Sounding an Alarm Over Children’s Mental Health
Guardian readers respond to news about soaring Ritalin use, the underfunding of child mental health services and the toll GCSEs are taking.
"As a group of...
Big Pharma Enlists Leading Professors to Justify Drug Prices
From ProPublica: The pharmaceutical company has deployed a potent new ally to justify skyrocketing drug prices. Precision Health Economics, a firm comprised of leading economists and...
“Can Mindfulness Help Treat PTSD?”
University of California Berkely's Greater Good Science Center reports a study that finds "adding mindfulness to traditional therapy could be beneficial for soldiers with PTSD."
Article...
“Randomized Controlled Trials in Environmental Health Research: Unethical or Underutilized?”
-Simon Fraser University health scientists argue that we need to start doing more randomized controlled trials to better understand the negative impacts of environmental pollutants on human bodies and brains.
Capitalism and Coercive Control
From Red Flag: A society that normalizes the dynamics of coercive control in most aspects of life is ill-equipped to eradicate them from our personal lives.
“Psychologists Throw Open The ‘File Drawer’”
“The ‘file drawer problem’ refers to the fact that in science, many results remain unpublished – especially negative ones,” Neuroskeptic reports. A new paper...
Deprescribing: How to be on Less Medication for Healthier Aging
In this post for Better Health While Aging, Dr. Leslie Kernisan discusses the importance of making sure that older adults are taking the minimum amount...
“There Was a Time – it Was a Long Time ago, Maybe 40 Years...
For consistently trenchant analysis of the DSM controversy, visit 1 Boring Old Man. Among many posts this weekend, he eulogizes his early career as...
On the Right of People on Disability to Refuse Psychotropic Medications
The People With Disabilities Foundation won a judgment against SSA for illegally using a plaintiff’s right to refuse psychotropic medications as evidence she was "not disabled."
“’Yalom’s Cure’ is a Meditative Immersion into Leading a Psychologist’s Life”
The LA Times reviews a new film about Irvin David Yalom, existential psychologist, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford Unversity. "’Yalom's Cure’ dispenses an...
Mental Health Advocates Launch Campaign to Stop Continued Electroshock of 22-Year-Old MN Man
From Mindfreedom: Charles Helmer was force-shocked on March 26 and, unless the advocacy campaign is successful, he will be force-shocked on April 9 and every two weeks afterwards.
Why Social Media can Never Fill the Void in our Depressing Lives
From VICE: According to Marcus Gilroy-Ware, author of Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism & Social Media, society's widespread use of social media stems from and is exploited...
Why Psychiatric Wards Are Uniquely Vulnerable to the Coronavirus
From The New Yorker: The coronavirus, and the public-health measures undertaken to slow its spread, is uniquely hostile to psychiatric care.
Coronavirus, Anxiety, and the Profound Failure of Rugged Individualism
From Vox: "Johann Hari: Depression and anxiety are signals telling us that our needs are not being met, and I would say the single most...
ADHD and “The Merchants of Speed”
Pediatrician and UCSF professor Lawrence Diller has issued the fourth of a four-part memoir on Huffington Post, recounting the rise of ADHD medicating and...
“How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat”
The New York Times’ Anahad O’Connor investigates how the sugar industry paid scientists as far back as the 1960s to downplay the link between...
“Making A Brain Map That We Can Use”
-Does it make any more sense to try to describe what a brain does based on its physical components than it does to describe what a computer does based on the plastics and metals that make it up?
“High-volume Care, Not Good Care”
WSJ Live interviews cardiologist Dr. Sandeep Jauhar about his new book, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician. Jauhar describes "the perverse incentives of...
Abuse Survivors Fight for Justice After Police Drop Investigation at Child Mental Health Unit
From The Independent: Survivors of the Hill End Hospital Adolescent Unit in St Albans, UK, said they were sexually abused, filmed during strip searches, beaten, punched and sedated as a punishment.
Watch: “I Hear Voices in My Head, But I’m Fine”
"Eleanor Longden started hearing voices when she was 18. She was drugged and hospitalised, then told she was schizophrenic. A psychiatrist even told her...
Parasites Can Alter Behavior
Science News reviews the prevalence of Toxoplasmosis Gondii in humans, and its effects on behavior. Though the connection of Gondii to schizophrenia is weak,...
It’s Time Psychiatrists Stopped Stereotyping Women With Personality Disorders
From The Independent: Taming the Beast Within, a new book on personality disorder diagnosis, has just been released. It features a small faceless monster...
It’s Misleading to Call Addiction a Disease
From The New York Times: The view of addiction as disease fails to capture much of the experience of addiction, and disease language is not necessary to make the point for humane treatment.
The Test Result that Gets You Locked Up Indefinitely
-People who've been arrested for sexual offences can end up indefinitely incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, depending on their answers to a ten-question form.
Is Multi-tasking Bad for Your Brain?
-The Guardian Observer looks at high-tech, high-speed multi-tasking and suggests it may be having negative impacts on our psyches.
