“Beware Return of Asylums”
-A psychologist and disability rights attorney argue that the idea of a return to building asylums is based on many false assumptions.
Many Psychiatrists Wouldn’t Disclose a Mental Illness
-In a Canadian survey, 42% of psychiatrists said that if they developed a mental disorder, they would not disclose it to family or friends.
“A Skeptical Take on Quit-Smoking Drug Chantix”
Philadelphia Inquirer health writer Marie McCullough reports on severe psychiatric disturbances in people taking Pfizer’s smoking-cessation drug Chantix.
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“Our Kids Are on too Many Drugs — and the Drug Companies Win”
Salon notes that "The glut of diagnoses and subsequent medication raises a whole raft of questions about what’s happening with our children, and how...
“Small Talk Can Improve Health”
Scientific American reports on a March 25 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that finds that even superficial contact with people...
Greenberg on DSM: “There are many… who wonder about the sanity…”
"There are many practitioners, including psychiatrists, who wonder about the sanity and the soundness of the enterprise in general," Gary Greenberg tells the Australian...
“If This Isn’t Racketeering…”
1 Boring Old Man opines that the lawyers in the Texas TMAP trial "were operating on a higher plane than these guys in Philadelphia,"...
“What Doctors Don’t Know About the Drugs They Prescribe”
Ben Goldacre write about scientific triumphalism, dirty pharmaceutical research, and his Ted Talk in the Huffington Post.
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Latest Issue of “Human Givens” Released
Human Givens is a biannual journal that “explores the relevance of the very latest knowledge about human psychology and the way we live today.”...
1BoringOldMan on Misusing the Tools of Clinical Neuroscience
1BoringOldMan picks up where he left off two years ago - critiquing Robert Gibbons' misuse of statistical analysis to claim that antidepressants were both...
SeaWorld Uses Benzodiazepines to Control Killer Whales
The Daily Beast dives into the debate over SeaWorld's use of benzoiazepines to stop their killer whales from "acting aggressively toward each other in...
Terrorism Science: 5 Insights into Jihad in Europe
"Terrorism researchers are trying to understand how young people in Europe become radicalized, by looking for clues in the life histories of those who have committed or planned terrorist acts in recent years, left the continent to join ISIS, or are suspected of wanting to become jihadists. A mixture of sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and psychologists, such researchers are drawing on information generated by police, judicial inquiries and the media, and, in some cases, on interviews. They also study factors at play in prisons and socially-deprived areas. Some of their insights are summarized here.”
“It’s All In Her Bed (Or, Don’t Shoot the Massager)”
The drug watch blog Evidencer.org takes on Flibanserin (Addyi) the first drug claiming “to enhance women’s sexual drive…”
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“Dear Disability or Disease…” — What Would You Write?
-Julio Salazar shares a letter that he addresses to his "PTSD, OCD and Depression," and invites others to submit theirs.
“Porous Diagnostic Boundaries: A New Emphasis for the Bulletin”
Schizophrenia Bulletin wrestles with its identity and mission in light of current challenges to the diagnostic categories.
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“MIT’s Misleading PR Headline on Autism”
Last week a headline from MIT news proclaimed “Neuroscientists reverse autism symptoms.” The Health News Review points out why this headline is misleading.
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“It’s the Drugs, Stupid!”
Gary Kohls, MD, revisits an article from AmericanThinker.com that suggests "Today, many of our children are prescribed the same psychotropic drugs as were given...
Sunday Oddity: “How do you diagnose and treat an illness that doesn’t linguistically exist?”
Canoe.ca reports on the doings of Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Kutcher, previously exposed by MIA Blogger Alison Bass for his role as a co-author...
Sunday Humor: Study Finds Therapy and Antidepressants Equally Effective At Monetizing Depression
-The Onion< reviews a new study that finds gold in them thar patients.
“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.
Lax Online Security Makes Hacking Your Way to Scientific Prominence Easy
How easy is it to gain access to some of the biggest online hosts of academic research journals in the world, and then start...
“Want to Ensure There’s Not Another Adam Lanza? Look at the ‘Lost Boys’ Around...
Bruce Levine writes in Take Part that "Recognizing the limitations of professional treatment can be sobering but can also serve as motivation for nonprofessionals...
“The Irrationality of Irrationality: The Paradox of Popular Psychology”
From Scientific American: "Psychologists found that people are 'radically insensitive to both the quantity and quality of information that gives rise to impressions and...
“Nursing Homes for People of Color: Still Segregated, Still Unequal”
-In Patient POV, Laura Newman argues that nursing homes are hiding their poor health and mental health practices -- including racist ones -- from the general public.
“Mental Illness and Familial Influences”
"Let us be clear that claims about established genetic or biochemical causation for mental distress are, as things stand, entirely fictional," writes Dr Lucy...
