Health Care? More Like Health Scare!
From the Lown Institute: For pharmaceutical companies who use scare tactics to sell drugs, every day is like Halloween. This list of egregious advertisements shows...
Twenty Years of Art at Bethlem Hospital
From BBC: At Bethlem Royal Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in London, patients are given the opportunity to work in the hospital's art studios as part...
The Misery Filter
In this op-ed for The New York Times, Ross Douthat discusses the way we tend to "filter for misery," failing to recognize the private struggles...
The Placebo Effect is Amplified When Doctors Appear Likeable
From The British Psychological Society: A new study found that the placebo effect is enhanced by the impression of warmth and competence.
"Howe and her team...
Mental Health Patient Becomes Best Mental Health Nurse
From ABC Australia: Matthew Ball, a mental health nurse with lived experience of hearing voices, psychiatric diagnosis, and hospitalization, was recently named the Australian College...
Depressed Patients on Antidepressants Do Worse in the Long Run
From Medical Xpress: A new analysis of the long-term effects of antidepressants found that symptoms of depression were more sharply elevated nine years following treatment...
Low-Carbohydrate Diet Superior to Antipsychotic Medications
From Psychology Today: Research and case studies show that the ketogenic diet may be a promising treatment for psychosis and other mental health challenges. The ketogenic...
The Truth is Out There: The Philosophy of the X-Files
From Big Think: The X-Files, a popular TV show from the 1990's, explores the philosophy of science, delving into questions about what constitutes quality science. While one...
Humans Had to Evolve to Acknowledge Octopus Consciousness
In this piece for Quartz, Ephrat Livni explores our evolving attitudes toward octopuses, from initial fear and revulsion to contemporary respect and inquiry. Now, scientists are...
Teaching Psychology Students to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse
From The Conversation: An undergraduate course in behavioral psychology at Bangor University now includes a fully gamified module that immerses students in a zombie apocalypse...
Zombies Must Be Dualists
In this piece for Nautilus, Sean Carroll introduces the idea of a "philosophical zombie," beings that look and behave exactly like humans, but lack the...
The Persistence of the Radioactive Bogeyman
From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Since 1950, a noteworthy number of American and European horror movies have used radiation as a plot device. The...
The First Count of Fentanyl Deaths in 2016
From The New York Times: According to the first governmental account of nationwide drug deaths to cover all of 2016, drug overdose deaths increased by...
Vikas Saini: Protecting Patients From Excessive Medicine
In this piece for the BMJ, Jeanne Lenzer profiles Vikas Saini, a cardiologist who is working to fight against excessive medical treatment. His work with...
Pierre Janet and the History of Psychological Treatments
In this piece for Holistic Elephants, Bernard Guerin discusses Pierre Janet's book Psychological Healing: A Historical and Clinical Study, which describes a variety of mental health...
The Perspective of the Outside
From Red Wedge: Mark Fisher, an author and scholar known for analyzing mental health under neoliberal capitalism, took his own life this past January. His...
What We Must Learn From the US Opioid Epidemic
From The BMJ: There is no doubt that America's opioid epidemic is a national crisis that needs to be addressed. However, we must be careful...
Playing Up the Benefits of Play at Work
From the Association for Psychological Science: New research has found evidence that play at work is associated with less fatigue, boredom, stress, and burnout in...
How Norms Change
From The New Yorker: The extent to which we act on our biases is largely dependent upon the social norms within our surrounding environments, which...
Drug Dealers in Lab Coats
From The New York Times: For decades, America has waged an ineffective war on illicit drug dealers and drug lords. However, we have failed to...
How UCLA is Fighting a Proxy Patent Battle in India
From The Wire: Xtandi, a life-prolonging cancer drug, currently does not have a patent in India, meaning that Indian cancer patients are able to access...
When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy
From The New York Times Magazine: The work of Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist best known for her research and viral TED talk on "power...
The Drug Industry’s Triumph Over the DEA
In this piece for The Washington Post, Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein investigate how a handful of members of Congress, allied with some of the nation's...
Consciousness: An Object Lesson
In this interview for The New York Review of Books, Riccardo Manzotti puts forth a view of existence as relative. However, he argues, the fact that...
State Spends $90 Million on Unnecessary Mental Health Care
From the Star Tribune: Minnesota taxpayers have shelled out more than $92 million to house patients at a state psychiatric hospital who no longer require...
