 parents of children disabilities. They found that enhanced self-understanding and discussion of existential issues was...
Do I Have Too Many Questions This Morning?
What if it were the sun that could cure you; would you have the courage to go and find it? Would you wear sunscreen?
If...
Scant Evidence for Combining Antipsychotics
Researchers in Barcelona, Spain retrospectively reviewed the use of antipsychotics in 117,811 patients, of whom 9,855 were given combinations of antipsychotics and 13,763 were...
‘Presentation Bias’ Favors Psychopharm at Major Meetings
Researchers at the University of Michigan and Yale reviewed the 278 studies presented at the 2009 and 2010 APA meetings that compared medications, finding...
Tunneling
Texas is big.
So are its politics, at the very heart of it all.
I fell into mental health by sheer virtue of my own shared...
The Denial of Mystery and the Use of Medication to Replace Personal and Social...
I believe the question of whether to medicate or not cannot be kept separate from the question of whether or not to consider individuals...
Antipsychotics for Anorexia: Weight Gain and Sedation as Treatment
A study published online today (May 26, 2012) in Current Psychiatry Reports recommends Zyprexa as "elusive" pharmacologic solution to anorexia nervosa. On the basis...
What You Can Do TODAY About Managed Care
Some other bloggers have been talking about managed care, and I wanted to share some action points for all of us. There are many...
ECT Increases Readmission
ECT-treated patients were at a greater risk of readmission compared to non-ECT treated patients, according to a study published online May 25, 2012 in...
