“Get Ready for More Drug Ads: Facebook is Making a Bid for Pharma Dollars”
For STAT, Rebecca Robbins reports that we’ll soon see drug ads – “both overt and stealthy” – on Facebook and other social media outlets.
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‘Hijacked by Anxiety’: How Climate Dread Is Hindering Climate Action
From The Guardian: "A measure of mental health is having the capacity to accurately emotionally respond to the reality in our world. So it’s not delusional to feel anxious or depressed. It’s mentally healthy."
“In US Prisons, Psychiatric Disability Is Often Met by Brute Force”
TruthOut reveals that "Turned out by the tens of thousands, scores of patients have been trapped between the worst of both worlds, free to...
Personal Boundaries and Their Violations
From Dr. Gary Sharpe/Out-Thinking Parkinson's: How invasions of physical, mental, emotional, and energetic space damage boundaries and lead to psychological and physical health conditions.
“Can Neuroscience Understand Donkey Kong, Let Alone a Brain?”
The Atlantic covers an experiment by two researchers who tried to use neuroscience techniques to understand the working of an old microprocessor. “Forget attention,...
Susie Orbach and Frederick Crews Debate Freud’s Legacy
In this piece for The Guardian, Frederick Crews, author of Freud: The Making of an Illusion, debates with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach about the merits of Freud's...
Too Much Emotional Intelligence is a bad Thing
From Scientific American: High levels of emotional intelligence may be associated with increased stress as well as feelings of depression and hopelessness.
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When ‘Not Guilty’ is a Life Sentence
From The New York Times: While the public perception of the insanity defense is that it is a "get out of jail free" card, the...
The Virtual Couch: Is Online Therapy Going Viral?
From Alternet: Applications that provide online counseling, such as BetterHelp and Talkspace, are increasing in popularity. While some studies support the effectiveness of virtual therapy,...
“Maybe Oregon Shooting and Others Aren’t About Mental Illness”
Matthew Cooper, writing for Newsweek, reports that despite the preponderance of political rhetoric about “mental illness” after mass shootings, a review of the research suggests that the connection between mental health and gun violence is dubious.
“How We Learned to Stop Worrying About People and Love the Bombing”
For Tom Dispatch, historian Rick Shenkman “explores the biological phenomena that may well underpin our appalling lack of empathy, the animal instincts that allow so many of us to stand by in the face of unspeakable acts,” and “how the stories we tell ourselves and others might offer us a path to overcome our utterly human inhumanity.”
Medicalizing Society
From Jacobin: "...the idea that population-wide rates of despair and social dysfunction should be understood as biological diseases, rather than the result of rampant...
Study Identifies Cause of Weight Gain From Antipsychotic Drugs
From UPI: A team of researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that the serotonin 2c receptor is responsible for weight gain...
The Importance of Having a Breakdown
From The School of Life: Our crisis, if we can get through it, is an attempt to dislodge us from a toxic status quo and an insistent call to rebuild our lives on a more authentic and sincere basis.
Illness Inflation: Expanded Medical Definitions Create More Patients
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has issued a watchdog report titled “Illness Inflation” that examines how new medical conditions are often the product of industry...
Psychologists Surveyed Hundreds of Alt-Right Supporters
From Vox: Recently, psychologists Patrick Forscher and Nour Kteily surveyed members of the alt-right to build the first psychological profile of their movement. Compared to the...
“Can Psychology Be an Empirical Science?”
Neuroskeptic covers a provocative paper from psychologist Jan Smedslund which argues that psychology “cannot be an empirical science.” “Psychological findings are in principle historical, and...
Call for (Pithy) Submissions: “Is Psychiatry a Real Science?”
In a call for submissions posted on the History of Madness in Canada website, the long-running OUR VOICE / NOTRE VOIX magazine, publisher of...
53% of Docs Still Not Transitioning to Value-Based Care
From Modern Healthcare: There has been a recent uptick in the number of doctors transitioning to value-based care, but 53 percent of physicians still have not...
“A Generation of Stimulation Junkies: Television, ADD and ADHD”
Mod Vive reports that "The rampant self-diagnosing of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is out of control. There is also an increasing amount of people...
Court-Ordered Psychiatric Tests Used as a Weapon
From Courier Mail: Divorced parents are increasingly ordering involuntary psychiatric examinations against one another to be used as a weapon in custody fights.
"Family lawyer Deborah...
UN Calls for Human Rights-Based Approach to Suicide Prevention
From Psychiatry Advisor: "A focus on locating problems and solutions within individuals obscures the need to address the structural factors that make lives unliveable," said the special rapporteur on the right to health.
What Know-it-alls Don’t Know, or the Illusion of Competence
In this piece for Aeon, Kate Fehlhaber investigates why some people are overconfident in their knowledgeability and skills, despite holding inaccurate beliefs or being less competent...
Listening to, Rather Than Trying to Fix, My Suicidal Wife
From The Guardian: One man shares how listening to his wife when she experienced suicidality, rather than rushing to action or attempting to dissuade her...
“All Joy and No Fun” – NY Times Book Review
Andrew Solomon's review of "All Joy and No Fun" by Jennifer Senior serves as a great reminder of the importance of good parenting -...
