Around The Web

-Psychiatric Times' most popular posts of 2014.

-What are scientists learning from brain scans of babies in the womb?

-The industry of mobile apps that diagnose users' physical and mental ailments is already worth some $4 billion.

-An intimate personal story of a husband and wife struggling through psychological crises together.

-Psychiatrists analyze why US bipolar diagnoses in children and adolescents increased 40 times over in less than 10 years.

-A radio show from inside a Buenos Aires psychiatric hospital.

On Madness Radio, Will Hall interviews psychotherapist and author Tim Dreby about his experiences with both external world and internal world encounters with secret...

In JAMA, several Texas medical doctors and health information experts discuss the rapidly expanding number of "medical scribes" being hired by physicians to enter medical information into electronic health records (EHRs). Many doctors are finding electronic health records to be inefficient and unhelpful, they write, yet governments continue to mandate them.

In Medscape, three psychiatrists discuss the new definitions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for grief, complicated grief, depression and major depression, and try to explain how to reliably distinguish between them all.

A 1995 issue of Aisling Magazine ran an essay by philosopher Ivan Illich that challenged our society's growing psychological dependence on the health care system. "(S)ome of us today have come to believe that we desperately need packages, commodities, all under the label of "health", all designed and delivered by a system of professionalised services," wrote Illich. "Some try to convince us that an infant is born, not only helpless needing the loving care of a household, but also sick requiring specialised treatment by self-certified experts."

Brain Pickings offers its list of its own best articles of 2014, including a discussion of Kierkegaard's 1847 treatise on bullying, a re-analysis of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter, and an exploration of "the art of living wide."

The British Psychological Society's Research Digest examines a recent study that found that certain higher ratings of intelligence in people seemed to be correlated with higher ratings of anxiety and rumination as well.

In NPR's Cosmos & Culture blog, philosopher Alva Noë discusses how we see colors, and uses it as an introduction to the efforts of...

In the New York Times, Natasha Singer discusses last year's launch by the Samaritans of an app that allowed people to track others' mental...

In Metapsychology Online Reviews, Roy Sugarman discusses the latest Cerebrum Anthology, which examines "Emerging Ideas in Brain Science." The book, Sugarman writes, covers topics...

In his blog Psychology Salon, psychologist Randy Paterson explores what the balance of evidence is showing us after 60 years of increasing medical treatments...

Mind Hacks looks at a number of unusual cases, such as a woman missing a cerebellum and a man who had a tapeworm eat its way through his brain over four years, and asks what these kinds of cases are telling us about what we do -- and don't -- know about the human brain.

In The Conversation, two psychologists discuss the research evidence into providing early intervention mental health services to the public shortly after large-scale tragedies. They advise that doing nothing is often much better and safer for people.

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Helen Shen recounts the history of how neuroscientists first discovered that the human brain had right and left hemispheres with seemingly unique functions, and how that scientific view has since been superseded even as the general public has held on and oversimplified it.

In Counterpunch, Geoff Gray analyzes how increasing use of psychiatric drugs and declining financial support for psychology may have contributed to the American Psychological Association's reluctance to condemn involvement in US government torture programs, even in spite of protests from its own membership.

"I spent almost 20 years inside the inner sanctum of the American Psychological Association," writes Bryant Welch in The Huffington Post. "A psychologist and attorney, I was the first Executive Director of Professional Practice for the APA and in 1986 built much of the advocacy structure still in place to advocate for clinical psychologists." Welch offers his perspectives on how and why the APA started to support the US torture program after his departure.

Mind Hacks discusses the first historical case of a celebrity (presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964) being "diagnosed" in the media by psychiatrists and...

Psychology Salon psychologist Randy Paterson discusses the Mad In America investigative report about a program that trains physicians and school staff to more readily diagnose mental illnesses in children. "Authors of the initiatives almost always talk about the enhancement of social supports, the provision of psychotherapy, involvement with community, and so on," writes Paterson. "But in the real world of medical practice, screening usually translates into prescriptions written."

Interviews in io9 with neuroscientists James Giordano of Georgetown University Medical Center and Jonathan Moreno from the University of Pennsylvania supplement a discussion of...

In Discover, Neuroskeptic adds his voice to a discussion about the BMJ Christmas issue and whether or not scientific studies that are intended to...