Childhood Adversity/Trauma

From MinnPost: According to psychologist Hal Pickett, childhood anxiety is best reduced through self-care and common-sense therapies such as getting enough sleep, maintaining a balanced...

Scrooge’s character was forged from his own emotional pain. Indeed, we can change the course of our lives through facing and mourning that pain. Want, deprivation and cruelty create the evils of the world. Mourning and trust, in the context of love, are its antidotes. 

When controlling for social and family characteristics, separating children from parents into out-of-home care increases psychiatric issues, prescriptions, and criminal activity.

Johann Hari, British journalist and author of the new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions, continues to speak out...

In a philosophically rigorous article, Spanish researcher Marino Pérez-Álvarez examines the logic of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Researchers in Finland reviewed questionnaires filled out by 911 primary and psychiatric care patients over 16 years of age. They found that more than...

PsychCentral offers a take on noncompliance: "The moment we decide for others why they experience something as they do is the moment at which...

In a new article for Scientific American, Diana Kwon reports on how the true risks for suicide and aggression in children and teens taking...

Eve Troeh and Mallory Falk explore the use of trauma informed curriculum in the New Orleans school system following Hurricane Katrina. “Consider the everyday...

Furthering findings that social adversity and urbanicity increase the risk of psychosis, research in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry finds that moving schools, family adversity,...

Proposal to include psychosocial adversities that impact mental health in ICD and DSM diagnoses.

When a foster youth encounters a Psychiatrist, chances are high that s/he will get medicated. Traumatized foster youth are often prescribed powerful psychotropics due to exhibiting a wide variety of “normal reactions to abnormal events,” such as despair, agitation, anxiety and self-harm. The practice has been well documented; foster children are prescribed psychotropics at a 2.7 to 4.5 times higher rate than non-foster youth. The National Center for Youth Law aptly summarizes the problem as; too many (25% of foster youth medicated), too soon (300 children under the age of 5 in California are given psychotropics annually) too much (adult dosages) and for too long (no planning or reviews for possible discontinuation).

The Mercury News reports that California’s judicial council is taking major steps to address the rampant use of psychiatric drugs in foster care. The...

Study counters previous evidence supporting multisystemic therapy, finding adolescents are just as likely to have out-of-home placements when receiving multisystemic therapy versus management as usual.

A pathbreaking new study out of Finland suggests that early intervention programs for youth experiencing psychotic-like symptoms may see the greatest improvement when treatment works within the home rather than in a hospital setting. The research, to be published in next month’s issue of Psychiatry Research, found greater improvement in functioning, depression, and hopelessness among teens in a new need-adapted Family and Community oriented Integrative Treatment Model (FCTM) program.

Individuals diagnosed with a psychotic disorder are 4-6 times more likely than the general population to experience victimization.

In this piece for ABC News, Farz Edraki and Lucy Fahey present five stories of people who have recovered from traumatic events through various means,...

A new article examines the usefulness of the ADHD diagnosis and suggests alternatives

Nick Harrop, a campaign manager at YoungMinds, supporting young people’s mental health and wellbeing, said antidepressants for children should never be the only course of action....

What physical activity-based programs are being implemented in schools, how are they being researched, and what kind of impact have they made?

In this episode of On Being, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk discusses the role that bodywork including yoga and eye movement therapy can have...

New research questions whether the diagnosis of ADHD even meets the criteria for a disorder, as set out in the manuals used by the medical and psychiatric fields.

From Scientific American: A decades-long study recently found that men raised in warmer, more nurturing family environments have stronger relationships in adulthood. Article →­

Study questions how international psychiatric treatment of street children in Cairo could be reinforcing their marginality and vulnerability.

New study examines how increased screen time and social media may be contributing to depressive symptoms and suicide risk in teens