Around The Web

From National Institutes of Health: NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow have co-authored a special report on a new public-private...

MiA blogger Sandra Steingard's Washington Post article "A Psychiatrist Thinks Some Patients are Better off Without Antipsychotic Drugs" is getting wider play, reprinted yesterday in...

This TED Talk sheds new light on stress. "... While stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress...

From AP News: "Thousands of foster children may be getting powerful psychiatric drugs prescribed to them without basic safeguards, says a federal watchdog agency...

From The Washington Post: Feeling socially isolated triggers a fight-or-flight response, just as it would have in our ancestors, for whom being alone could mean being a saber-toothed tiger’s lunch.

In this blog post for Bioethics.net, Dr. Brandy X. Lee, editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a...

From Psychiatric Times/Conversations in Critical Psychiatry: Dr. Awais Aftab interviews Lisa Cosgrove, PhD, a leading expert on how pharmaceutical industry and academic guild interests have shaped the evolution of psychiatry.

From The British Psychological Society: A group of senior psychologists and prominent service user campaigners has published a report offering an alternative framework to understand emotional distress. "The Framework...

An editorial in the Guardian discusses the fact that the number of people with intellectual or learning disabilities “who are being treated with psychotropic drugs far exceeds those with mental illness.” The authors of a new study examining the overuse of psychotropic drugs on people with learning disabilities, published this month in BMJ, argue: “If people without mental illness are given psychotropic drugs… it is probably to control their behavior.”

-Clare Allan writes that the late John Nash often expressed how important it was for him to find his own balance between conventional and unconventional thinking.

From Lown Institute: Pharma funding and "grooming" of patient organizations has a profound impact on the drug approval process, as testimony from patient advocates has become more common.

"It’s an appealing idea: the notion that understanding the learning brain will tell us how to maximise children’s potential, bypassing the knotty complexities of...

From The Atlantic: A new study suggests that lower socioeconomic status may cause detrimental changes to the brain. "...this line of research suggests that being poor...

From The Sydney Morning Herald: Health Minister Greg Hunt has asked his department to review a study linking the increase in youth suicide with a rise in antidepressants

From inews.co.uk: Family doctors say a lack of access to effective psychological therapies on the NHS is leading them to over-prescribe medication.

From STAT: President Trump has nominated Indiana's health commissioner, Dr. Jerome Adams, to be the next surgeon general. Adams has played a critical role in...

Psychiatric Times dips into Thomas Szasz's thinking, considering the proposition that "By definition, a disease of the mind is impossible. Disease requires a physical...

From IIPDW: The International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal is requesting, for the second time, that NICE reverse its decision to exclude antipsychotic medications from its published withdrawal guidelines.

Dr. Mickey Nardo adds to the ongoing discussion about the RAISE study results. He writes: “If there is ‘spin’ in the reporting of this study, we need to know about it. I personally think that it’s more important for RAISE to be reported completely and honestly than whether it comes out like they [or I] want it to come out. We don’t need some sanitized version of RAISE to tell us we need to turn our attention to a full bodied approach to the treatment of First Episode psychotic patients. We all already know that. What we do need is to have our confidence restored in our research community – that they will honestly and clearly report their findings whether they are clean as a whistle or an unholy mess.”

Republican Tim Murphy should be lauded for bringing attention to important issues through his proposed legislation, but he "has it wrong when it comes...

In this piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Patrick Flynn describes how universities can lead the way in providing an accommodating, inclusive environment for...

From The New York Times: Overprescription is becoming an increasingly prevalent public health issue, especially for older adults with multiple chronic conditions. "Though studies have found...

From the New York Post: Mass murderer Stephen Paddock was reportedly prescribed anti-anxiety medication this past summer. The gunman purchased 50 10-milligram tablets of Valium...

From STAT: Every insurance company should be required to keep its provider lists updated so they can’t collect premiums for services they don’t actually provide.

From The New Inquiry: Civil libertarians and liberal privacy advocates often frame government surveillance as a universal threat. But two new books show that surveillance...