Around The Web

From Wild Truth: Being in touch with reality means seeing things clearly, without the veils or filters known as defenses. Thus, we’re all crazy to some degree, to the degree that we have defenses.

From Sustainable Human: Everyone thinks that the way to get to love, happiness and joy is by avoiding the forest of dark emotions inside us. But we actually need to go through it in order to get to the Garden of Eden.

From ACES Too High/Kindred Media: A review of research by Dr. Allan Schore shows that early life experience influences boys significantly more than girls, leading them to need more care instead of less.

From Harvard Divinity Bulletin: The therapeutic instrumentalization of transcendence ignores volumes of wisdom from traditions that emphasize the dangers of nonordinary experience.

From The Guardian: Although the overall percentage who were prescribed antipsychotics was relatively small, experts consider it a worrying trend since these powerful drugs carry serious safety risks.

Dr. Sterling's grand rounds lecture looks at why U.S. deaths of despair are the highest in the developed world, what our species' needs are for a healthy lifecycle, and what happens when those needs are frustrated.

From The Washington Post: An inspector general report indicates nursing home physicians have traded one controversial practice for another: sedating dementia patients with anticonvulsant drugs rather than antipsychotics.

From Sustainable Human: Western medicine has a number of hidden ideological beliefs that hinder our understanding and resolution of illnesses, whether physical or mental.

From Academy of Ideas: "In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time," wrote Huxley. "Twenty-seven years later…I feel a good deal less optimistic…The nightmare of total organization…is now awaiting us, just around the next corner."

From The Wall Street Journal: In the two years since the government expanded the scope of allowable telehealth services, companies have been operating largely outside of the advertising rules that govern drugmakers.

From The New York Times: The agency’s actions "raise serious concerns about FDA’s lapses in protocol," the report concluded. Nevertheless, the FDA is now evaluating two other Alzheimer’s drugs for approval early next year.

From CounterPunch/Bruce Levine, PhD: Once again, as with their reporting on WMDs in Iraq, the paper showed no skepticism about declarations from sources with powerful motives to sell a self-serving narrative that conflicts with the evidence.

From Tikkun/Jeremy Lent: Many of the ideas we hold sacrosanct in modern society are actually myths that emerged from erroneous assumptions made at different times and places in history.

From Return to Now: Researchers found that babies are actually four times more sensitive to pain than adults, even though painful procedures are still routinely performed on them with no pain relief.

From Scottish Daily Express: European countries and US states that have introduced systems to allow for euthanasia have reported an increase in the number of non-assisted suicides.

From The Washington Post: What if you went five days a week to a school that regularly locked you up or physically held you down? Most of us would walk in ready for a fight, not to learn.

From The Guardian: As Mayor Eric Adams recently announced a dramatic expansion of New York City’s involuntary hospitalization policy, I listened in disbelief, overcome with both rage and grief.

From Clearer Thinking: The new initiative, launched by Clearer Thinking, will replicate a substantial fraction of papers coming out in top psychology journals.

From John Read, PhD/Psychology Today: 2022 saw many examples of the ongoing international struggle for effective mental health services. Here is my list of some of the year's successes.

From Medium/Rev. Sheri Heller, LCSW: The 'symptom bearer' or 'identified patient' is the scapegoat who carries the evidence of the familial dysfunction.

From The Imprint: A new report says the child welfare system fails to adequately address the needs of families and often harms the very kids it's designed to protect.

From Psychology Today/Justin Garson, PhD: Intriguingly, the greatest increase in stigma toward 'schizophrenia' occurred from 1990 to 2001, the so-called "decade of the brain."

From Eat For Life: As one of the first children to be put on Prozac, this is an important and personal episode for me, as depression and mental illness continue to rise despite all the drugs available today to treat them.

From How To Academy: What happens if, for the sake of fitting in with the family or culture, we have to give up our connection to ourselves, our authenticity, for the sake of attachment?

From Resilience/Jeremy Lent: Futurists warning about the threats of AI are looking in the wrong place. Humanity is already facing an existential threat from an artificial intelligence we created hundreds of years ago.