“Does Sexual Aggression Alter the Female Brain?”
In a recent rodent study out of Rutgers University, researchers found elevated stress hormones and reduced learning and maternal behaviors in female rodents who...
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...
Brain Science Doesn’t Explain All
In an essay in the Sydney Morning Herald, a psychiatrist explores how the same blind faith in reductionist economic models that lead to a global...
It Remains Unclear How Head Blows Affect Behavior Over the Long Term
It's not clear how repeated injuries to the head that lead to neurodegeneration actually affect people's behaviors, argue University of Buffalo researchers in The...
Alaskan Indigenous Peoples Experiencing High Rates of Trauma
-Two reports found Alaskans of aboriginal descent experiencing very high rates of many different types of trauma.
Pain Predicts Psychopathology
Researchers from Italy, Hungary, and the U.S. investigated the extent that the subjective experience of pain in 575 psychiatric outpatients (without comorbid physical diagnoses)...
Mental Health Providers with “Understanding of Aboriginal Approaches” Wanted
-"Aboriginal youth are nine times more likely to be depressed and three times more likely to think about suicide compared to non-aboriginal youth."
“Maybe Companies Should Chill on Employee-Happiness Programs”
Will Davies, author of The Happiness Industry, does a Q&A on the ways companies are misusing psychological research on happiness. “I think that one thing that often gets lost in lots of the discussions of happiness (especially in the business world) is the possibility that happy work may mean less work.”
“Cortisol Levels in Children’s Hair May Reveal Future Mental Health Risk”
The Guardian covers research out of Australia that found that levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol in the hair of 70 nine-year-old children corresponded to the number of traumatic events experienced by the child. “Childhood is an imperative and sensitive period of development, and when things go wrong it can have lifelong consequences, not just on mental health, but also on general health.”
Mental Illness is the Leading Cause of Military Hospitalizations
Since 2001 almost $2 billion have been spent on drugs to treat mental illness and PTSD in soldiers, but mental illness is still the...
“Attention Deficit After Kids’ Critical Illness Linked to Medical Tubes”
Past research has revealed the children who get hospitalized in the intensive care unit are more likely to develop the symptoms associated with ADHD....
Pain Meds Reduce Dementia Symptoms
British researchers find that a 10% increase in pain medication resulted in a dramatic reduction in the use of antipsychotic and other medications. “When...
Sensitivity to Anxiety is Related to Psychiatric Multimorbidity
Researchers in Israel found that sensitivity to the physical and psychological experiences of anxiety was strongly correlated with PTSD, depression, anxiety disorder, panic attacks,...
“More Patients in Scotland Given Antidepressants”
The BBC reports that the number of people in Scotland taking antidepressants has increased by 5% in the past year with most of the patients being women and those in the poorest parts of the country. “We are now looking at the flabbergasting statistic of more than one in seven people in Scotland being prescribed antidepressants this year,” Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said. “We urgently have to look at better alternatives than simply parking people on medication in the hope things don't get any worse, with no aspiration for complete recovery."
The Dangers of Getting “Diagnosed”
-"When we treat diagnosis as simply a medical issue, we mask the tremendous social power involved in putting a name to human suffering."
Childhood Adversity Promotes Neuroimmune Inflammation and Depression
Researchers in Canada and the U.S. found that in a group of 147 female adolescents at risk for depression, actual transition to depression was...
“Second Patient Dies in Zafgen Obesity Drug Trial”
Two patients have now died while taking the drug beloranib in an obesity drug trial. Both patients were in the active arm of the study and had received the drug rather than a placebo. Zafgen did not say whether it believed the drug had caused the blood clotting in the lungs that led to the patient’s death.
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...
“Income Inequality Is a Health Hazard – Even for the Rich”
“Wealth in the United States can buy many things: education, homes, vacations. It can even buy the best doctors and diet, but it can't buy health.” Why not? Asks Yessenia Funes. Researchers find that inequality in society leads to shorter lives for everyone.
Training the Brain for Well-Being
Experience shapes the brain, for better or worse. Richard Davidson & Bruce McEwen review the ways that adverse early experience create measurable changes in...
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments in Psychiatry
Go to "Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments in Psychiatry" → ...
Scottish Report: Poverty and Mental Health Strongly Linked
-People from Scotland's most deprived areas are more than three times as likely to be treated for mental illness than those in more affluent communities.
Call For DSM-5 Reform Continues
Over 13,000 mental health professionals have signed an open letter from The Society for Humanistic Psychology (Div. 32 of the APA) to the DSM-5...
Are We “Plastic People”?
-How are learnings in epigenetics re-defining human bodies and brains, and what does that mean for our ideas about "normalcy"?
