Around The Web

-Time magazine reports on a study about Assisted Outpatient Treatment, without disclosing that the study was developed for prominent promoters of AOT.

Helen Branswell at STAT: “Give the FDA independence and elevate its status. That’s the message from six former commissioners who led the FDA for...

Having had an open letter on his website linked through a pair of crossed fingers on his website for some time, 1BoringOldMan gives up...

NBC News reports that the FDA is taking action in an attempt to make opioid drugs, cousins to opium and heroin, a last-ditch option...

A plan from the British government to pay doctors for every diagnosis of dementia that they make is an act of "folly," writes physician...

Andrew Solomon's review of "All Joy and No Fun" by Jennifer Senior serves as a great reminder of the importance of good parenting -...

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.

-People could be sentenced to two years in jail for publicly disclosing information about health and mental health conditions in Australian immigration detention centers.

-What evidence base is there to guide a patient switching from one type of psychotherapeutic treatment to another?

Writing on his critical psychiatry blog, Duncan Double critiques Joe Herbert’s piece on “Why can't we treat mental illness by fixing the brain?” in Aeon. While Herbert admits that there is a "mysterious and seemingly unfathomable gap" between psychology and neuroscience, which "bedevils not only psychiatry, but all attempts to understand the meaning of humanity,” he goes on to speculate that someday psychiatrists will be able to relate symptoms to brain activity.

The Guardian writes that "Use of antidepressant drugs has become more common than ever before. Perhaps it's time that we looked at the wider causes...

-Two neuroscientists call for "immediate action" to better understand the risks of using drugs like Ritalin and Provigil to "enhance" cognitive functions.

"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.”

Beyond Meds offers a collection of posts that look at the "mental illness" system from a variety of perspectives. Article →  

The sub-heading "A pill to dampen memories stirs hope and worry" opens a reflective essay in Nautilus by Emily Anthes on the neuroscience and...

"Our research shows that wise reasoning is not exclusively a function of the mind and cognitive ability. We found that people who have greater...

The Mail sent three women to their doctors, reporting fictional symptoms of short-term, mild depression.  Two walked out with prescriptions for medication, despite expressions...

-The Conversation has run a seven-article series discussing the history, politics and philosophical underpinnings of ethically questionable medical research.

A small study of 30 participants in Germany claims that cannabis can be used to treat “ADHD” because it increases the availability of dopamine. "This then has the same effect but is a different mechanism of action than stimulants like Ritalin and dexedrine amphetamine, which act by binding to the dopamine and interfering with the metabolic breakdown of dopamine." According to the report, 22 of the 30 participants opted to discontinue their prescriptions in favor of medical marijuana.

-Only one person out of 661 in a psychological study said that he/she is more biased than the average person.

“We are concerned about the implications of this rule,” said Jennifer Mathis, a lawyer at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for patients. “It points a finger inappropriately at people with mental illness as a source of gun violence. It’s a bad precedent to start creating exceptions to the privacy law for people with mental illness, who are responsible for about 4 percent of incidents of gun violence.”

-"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."

At CounterPunch, Joseph Natoli connects Big Pharma, mass shootings, and rampant inequality. He writes: “The Brave New World soma strategy to deal with a population that, were they not doped up, might violently disrupt that brave new world, is useful if a society is ‘creatively destroying’ a growing number of its population each day. While the poor have daily evidence of their poverty, a collapsing middle class live in the illusion that they are middle class and just a short distance, not from ruin, but from fame and fortune. They are, in short, heading for a catastrophic break-down. Big Pharma is already set to give us all a ‘soft landing.’”

-"They argue that the concept of 'schizophrenia' is neither valid, nor useful, and suggest replacing it with more generic concepts such as 'psychosis' or 'madness'."

“A little background digging revealed to me that this study is the tip of a new iceberg relative to ADHD diagnosis, stimulant treatment, and...