Childhood Adversity/Trauma

The staff at Minneapolis’ Southside Village Boys and Girls Club are implementing  a specially targeted free interactive counseling toolkit designed by a team of volunteers...

The researchers suggest that developmental immaturity is mislabelled as a mental disorder and unnecessarily treated with stimulant medication

Researchers recently completed a first of its kind, large-scale international survey of attitudes about mental health and they were surprised by the results. According to their analysis published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders, people in developed countries, like the United States, are more likely to assume that ‘mental illnesses’ are similar to physical illnesses and biological or genetic in origin, but they are also much less likely to think that individuals can overcome these challenges and recover

Researchers at Duke University who studied 183 adolescents for three years found that increased depression associated with poverty may be mediated by epigenetic changes in DNA. The...

A new article suggests integrating physical activity throughout the day may help to address the mental health of students.

A new study investigates the relationships between early-home environmental factors and later-life physiological response to psychosocial stressors.

Attempts to bridge the gap between research and practice result in a family therapy approach which employs clients as co-researchers.

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

In this piece for Canterbury Christ Church University, Nell Butler highlights the significance of the recently released Power Threat Meaning Framework. A trauma survivor herself, Butler...

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

Amid growing criticism about the over-prescription of psychotropic medication in foster care, Pennsylvania commissioned PolicyLab to conduct an analysis of the use of psychiatric drugs among all of the state’s Medicaid-enrolled children. The report, released in June, found that the rate of psychotropic prescriptions among youth in Medicaid and foster care was higher than previously reported.

Structural competency is put forth as a framework that addresses social and structural determinants in global mental health.

From the Stamford Advocate: Increasing numbers of students have been affected by trauma; almost half of American adolescents have experienced an adverse childhood event. It...

ADHD behaviors were linked to the presence of both high levels of pollutants and persistent economic deprivation at birth and through childhood.

In the Boston Globe, Sarah Schweitzer tells the story of a young boy brutally abused by his parents then given to his grandparents who struggled with extreme poverty and homelessness. “Researchers now understood that trauma could alter the chemistry of developing brains and disrupt the systems that help a person handle stress, propelling a perpetual state of high alert. The consequences could be lifelong. As an adult, he’d be more likely to suffer anxiety and depression and heart disease and stroke. His ability to hold a job, manage money, and make good decisions could be compromised. And there was evidence, controversial but mounting, that he could pass on these traits to his children.”

School discipline that punishes minor misbehavior may increase adolescents’ misconduct and lead to racial inequalities in school discipline.

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

In this guest post for Shrink Rap, Dr. Maher critiques the ways psychiatry has changed over the years. While psychiatry used to be humanistically, psychodynamically oriented,...

A new article explains common misconceptions about ADHD that are held by teachers and mental health professionals and may lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication in schools.

While a great deal of the excitement about advances in psychological treatments comes from the potential for research in neuroscience to unlock the secrets of the brain, many mental health experts would like to temper this enthusiasm. A special issue of the Behavior Therapist released this month calls into question the predominant conception of mental illnesses as brain disorders.

From CNN: From 1999 to 2015, 1,309 children ages 5 to 12 died by suicide in the U.S. That means that on average, one child under...

From Vox: Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being introduced in schools and touted as helpful methods of reducing students' anxiety and attention problems. However, the research...

Fifteen years ago this month we were sitting together in the basement of Peter’s house. We had felt a sense of despair at the widespread misinformation and atrocious stereotypes that were dominating media coverage of mental health at the time. We felt that our profession had a responsibility to challenge these stereotypes, and that as psychologists we had something unique to contribute. That was the time when research into the psychology of psychosis was beginning to burgeon, and many of our findings challenged not only the stereotypes but – perhaps more significantly - much ‘accepted wisdom’ within mental health services as well.

Researchers at Harvard University, in the largest and most detailed study on the topic to date, found that childhood maltreatment is significantly associated with...

In this piece for The Guardian, Jay Watts explores the social and societal factors that often lead to self-harm and explains how psychiatric labeling can exacerbate self-harm. "Self-harm...