Physical Health

A sea change is needed in the evaluation of children with perceived psychological disturbances. Parents are told that their child has a fictitious biochemical imbalance in the brain while real medical disorders are overlooked. In our family's case, it was Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Strep (PANDAS).

The Defense Cascade is a survival framework that evolutionary researchers are exploring as an explanation for extreme states that many people experience. It can help explain why chronic stress can make us feel like ending our life is the only reasonable way out.

The latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences features several prominent researchers arguing that mental health concerns are not “brain disorders.”

Throughout the ages, convulsions, contortions of the body and face, including the tongue, super-human strength, catatonic periods, long periods of wakefulness or sleep, insensitivity to pain, speaking in tongues, and a predilection for self-injurious behaviours have all been offered as physical evidence of possession. The modern day interpretation, however, comes with a plot twist befitting a media spectacle. There is growing consensus in the medical community that many prior accounts of “demonic possession” may have represented original accounts of what is now broadly known as autoimmune encephalitis.

Holistic psychiatry teaches that within each and every one of us there are great and latent powers, which are beyond the ordinary life. Daily progress in self-development is not the result of accident or chance, rather it comes from a steady practice of working on yourself.

Utilizing Maslow’s published books and essays, psychologist William Compton delineates common myths and attempts to respond to them.

Findings suggest that treatment not only fails to reduce the severity of “ADHD” symptoms in adulthood but is associated with decreased height.

A new article reviews studies in the field of nutritional psychiatry and how nutrition can prevent and treat mental health issues.

Attempting to locate the mechanisms of psychiatric disorder is a step in the wrong direction and fails to challenge potentially unjust social practices.

The first ever population-level study of the brain-gut connection in humans finds evidence for a link between gut bacteria and mental health.

New research suggests that treatable metabolic abnormalities underlie some treatment-resistant cases of depression—and treating the metabolic condition has the possibility of dramatically reducing depressive symptoms

Derek Summerfield, consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation Trust, challenges the assumption that Western depression is a universal condition.

Can a renewed biopsychosocial approach, grounded in an updated philosophy, foster person-centered medicine, and psychiatry?

Review compares the effectiveness of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for improving physical health outcomes in people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Study finds that individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression have diets that are more inflammatory and higher in calories.

A new study finds that more than a third of Americans are taking prescription drugs that can cause depressive symptoms as a side-effect.

New prevention strategies are needed based on our increasing understanding of the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

A review article and meta-analysis of 18 articles published in the journal of Psychological Medicine reported effects of vitamin and/or mineral supplements on psychiatric symptoms in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study provides evidence of the beneficial effects of taking certain vitamins and minerals for improving symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and fish has repeatedly been found to improve mental health.

The conventional Western classification systems of health conditions are based on flawed science shaped by reductionist, hierarchical, and profit-driven ideologies. THEN wants to create a new paradigm built upon principles drawn from systems science, the life course perspective, developmental neurobiology, and other evidence-informed studies.

Neuroscientific results that class humans into two categories, “male” and “female,” tend to reify gender stereotypes by giving them the appearance of objective scientific truth.

Some researchers have been arguing to reclassify all psychiatric disorders as diseases of the brain and nervous system, similar to epilepsy or Parkinson's disease. Neuroimaging research, however, reveals that psychiatric disorders appear to be distinct from neurological disorders, according to a new study published in this month’s issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.

A new study offers radical solutions for improving the cardiovascular health of people with mental health diagnoses: reducing antipsychotic prescriptions..

Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.

From Thoughtful Living: The biomedical model of psychiatry, along with the DSM, is deeply flawed and can often be misleading. To improve, mental health services...