Spanking is Associated With Mental Illness
Canadian researchers, publishing today in the journal Pediatrics, find that physical punishment such as spanking is associated with an increased risk of mental disorders....
Lowered Oxytocin in Schizophrenia
Researchers from Japan found, in a study of 27 persons with a schizophrenia diagnosis, 17 with major depressive disorder, and 27 controls, that negative...
Stress Reduces Gene Activity Thought to Protect Against Depression
Researchers at Yale University found that stress in rats blocks the activity of a gene that promotes healthy neural connections in the brain. The...
Prenatal Prozac Alters Stress Response in Male Rats
Researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands, publishing online June 20 in Neuroscience, found that prenatal fluoxetine (Prozac) differentially affected the development of glucocorticoid receptors...
Chemical Imbalances and Other Black Unicorns
âWhat do you think caused your problems?,â I asked.
âI have a chemical imbalance, a chemical imbalance, an imbalance in the brain that makes me ill.â
Familial Factors Affect Depression, BD, OCD, PD, and Phobias
A study of 566 families with 1416 bipolar-disordered members, and 675 families with 1726 depressed members by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University...
“Mental Illness” and the Spiral of Shame
A researcher from the University of California in Santa Barbara writes today in the Journal of Social Psychiatry that "one reason that theories of...
Amygdala Development and Caregiver Absence
A researcher from UCLA writes in Developmental Psychobiology of the effects of caregiver absence on the development of the amygdala, suggesting that caregiver deprivation...
British Psychological Society Critiques the DSM-5
The British Psychological Society has "serious concerns about many aspects of the framework. In our response we have argued that the categorical framework of...
The Psychopathology of American Life
âIâm severely depressed.â
These were the words that Donesha*, a 35 year-old African American woman repeatedly uttered to me.
Nevada Legislation Aims to Curb Psychotropics in Foster Children
A touching article in the Las Vegas Sun follows one child from abandonment through foster placements, polypharmacy, suicidality, delinquency and homelessness to stability off...
The Functional Neurology of Guilt in Depression
The University of Manchester in England, along with the D'Or Insitute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have found that differences in activity in the...
Antenatal Depression Associated w/Mom’s Childhood Maltreatment
Maternal antenatal depression is highly correlated with a history of the mother having been mistreated in childhood, and these two facts significantly increase the...
The Genetics of Depression: “Look to the Environment”
A comprehensive review of research on the genetics of depression up to 2012, published online today by Psychological Bulletin, finds "a continued lack of...
Eye Movement and the Schizophrenia Diagnosis
Researchers from the U.S., Germany and the U.K. found they were able to differentiate 88 persons with schizophrenia diagnoses from 88 controls with almost...
Childhood Stress Alters Memory and Brain Structure
Researchers from the universities of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Orleans collected MRI scans and assessments of executive functioning and stress exposure from 61...
Human Behavioral Genetics’ “Unfulfilled Promise”
A review of the literature on behavioral genetics, published online today by Developmental Psychobiology, finds "powerful new methods have failed to reveal even one bona...
Children Raised in Institutions: Increased ADHD, Anxiety, etc.
Data drawn from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project show that children raised in institutions in Romania exhibit elevated symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, depression, and...
Anxiety Accounts for Bipolar False Positives
Researchers found that of 1,534 patients assessed at Australia's Black Dog Institute Depression clinic, a significant number received a false positive diagnosis of bipolar...
Antidepressants Cause Autism-Like Gene Expression in Fish
Prozac, Effexor, and/or carbamazepine induce gene expression patterns in the brains of fathead minnows that mimic those thought to be associated with autism in...
Stress Response in Individuals and Families Predicts Psychosis
Researchers from King's College, London, reviewed all studies examining psychological and biological markers of the stress response in both individuals at high risk of...
Similarity of Dissociation and Voice-Hearing in DID and Schizophrenia
A study of 40 patients with schizophrenia diagnoses and 40 patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID) found that "neither phenomenological definitions of dissociation nor...
Search for Schizophrenia Gene Marches On
In a study released June 6, 2012 through the online journal Behavioral and Brain Functions, researchers from Japan acknowledge that "the results of association...
Stress Sensitivity and Tolerance Associated With Psychosis
Researchers from Columbia and NYU found that stress sensitivity and impaired stress tolerance was greater in a cohort of 65 individuals deemed at high...
Discrimination Impacts Mental Health: Especially Among the Educated
A cross-sectional study of 1,994 individuals in a deprived area of Japan found that perceived discrimination was significantly associated with depressive symptoms and a...
