Causation Theories

PsychAlive is releasing a new blog and e-course on “Making Sense of Your Life,” with psychologists Lisa Firestone and Dan Siegel. They draw upon the...

Black patients are almost twice as likely as their white counterparts to be diagnosed with schizophrenia while whites are significantly more likely to receive a diagnosis of anxiety or depression, according to a recent study published in the journal Psychiatric Services. The researchers also found that the likelihood of receiving psychotherapy for any diagnosis (34%), regardless of race or ethnicity, was much lower than the likelihood of receiving a psychotropic medication (73%).

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

Our use of antidepressants has turned single-episode struggles that recovered 85% of the time within one year, never to recur, into chronic and debilitating disorders that hold patients hostage in their own arrested development. But, If you are in the hole of pain, here’s what I have to say to you. It’s what I say to my patients, and what I tell myself in times of struggle.

When I looked through my mountains of medical records, I saw that the providers who listed my race as black applied diagnoses like major depressive disorder and PTSD. The providers who saw me as white preferred diagnoses of panic disorder and borderline personality disorder. Of course, my experiences are just anecdotal. But if racial bias due to subjective experiences of practitioners can play such a large role in mental health diagnostics, how is this even considered a scientific discipline?

Research in Translational Psychiatry finds that childhood maltreatment and trauma predict a greater likelihood of developing chronic depression, and a reduced likelihood of responding to treatment...

Here I was, 15 years old and already in a long-term treatment facility. I was, on paper: crazy! This entire time, all the adults in my life had been speaking for me. I never felt like I was any of the things they said, but I went along with it. What else could I have done? Every time I rebelled, it only confirmed to my mother what she thought of me.

A new study in press in the Journal of Schizophrenia Research finds that patients who actively resist the negative stigma associated with mental health...

A YouTube video called “Drugs for Kids” takes a rather tongue-in-cheek approach to the overmedication and overdiagnosis of kids. Studies reveal a correlation between how young...

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence is meeting today, May 11th, to discuss evidence of the link between the rise in disability...

For The Influence, addiction expert Stanton Peele criticizes our current genetic and biological “brain disease” approaches to addiction and mental health. Article →

In the Room for Debate section of this weekend's New York Times, specialists in ethics, psychiatry, social work, addiction, and human rights hash out their...

In this podcast from the BMJ talk medicine series, researchers discuss their finding that medical error is the third leading cause of death in...

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....

The Atlantic interviews Raj Raghunathan about his new book, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? “If you were to go back to the...

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...

People who survive life-threatening illnesses in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital are at high risk for depression and anxiety and nearly...

A new study out of UCLA finds that genes related to Alzheimer’s and “ADHD” can be damaged by fructose, a sugar common in the...

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...

Edward Machtinger, MD, director of UCSF's Women's HIV Program, nearly 84 percent of patients with HIV/AIDS died from trauma, such as physical abuse, neglect, substance...

For the last three years, I have been working with people, labeled "hoarders," who have become overwhelmed by their possessions in their homes. This has been some of the most interesting, challenging and thought-provoking work I have ever done. It is also an area that, I think, highlights all of the issues that challenge us in helping people who feel overwhelmed, for whatever reason.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently issued a controversial recommendation that all adolescent and adult patients undergo depression screening in primary care. The...

This MedScape Psychiatry Minute video reviews new research concluding that climate change increases the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders....

Why, despite the fact that the vast majority of people diagnosed with a mental illness have suffered from some form of childhood trauma, is it still so difficult to talk about? Why, despite the enormous amount of research about the impact of trauma on the brain and subsequent effect on behaviour, does there seem to be such an extraordinary refusal for the implication of this research to change attitudes towards those who are mentally ill? Why, when our program and others like it have shown people can heal from the effects of trauma, are so many people left with the self-blame and the feeling they will never get better that my colleague writes about below?

A new analysis of the information that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) publishes for parents about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) concludes that the children’s experiences and contexts are ignored and that medication is presented, misleadingly, as the only solution supported by research evidence.