Yearly Archives: 2017
10 Life Lessons I Learned as a Psychiatric Nurse and Patient
In this piece for Wake Up World, Cortland Pfeffer shares 10 life lessons he learned from his experience as a psychiatric patient, a recovering...
Study Connects Environmental Risk Factors and Psychosis
A meta-analysis of known risk factors for psychosis finds elevated risk with the presence of childhood trauma, adverse life events, and affective dysfunction.
Avenevoli Named NIMH Deputy Director
From the National Institute of Mental Health: Dr. Shelli Avenevoli has been named the new deputy director of the NIMH.
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Racism as a Public Health Threat
From Medical Xpress: Racism is a major public health issue that is correlated with physical and mental health problems including depression, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, breast...
Medical Community Split on Easing of Drug Company Gift ban
From VTDigger: A new bill has been introduced in Vermont that would scale back the state's law banning pharmaceutical companies from providing certain gifts to health care...
Baycrest Creates First Canadian Brain Health Food Guide
From Medical Xpress: Baycrest scientists have developed the first Canadian Brain Health Food Guide, which provides older adults with guidelines and advice on maintaining a healthy...
Emotional Strategies and Skills for Aspiring Mental Health Workers
In mental health, we have spent an inordinate amount of effort on the intellectual level. Since most people who come to us for help have deeper needs than that, we’re going to fail most of them if we don’t instead operate predominantly at the emotional level.
Infamous 1960s Study Repeated: How far Would you go to Obey?
From Live Science: Stanley Milgram's infamous experiments on the science of obedience to authority figures were recently repeated with very similar results. Participants showed a high...
This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
From The Atlantic: For some people, believing false information is not a result of low intelligence or lack of education, but the desire to...
Two Thirds of Patients See Physicians Who Receive Payments From Pharma
Study finds more patients are visiting physicians who have ties to industry than previously thought.
Researchers Make Recommendations to Improve FDA Transparency
Organizations, advocates, scholars, and practitioners had a chance to give feedback regarding FDA processes.
The General who Went to war on Suicide
From Politico Magazine: Having struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts himself, Major General Dana Pittard developed a unique approach to suicide prevention in the military: expanding...
Black man Labeled with Schizophrenia Boiled to Death
From the Miami New Times: On June 23rd, 2012, four corrections officers at Dade Correctional Institution kept Darren Rainey, a black man labeled with schizophrenia,...
Why I Don’t Like the Idea that Mental Disorder is a Disease
What we need to try and understand extreme and unusual states of being are not the specialised methods of natural science. In contrast, it is the ways in which we understand ordinary, everyday behaviour that can help to reveal the nature and meaning of madness.
Webinar Discussion – Rethinking Madness
A free recording of last week's webinar anchored to Phil Borges' Crazywise, a documentary exploring alternative approaches to mental health, is now available. Over 4,000 people...
‘CRAZY’: New Documentary about Forced Psychiatric Treatment
Lise Zumwalt’s new documentary “CRAZY” follows Eric, a young adult diagnosed with serious mental illness, and his father, who together want to change Eric’s treatment. However, the county does not want to give them a say.
Asylum Magazine: Mad Studies Comes of R/Age, Part Two
A new issue of Asylum Magazine is available. This issue is the second in a two-part series highlighting new and original work on the theme...
Girl in Facebook Live Hanging was Prescribed Antidepressant
From the Miami Herald: Naika Venant, a 14-year-old girl who died by suicide this past January, had been prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant with a black box...
The Secret History of Emotions
From The Chronicle of Higher Education: The classical view of emotion, which asserts that emotions have distinct and universal facial expressions, bodily patterns, and brain circuitry,...
Medical Students’ Racial Biases Lead to Failure to Adequately Treat Patients
False beliefs about biological differences between races are associated with a failure to provide recommended pain treatments to Black people.
The Door to a Revolution in Psychiatry Cracks Open
The Ministry of Health in Norway has ordered its four regional health authorities to offer medicine-free treatment in psychiatric hospitals. A six-bed ward in Tromso, which is in the far north of Norway, is now providing such care.
Mainstream Western Psychiatry: Science or Non-science?
Because it is such an important question, because people's lives depend on this and psychiatry has a record of getting it seriously wrong, we need to be sure we can trust their claim. In practice, is it true that biological psychiatry has the science?
The Power Thinker
In this essay for Aeon, Kolin Coopman explores the impact and legacy of Michel Foucault.
"It was a bio-power wielded by psychiatrists and doctors that,...
The Psychedelic Miracle
From Rolling Stone Magazine: Both the underground practice of and aboveground research on the use of psychedelic drugs to heal PTSD, as well as depression, anxiety,...
Is Facebook a Structural Threat to Free Society?
From TruthHawk: Facebook's technology has an unprecedented ability to surveil and manipulate people.
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