Around The Web

What does the psychology of terror mean for America’s future? Social psychologist Daniel Kort weighs in on what the science of terror management theory, behavioral economics, and political polarization can tell us about where we’re headed.

“Therapists and other people who help victims of trauma can become traumatized themselves.” Aaron Reuben writes in The Atlantic. “Hearing stories of suffering, in other words, can generate more suffering.”

"The holiday season can be a very stressful time, so think about giving directions, asking someone if they need help, or holding that elevator...

“Offenders sentenced to forensic psychiatric care do not consider their mental illness to be the main reason for their crime. Instead, they point to abuse, poverty or anger toward a particular person.”

In a series of experiments in mice, researchers found that the drug risperidone alters gut microbes, which in turn profoundly influence metabolism, weight, and overall health.

"Every year since 2006 in the U.S., the amount of new medical research in humans that’s funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has gone down, while the number of industry-funded trials has gone up, a new study shows.”

Hugh Middleton, MD, Associate Professor at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, and NHS Consultant Psychiatrist, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust has written an interesting and worthwhile book, “Psychiatry Reconsidered, From Medical Treatment to Supportive Understanding.” Dr. Middleton is co-founder of the Critical Psychiatry Network and this book could serve as the foundational textbook for our field. As his academic appointment would suggest, he has a decidedly social perspective on the kinds of problems that bring many people to a psychiatrist’s attention, but in this book he offers eloquent discussions of many perspectives that inform our field. It is remarkable that in this 200 page text, he is able to cover so many topics – diagnosis, pharmacotherapy, schools of psychotherapy - with such clarity.

In Scientific American, Kasley Killam presents insights from research on “post-traumatic growth,” highlighting the importance of finding meaning or underlying significance in our struggles and misery. “The psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote extensively about this process after observing that his fellow inmates in concentration camps were more likely to survive the horrific conditions if they held on to a sense of meaning.”

Sociologist Garry Gray examines the institutional pressures and systemic failings that allow unsafe drugs to hit the market. “Research integrity and the institutional structures that support scientific research are key to understanding and eliminating scientific compromises. Without this understanding, we can’t truly progress beyond the 'Grünenthal science' that underscored the thalidomide tragedy.”

The Daily Telegraph reports on a warning published in the Medical Journal of Australia that urges doctors not to “jump the gun in prescribing patients the drug ketamine to treat depression.”

In “When Phrenology Was Used in Court,” Geoffrey S. Holtzman writes for Slate about the spurious use of brain science in legal cases. In the 1800’s the “science of phrenology” promised to reveal criminal psychological traits by measuring the skull and today defense teams still employ neurogenetic explanations for their client’s violent behavior.

Critical psychiatry researcher, anthropologist and NYU professor Helena Hansen writes: “Opioid maintenance acts as a kind of pharmaceutical prosthesis which promises to return white ‘addicts’ to regaining their status as full human persons and middle-class consumers. Meanwhile, black and brown users are not deemed as persons to be rescued, but rather dangerous subjects to be pharmaceutically contained within the public discipline of the state.”

“If language is inherently unstable, then how can we hope to diagnose illness accurately?” asks psychiatrist Mark Salter in an article for iai news. “Naming things, abstract or concrete, is a form of categorization,” but, he adds, “it is important to remember that our categories say more about the categorizer than the categorized.”

“The federal privacy law known as HIPAA doesn’t cover home paternity tests, fitness trackers, or health apps. When a Florida woman complained after seeing...

For Buzzfeed, Laura Silver reports on the UK recovery houses where mental health patients in psychiatric crisis can work toward a meaningful recovery and avoid institutionalization. Unfortunately, she finds that funding for these houses is under increasing threat.

Speaking on the Essential Pittsburgh radio show, psychologist Brent Dean Robbins, former president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, discusses how fear drives us toward irrational policies in the wake of terror attacks. He also offers commentary on the Murphy Bill, which he criticizes for unfairly scapegoating those diagnosed with mental illnesses.

“Some autistic adults have spent much of their lives with the wrong diagnosis, consigned to psychiatric institutions or drugged for disorders they never had,” Jessica Wright writes in The Atlantic.

Psychologist William Copeland writes for Mental Health Recovery that “bullying can occur at any age and the effects of which remain harmful long after the behavior has been endured.” “We, as a society, are just beginning to understand and come to terms with the havoc that bullying wreaks on the emotional lives of its victims.

"Terrorism researchers are trying to understand how young people in Europe become radicalized, by looking for clues in the life histories of those who have committed or planned terrorist acts in recent years, left the continent to join ISIS, or are suspected of wanting to become jihadists. A mixture of sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and psychologists, such researchers are drawing on information generated by police, judicial inquiries and the media, and, in some cases, on interviews. They also study factors at play in prisons and socially-deprived areas. Some of their insights are summarized here.”

“While evidence of abuse of the disabled has piled up for decades, one for-profit company has used its deep pockets and influence to bully weak regulators and evade accountability.”

A new study in JAMA reveals that, on average, 25% of beginning physicians meet the diagnostic criteria for major depression. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Thomas Schwenk, added: "Everybody asks me, because of some of my prior studies, should we have more intense work in diagnosing depression in students? Of course, the answer is 'yes,' but how do you go about that without further stigmatizing them, further labeling them, further singling them out to even greater stigma? It's not just an issue of, 'Let's make better diagnoses and let's provide better treatment'; it’s more complicated than that."

Yesterday, the FDA approved Pfizer's “QuilliChew ER” chewable methylphenidate for ADHD in children as young as six. “CNS stimulants, including Quillivant XR, QuilliChew ER, other methylphenidate-containing products, and amphetamines, have a high potential for abuse and dependence.”

A phase 1 study for a stem cell derived agent that promotes the growth of new nerve cells in the brain demonstrated efficacy in a very small sample of patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). The phase 1B study was published online December 8 in Molecular Psychiatry.

A four-part series from Canada Free Press on Pfizer’s smoking cessation drug Chantix and its connection to violence and suicide. “The 26 case reports included three actual suicides. In every case, the acts or thoughts of violence towards others appeared to be both unprovoked and inexplicable. Most of the perpetrators had no previous history of violence, and most of them were middle-aged women—not a group known for its propensity towards violent behavior.”

The New York Times reports that a growing number of infants and toddlers are being prescribed dangerous psychiatric drugs. “Almost 20,000 prescriptions for risperidone (commonly known as Risperdal), quetiapine (Seroquel) and other antipsychotic medications were written in 2014 for children 2 and younger, a 50 percent jump from 13,000 just one year before.”