Around The Web

From the Sun Sentinel: Palm Beach County is drafting regulations prohibiting therapists from practicing conversion therapy to try to change a child's sexual orientation. Palm Beach...

Claudia M. Gold, a psychiatrist who writes for the Boston Globe, takes on The New Republic's article ADHD Does Not Exist, which, she says,...

From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Since 1950, a noteworthy number of American and European horror movies have used radiation as a plot device. The...

Researchers are studying whether psychological treatments can prevent relapse after patients go off antidepressant medication, reports the Wall Street Journal, noting that "SSRIs have long been...

Writing for the Huffington Post, Caroline Beaton looks into how drugs continue to make billions in sales even after they lose lawsuits for fraud and misconduct. “The persistence of Big Pharma's fraud despite ubiquitous legal action suggests that our present efforts to hold the industry accountable are ineffective,” Beaton writes. “New polices in motion will make potentially unsafe drugs even easier to bring to market and promote.”

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.”

From The Independent: Non-NHS private firms won almost 70 percent of tendered contracts in England last year, undermining repeated government claims that private companies play a small...

In this Shouts & Murmurs video from the New Yorker placebo pills get the full drug advertisement treatment. Video → Watch this video on The Scene.

"This video will make your heart melt with cuteness." Sputnik News →

In this piece for Aeon, Omnia El Shakry highlights the role that Freudian ideas and psychoanalysis played in midcentury Arab literature, education, politics, and culture. "For some,...

Kelly Brogan, MD, writes: "Maybe your depression, chronic fatigue, ADHD, and chemical sensitivity are just ways that your body, mind, and soul, are saying no....

Neuroskeptic takes on a new paper that proposes a new DSM-5's diagnosis will reduce the epidemic of bipolar diagnosis in children, comparing it to fighting...

From California Healthline: Although people of color are much more likely to suffer from severe psychological distress, they are less likely to receive mental health...

-On the Oxford University Press blog, a professor of psychiatry and psychology weighs in on recent studies using therapy as a response to problematic psychosis symptoms.

-A satirical post about "nostalgia disorder" by a medical student looks a lot like the real thing.

Our friend Monica Cassani muses "Psychosis is, among (many) other things, also, quite often, a deep attachment to one’s (not consensually reasonable) thoughts and...

The Verge reviews the growing body of evidence of the psychological impacts of different types of gastrointestinal microbes, and interviews Boston-area psychiatrist James Greenblat...

From Lown Institute: "Taking many medications at once can put patients, especially older adults, at risk of a negative reaction to one or more...

For Alternet, Martha Rosenberg discusses the dangers of overmedicating seniors and older adults. She interviews Dr. Harry Haroutunian about his new book, “Not As...

From Science of Us: A new research paper examines the mental and physical health effects of the 2016 presidential election, including the impact of toxic...

-BBC psychologist Claudia Hammond discusses topics such as what psychology can tell us about how we decide to vote and portrayals of mental health in comedy.

On September 18th the one day "More Harm than Good Conference" brought together many of the leaders of the critical psychiatry movement. While the event has passed, the video and slides from the conference have been made available on the council for evidence-based psychiatry website.

From Science of Us: Researchers have found that awe and other Self-Transcendent Experiences have positive consequences for people's mental and emotional health, including enhanced interconnectedness and...

The World Health Organization (WHO) currently lists being transgender as a medical condition and mental illness. Critics argue that the world’s leading health organization...

Doris Iarovici, a psychiatrist from Duke University, asks in the New York Times "Are we using good scientific evidence to make decisions about keeping...