Around The Web

Former DSM-IV task force chair Allen Frances takes aim at the “massive overuse of psychotropic medication in children” in an article for the Psychiatric Times. He shares a checklist of questions for doctors to consider before prescribing medication to children. Frances warns: “We simply don’t know what will be the long-term impact of bathing a child’s immature brain with powerful chemicals.”

Writing for GreenBiz, Elizabeth Grossman reports on research on the increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals making their way into the environment. “They report on opiods, amphetamines and other pharmaceuticals found in treated drinking water; antibiotics in groundwater capable of altering naturally occurring bacterial communities; and over-the-counter and prescription drugs found in water leeching from municipal landfills.”

“Stress damages the integrity of the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that deals with memory and emotions,” Thor Benson writes for Salon. “Hormones like Cortisol and other biological reactions created by stress essentially disrupt the balance of how much white and grey matter the brain is creating, which affects how the brain operates.”

In this week’s NY Times Modern Love blog Hannah Louise Poston tells the story of living with her severely depressed boyfriend, Joe, and how her decision to buy a kitten improved their relationship. “The next morning when we woke up, the first words out of Joe’s mouth were, ‘Where’s the kitten?’ And the kitten’s first act, when she heard his voice, was to ice-pick her way up the quilt and jump on his face. That same summer, Joe mustered the energy to make major changes in his life…”

Paul Thacker and Charles Seife provide an update on the ongoing battles over transparency in science, writing for the PLOS Biologue blog. While transparency is important for accountability and the public trust, some have begun to argue that requests for personal communications between companies and researchers have gone too far.

In an Op-Ed for The Advocate, activist Ally Nugent relates her experience of post-acute withdrawal syndrome and says that our mental health institutions disproportionately...

A study in PLoS One shows that the number of National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded drug trials reporting positive results declined precipitously after the implementation of the clinicaltrials.gov registry, which requires researchers to record their trial methods and outcome measures before collecting data. Of the 55 studies examined, 57% percent of those published before the implementation of clinicaltrials.gov in 2000 yielded a positive result. After 2000, only eight percent of trials claimed a significant benefit to the intervention examined.

Julia Belluz at Vox interviews Russ Poldrack, the director of the Center for Reproducible Neuroscience, on recent efforts to “clean up the house of...

Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove discuss their new book Psychiatry Under the Influence in an interview with psychologist and social critic Bruce Levine for Truthout. In the book, Whitaker and Cosgrove apply the institutional corruption framework, developed by Larry Lessig, to psychiatry and determine that “just as elected officials develop dependency on special interests and become beholden to these funders instead of the citizenry,” psychiatry has “had its social mission subverted by drug companies as well as by the psychiatry guild's self-preservation and expansionism needs.”

Australian trade minister, Andrew Robb, spoke about inadequate government funding for mental health at a summit of mental health experts on Monday. Canberra related his own personal experience of struggling to seek treatment for depression and counseled that “stigma has been such a massive deterrent” both for individuals in need of help and for government funding of mental health programs.

In a blog post for The Guardian’s Healthcare Professionals Network, frontline worker Tim Smith takes on the oft-heard metaphor that “mental health problems should be seen like a broken leg.” Smith explains how this metaphor, while intended to reduce stigma, negatively impacts mental health care by creating the expectation that treatments will follow a set course and that patients will respond uniformly and predictably.

From Marlo Thomas on HuffPo: "For those taking medication or anti-depressants, orgasm can seem even more unattainable. Reduction in both sexual desire and orgasms...

"Mary Ann DeBernardis of Utica knew her mother was dying when she left the hospital on the evening of July 5, 2013. Burdened with a...

"Older women who eat white bread and rice found to have greater risk of depression, according to research ... But whole grain foods, roughage...

Fox 5 Atlanta featured a back to school story about the growing percentage of preteens and teens being prescribed antipsychotic medication for ADHD.  They report:...

On The New York Times Opinionator Blog, Diana Spechler has written a series entitled “Going Off,” relating her experience transitioning to a life without...

"I’ve eaten mushrooms ... dropped LSD ... taken MDMA ... I’ve done everything adults always told me not to do in my youth, and...

High Times takes a good look at the chemistry and epidemiology of "America's Favorite Amphetamine": "If you’re one of the roughly 6.4 million kids or 10 million adults in the...

"Sales for drugs like Vyvanse and Adderall are growing rapidly. To those who have experienced the dark-side of regular amphetamine use, that’s concerning," says...

"In an article published this month in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, McGill University psychiatrist Dr. Joel Paris says the diagnostic criteria for adult...

Eleanor Longden and John Reed look at the "relationships between childhood adversity and the presence of characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia."  They conclude: "The current...

In 2004 'Amy,' who was being treated for a drug overdose, screamed "Mum, don't let him near me! He shouldn't be in here! He's raped...

TruthOut reveals that "Turned out by the tens of thousands, scores of patients have been trapped between the worst of both worlds, free to...

Tanya Luhrmann writes in the New York Times: "Americans are a pretty anxious people. Nearly one in five of us — 18 percent —...

-A "fact checker" investigates a statement by an Australian politician describing the government's supportive employment initiative as a "prescription" for young people struggling with mental health problems.