Yearly Archives: 2015

INJURED BY PSYCHIATRY Ally Nugent is an activist and a psychiatric survivor.  She writes and speaks about benzodiazepine iatrogenesis, as well as psychiatric survivor intersectionality.  She...

It used to be that the times when Santa Claus would show up were times when I was worrying about whether or not I had the right kind of medicine. I know when I see him that he is the medicine, and that he is showing me how to live.

Heather Duke is a neurofeedback technician at Stone Mountain Center in New Paltz, NY, an outpatient psychotherapy practice that offers neurofeedback among other modalities....

Heather Duke is a neurofeedback technician at Stone Mountain Center in New Paltz, NY, an outpatient psychotherapy practice that offers neurofeedback among other modalities....

Pro Publica and the NY Times collaborate on an investigative report revealing loopholes in HIPAA laws that allow providers to release the mental health...

“The paper, The  psychopathology of James Bond, and its implications for the revision of the DSM-007, has just won first prize in the Australian Medical Journal's...

The Washington Post reports on a new study in JAMA Psychiatry that shows that watching more than 3 hours of television a day in...

"To be sure, the FDA review process is not perfect. What is? But the agency is still considered the gold standard by which other...

“Can Santa blur the divide between fantasy and reality and, as a result, delay a child’s cognitive development?”

Rob Wipond takes HealthNewsReview.org to task for its coverage of a Philadelphia Inquirer article about a medical device designed for people experiencing panic. He writes that “hyperbolic psychiatric and psychological claims frequently get free passes from otherwise thoughtful medical critics.”

“In 2014, the number of people who died from drug overdoses in the United States reached 47,055 — an all-time high, according to a disturbing report published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” but “the effort to get physicians to curb their prescribing of these drugs may be faltering amid stiff resistance from drugmakers, industry-funded groups and, now, even other public health officials.”

Philosopher Richard Kamber discusses what Dickens’ tale of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol can add to our discussions of free will in the present....

Boston College Psychologist Peter Gray writes for Aeon about the impact of the gradual erosion of children’s’ play in the United States. “Over the...

Star Wars taps into some fundamental facets of the human condition and tells mythic and religious stories, Professor Patti McCarthy explains for The Conversation....

“Throughout the world, we estimate that millions of people are prone to displaying Christmas spirit deficiencies after many years of celebrating Christmas,” write the...

Experiencing emotional pain is a necessary part of life. Emotional pain often contains valuable lessons to help us on our journeys. We need to make sure we are not numbing our hearts to those that are hurting. We need to de-stigmatize the struggles, joys and pains that come with being human. We need to not just mindlessly pursue happiness - though we might think of that as an inalienable right - and avoid pain. We need to do the only thing that brings true joy: embrace all of life and each other, as we experience together all that makes us human.

This week another study was published showing that SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with increased rates of autism in the children.  By my count, this is now the tenth study on this topic and it follows on the heels of previous studies – all of which found links between SSRI antidepressant use in pregnancy and autism in the offspring.  Most of these studies were recently reviewed by Man, et al, who also concluded that SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with autism in the children. So we now have numerous studies in different human populations all showing a link between SSRI use in pregnancy and autism in the children. Yet, much of the news and blogosphere focus on casting doubts about these findings. What is going on here?

Recent meta-analyses of antidepressant clinical trials have revealed that up to 82% of the effects associated with the drugs may be attributed to placebo and non-medication factors. A new study examined the attitudes of psychiatrists toward these non-pharmacologic factors and found a large discrepancy between their beliefs and the empirical evidence.

"A STAT investigation finds that “Most research institutions — including leading universities and hospitals in addition to drug companies — routinely break a law that requires...

In the context of the Silicon Valley suicides, one mother offers her story about her daughter. “It’s my premise that not only the culture of Silicon Valley, but also, almost more importantly, the nature of the remedies that are being proposed in the name of mental health counseling, are to blame in these deaths.”

“A group of Boston doctors is proposing to join a study that would provide emergency treatment for brain-injured patients without obtaining the trauma victims’...

“Published in the journal PLoS ONE, a new set of studies suggests that compassion—and intentionally cultivating it through training—may lead us to do more to help the wronged than to punish the wrongdoer. Researchers found compassion may also impact the extent to which people punish the transgressor.”

“A new study is giving insight into how long-term care patients in the province are progressing — or, in some cases, worsening — over time. It found those living in central Newfoundland are more likely to be given antipsychotic drugs they don't need.”

For the Critical Psychiatry blog, Duncan Double writes that psychological formulation and psychosocial assessment may provide a way forward to a “new psychiatry” that moves on from modern concepts of mental illness as chemical imbalance or some other abnormality of the brain.

In Part One of this article series, we reviewed the contemporary research into the links between psychosis, problematic family dynamics, and other forms of childhood trauma. After reviewing this research, we find that a very interesting and important question emerges: What do all of these have in common? In other words, is there some common denominator that all of these types of trauma and patterns of problematic family dynamics share, a single underlying factor that makes someone particularly vulnerable to experiencing a psychotic crisis? Indeed, I believe that there is.