“Watching Too Much TV in Your 20s May Impact How Your Brain Works in...
The Washington Post reports on a new study in JAMA Psychiatry that shows that watching more than 3 hours of television a day in...
“Why Ted Cruz’s Plan to Overhaul the FDA Would Jeopardize Public Health”
"To be sure, the FDA review process is not perfect. What is? But the agency is still considered the gold standard by which other...
“Psychologist: Telling Your Child About Santa”
“Can Santa blur the divide between fantasy and reality and, as a result, delay a child’s cognitive development?”
“Why Does Psychiatry So Often Get a Free Pass on Standards of Evidence?”
Rob Wipond takes HealthNewsReview.org to task for its coverage of a Philadelphia Inquirer article about a medical device designed for people experiencing panic. He writes that “hyperbolic psychiatric and psychological claims frequently get free passes from otherwise thoughtful medical critics.”
“As Opioid Deaths Reach Record High, Drug Industry Resists Efforts to Rein in Prescriptions”
“In 2014, the number of people who died from drug overdoses in the United States reached 47,055 — an all-time high, according to a disturbing report published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” but “the effort to get physicians to curb their prescribing of these drugs may be faltering amid stiff resistance from drugmakers, industry-funded groups and, now, even other public health officials.”
“The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge”
Philosopher Richard Kamber discusses what Dickens’ tale of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol can add to our discussions of free will in the present....
“Children Today Suffer From a Deficit of Play”
Boston College Psychologist Peter Gray writes for Aeon about the impact of the gradual erosion of children’s’ play in the United States. “Over the...
“A Force Awakened: Why So Many Find Meaning in Star Wars”
Star Wars taps into some fundamental facets of the human condition and tells mythic and religious stories, Professor Patti McCarthy explains for The Conversation....
“Study on ‘Bah Humbug Syndrome’ Offers Cautionary Tale”
“Throughout the world, we estimate that millions of people are prone to displaying Christmas spirit deficiencies after many years of celebrating Christmas,” write the...
Failure to Report, Patients at Risk”
"A STAT investigation finds that “Most research institutions — including leading universities and hospitals in addition to drug companies — routinely break a law that requires...
“When Pills Are the Problem”
In the context of the Silicon Valley suicides, one mother offers her story about her daughter. “It’s my premise that not only the culture of Silicon Valley, but also, almost more importantly, the nature of the remedies that are being proposed in the name of mental health counseling, are to blame in these deaths.”
“Hospitals Want to Test Drug with No Consent”
“A group of Boston doctors is proposing to join a study that would provide emergency treatment for brain-injured patients without obtaining the trauma victims’...
“A Compassionate Approach Leads to More Help, Less Punishment”
“Published in the journal PLoS ONE, a new set of studies suggests that compassion—and intentionally cultivating it through training—may lead us to do more to help the wronged than to punish the wrongdoer. Researchers found compassion may also impact the extent to which people punish the transgressor.”
Canadian Institute of Health Identifies Provinces Overprescribing Antipsychotics
“A new study is giving insight into how long-term care patients in the province are progressing — or, in some cases, worsening — over time. It found those living in central Newfoundland are more likely to be given antipsychotic drugs they don't need.”
Critical Psychiatry: Importance of Interviewing
For the Critical Psychiatry blog, Duncan Double writes that psychological formulation and psychosocial assessment may provide a way forward to a “new psychiatry” that moves on from modern concepts of mental illness as chemical imbalance or some other abnormality of the brain.
“Culturally Specific Treatment Center Knows That One Approach Doesn’t Work for All”
"What was going on inside Turning Point was an experiment: a community-based treatment center designed to serve low-income African-Americans. After a few bumpy early...
“How Terror Hardens Us”
“We Americans are living through a dread-inducing age,” Jessica Stern writes in the ‘Times, and our feelings of vulnerability have psychological and political consequences. Terror Management Theory, “which suggests that much of human behavior is motivated by an unconscious terror of death,” provides an explanation for the xenophobia and culture wars that often follow the dread of an attack.
“Personalized Medicine: A Faustian Bargain?”
In a guest blog for the Scientific American, Eleonore Pauwels and Jim Drawta write about the “dark side of the data revolution —the successor to the Industrial Revolution, with personal data as the new coal, oil or shale gas to be extracted or traded away, enshrined in an updated Faustian pact.”
“Why San Bernardino Polarized America and What It Means for Our Political Future”
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.
“When PTSD Is Contagious”
“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.”
“Helping Others Dampens the Effects of Everyday Stress”
"The holiday season can be a very stressful time, so think about giving directions, asking someone if they need help, or holding that elevator...
“Forensic Psychiatric Patients and Staff View the Effects of ‘Mental Illness’ Differently”
“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.”
“Psychiatric Drug—Not Antibiotic—Messes with Gut Microbes, Spurs Obesity”
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.
“NIH-Funded Trials Dip, Industry Trials on the Rise”
"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.”
Book Review: Psychiatry Reconsidered
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.