Yearly Archives: 2015

For STAT, Ed Silverman reports on growing concerns about the industry ties of the new nominee for FDA commissioner.  “The nomination comes at a...

The latest economic recession led to a spike in diagnoses for mental illnesses, suicide attempts, and suicide, according to report out of the University...

“An ordinary person becomes a torturer with surprising ease. The hard part comes when it’s time to be human again,” neuroscientist Shane O’Mara writes...

"A classroom program that helps teachers adapt their interactions with students based on individuals' temperaments may lead to more student engagement in kindergarten, more...

Drug makers have faced large fines for unethical and harmful practices but have simply treated these as a cost of doing business. Ed Silverman reports...

Ed Silverman reports that only 80 prescriptions for Addyi, or Flibanserin, were filled in the drugs’ first two weeks on the market. Article →

In The Atlantic, Julie Beck interviews emotional intelligence expert David Caruso about the importance of accurately recognizing and communicating your emotions. “American culture demands that the answer to the question ‘How are you?’ is not just ‘Good,’ but sometimes ‘Great.’ Or—this drives folks around the world crazy, who might be based in another country but they work for an American company—we need to be ‘Awesome.’ There's this relentless drive to mask the expression of our true underlying feelings. It's almost inappropriate.”

The BMJ reports that renewed concerns about the “revolving door” between government and industry have been sparked by the health minister of England’s decision to join to drug company Roche.

How are we going to get anywhere at all if people believe that speaking to alternatives just means occasionally putting something out there that isn’t about psychiatric drugs? Assuming that the Mental Health Channel folks genuinely believe they’re offering a product that’s ‘well-rounded,’ how do we even get to a point where they understand why it’s not, and can make a well-reasoned decision about where to go from there? Yes, it’s about the drugs. But, in some ways, no, it’s not at all about them. It’s about the damage we do by convincing people that there’s no other choice than to take the drugs because of a ‘chemical imbalance’ or ‘chronic brain disease’ that, just like cancer, will only get worse if it goes untreated. It's about the inescapable nature of the boxes people put us in (even some of those boxes not filled up with pills).

“The point, overall, is that given the dizzying array of possible factors at work here, it’s much too pat a story to say that kids are getting more 'fragile' as a result of some cultural bugaboo,” Jesse Singal writes in response to the flurry of recent think pieces decrying the weakened resolve of today's college students.

Will Davies, author of The Happiness Industry, does a Q&A on the ways companies are misusing psychological research on happiness. “I think that one thing that often gets lost in lots of the discussions of happiness (especially in the business world) is the possibility that happy work may mean less work.”

A review of treatment guidelines published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics found that guidelines “shy away from stating clearly that SSRIs/SNRIs, like BDZs, are often (though...

The latest research shows that the effect of the “moral molecule” oxytocin has a much more complicated effect on human behavior than we think, according to Ed Yong in a recent article for The Atlantic. “Several scientists have shown that this tower of evidence for oxytocin’s positive influence is built on weak foundations,” he writes.

Pat Risser is an award-winning trainer, facilitator, speaker, author and consultant. He has been a human rights activist and mental health advocate for over...

Pat Risser is an award-winning trainer, facilitator, speaker, author and consultant. He has been a human rights activist and mental health advocate for over...

We hope we have convinced you by now (this is our 24^th blog) that the field of Nutrition and Mental Health is a vital piece of the solution, for preventing as well as treating mental health problems. What we have not talked to you about at all is how behind-the-times the regular granting agencies are. The two of us have always been very successful at obtaining research grants, as long as we do not want to study multinutrient treatments. When we (and some other colleagues in the U.S.) want to study multinutrient formulas, the reviewers react by asking “but which is the important ingredient?”

Mark A. Radcliffe is the author of two novels; Gabriel's Angel (2010) and Stranger Than Kindness (2013), he is a long term columnist in...

One of my problems with Mad In America is that not enough seem quite mad enough. I would like to encourage more outrage. I feel that if we were talking about a situation in another country, the US would be outraged. If we were talking about a common substance (like Big Macs), there would be outrage. If it were a business, citizens would be outraged and the government would intervene and shut it down. What is the “it” that I’m talking about?

The abuse of ADHD drugs on college campuses has reached epidemic proportions, according to the authors of a recent review in the journal of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. ADHD drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall, have become so commonplace on college campuses that students abusing these drugs for studying, weight loss and partying have underestimated their risks. As a result, we have seen exponential increases in emergency room visits, overdoses, and suicides by students taking these drugs.

For the past few years, I've been trying to put words on my multiple dissatisfactions with mainstream psychiatry and its shameful lack of rigour, compassion, reflection and ethical practice: hence my enjoyment of Bonnie Burstow’s percussive, hard-hitting MIA article in September. (I have not read her new book, and am almost afraid to do so, since it may well make irrelevant the final draft of my own critical monograph on psychiatry!)

“In America, medication is becoming almost as much a staple of childhood as Disney and McDonald’s,” writes Sarah Boseley in the Guardian. In this piece photographer Baptiste Lignel follows six boys and girls to examine the long-term effects of these drugs.

Children diagnosed with ADHD who are prescribed stimulant drugs have more sleep problems than those with ADHD that do not take these drugs.

I have long been concerned with the way society responds to people who come back from war. Veterans are routinely funneled into psychiatry’s grasp. Over the decades, some people who fought in wars have shared with me their experiences of being psychiatrized upon return from war. Sometimes these experiences included veterans being stripped of their second amendment rights, and a host of other constitutional, civil, and human rights violations as they began to be forced into complying with psychiatric regimens, and on several occasions this included veterans being subjected to electroshock.

Peter Holley reports for the Washington Post that a powerfuland highly addictive amphetamine drug known as fenethylline or Captagon is being used to fuel ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. “Captagon has been around in the West since the 1960s, when it was given to people suffering from hyperactivity, narcolepsy, and depression.”

Psychological abuse and childhood neglect are strongly associated with depression in adulthood, according to a meta-analysis of childhood trauma and depression published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders. “The findings clearly highlight the potential impact of the more ‘silent’ types of childhood maltreatment (other than physical and sexual abuse) on the development of depression,” the researchers conclude.