Around The Web

-Children's ways of thinking and feeling are being strongly shaped and delimited, as early as the age of five, through the imposition of social categories and stereotypes.

-Green Party Senator Rachel Siewert calls "insidious" an Australian government plan to take income support away from anyone undergoing psychiatric confinement.

-NPR interviews some of the psychiatrists who feel that the fast-acting drug ketamine is a "revolution" in depression treatment.

-Therapist and herbalist Jon Keyes discusses approaches to helping people in psychological distress that have been practiced in other cultures.

-Medical professor Norman Paradis gives a primer on the poor reliability of even the best screening tests -- let alone psychological ones.

-Is the psychiatric approach hindering understanding of feelings that were historically more often seen as having "theological, philosophical, legal, and aesthetical" import?

-London, England's Maytree Suicide Respite Centre runs with a few paid staff and nearly a hundred volunteers.

-A short video feature of an interview with a Neuroscience Laboratory Manager talking about the Human Brain Project.

-The 2014 New Zealand General Social Survey showed many New Zealanders feel more comfortable having neighbors with different sexual orientations or from minority groups than with mental illness.

-Correspondence in The Lancet Psychiatry suggests that a study linking depression to acts of violence should have examined antidepressant medications as possible causes.

-"Aboriginal youth are nine times more likely to be depressed and three times more likely to think about suicide compared to non-aboriginal youth."

-Emphasis on language "political correctness" on many college and university campuses may have less to do with politics than with how we process trauma.

-Three former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine criticize the NEJM for its recent publication of a series of articles downplaying conflicts of interest.

-BPS Research Digest reports on growing efforts to understand the voices that virtually everyone hears in their heads.

-Carl Elliott reflects on the scandals at UMinn, and explains why he worries that medical and psychiatric research at other universities and institutions may be just as unethical.

-Despite an "epidemic" of "expanding disease definitions that medicalize more people," most Australians have no idea that overdiagnosis is a problem.

-An article in Canada's Globe and Mail makes the case for expanding public funding of mental health services beyond psychiatrists.

-An accessible explanation of what fMRI brain scan devices actually measure.

-"For the most prominent journal of American medicine to offer so much precious real estate for arguments that are half-baked and tendentious is amazing."

-"Temper, Anxiety, Homework Trouble Are Medical Issues? Many Parents Don’t Realize It," stated a University of Michigan press release and survey report.

-Buzzfeed looks at the history -- and present -- of how antipsychotic drugs became a common treatment for depression, despite their apparent lack of effectiveness.

-Neuroskeptic critiques the premise of a journal article that declared that "neuroscientists who research mental health problems ought to listen to the views of people who have experienced those conditions."

-In a Canadian survey, 42% of psychiatrists said that if they developed a mental disorder, they would not disclose it to family or friends.

-"The civic lawsuit demands that Comptom schools incorporate proven practices that address trauma..."

-Two drug companies launched a petition to convince popular dictionaries to include "Major Depressive Disorder."