Poverty

The latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences features several prominent researchers arguing that mental health concerns are not “brain disorders.”

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

Already-existing ICD codes provide a diagnostic alternative to biomedical models of health by contextualizing suffering within psychosocial conditions, yet these codes are underutilized.

A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.

In-depth interviews find that those who screened positive for depression did not explain their experience in terms of diagnostic symptoms.

An anthropological look at the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement suggests several ethical problems and contradictions in its mission.

Utilizing Maslow’s published books and essays, psychologist William Compton delineates common myths and attempts to respond to them.

Report presents new body-based therapeutic approach for shock and complex developmental trauma.

A new study finds poorer depression and anxiety outcomes in psychotherapy for people in economically deprived neighborhoods and those on antidepressants.

From The Independent: Armchair diagnoses of personality disorders are a rising trend, from speculations that President Trump has narcissistic personality disorder to viral articles about discerning...

A new study finds that clinicians’ disregard for mental health patients’ insight into their own condition may be detrimental to treatment.

The team that developed the Power Threat Meaning framework as a diagnostic alternative reflects on the response to the framework after one year.

Attempting to locate the mechanisms of psychiatric disorder is a step in the wrong direction and fails to challenge potentially unjust social practices.

A new study explores feelings of belongingness as a protective factor for childhood trauma and adult mental health outcomes.

Psychological abuse and childhood neglect are strongly associated with depression in adulthood, according to a meta-analysis of childhood trauma and depression published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders. “The findings clearly highlight the potential impact of the more ‘silent’ types of childhood maltreatment (other than physical and sexual abuse) on the development of depression,” the researchers conclude.

Derek Summerfield, consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation Trust, challenges the assumption that Western depression is a universal condition.

Contemporary empirical research explores new ways to conceptualize and heal racial trauma through anticolonial and sociohistorical lenses.

A special issue explores the connection between poverty, mental health, and psychotherapy.

Are White Americans’ poor mental health outcomes caused by Whiteness?

Why do ineffective classification and intervention processes linger in school psychology, and what’s the alternative?

Can a renewed biopsychosocial approach, grounded in an updated philosophy, foster person-centered medicine, and psychiatry?

"There is a need of a shift in investments in mental health, from focusing on 'chemical imbalances' to focusing on 'power imbalances' and inequalities"

From Quartz: Despite its inaccuracy, the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness continues to persist in public consciousness. The prevalence of this myth may be...

Kev Harding argues against conceptualizations of therapy as a ‘cure’ to an ‘illness’ and instead offers alternative approaches.

The 90s were labeled - rather optimistically - as the ‘decade of recovery.’ More recently, recovery has been placed slap bang central in mental health policy. Is supporting recovery pretty much good common sense? Or is the term being misused to pressure those suffering to behave in certain ways?