‘A Little Bit of OCD’: The Downside of Mental Health Awareness
From The Guardian: People often claim to experience mental health problems only to excuse their unpleasant or hurtful behaviors. This can exacerbate prejudice toward those...
A Mad World: Capitalism and the Rise of Mental Illness
From Red Pepper: Capitalism produces much of the mental distress that is categorized as "mental illness" by turning human creativity and connectivity into social isolation,...
The ONION: “New Antidepressant Makes Friends’ Problems Seem Worse”
“This drug allows depressed patients to concentrate exclusively on their friends’ troubles and mentally magnify them, enabling them to, for example, construe an insignificant...
Staggering Levels of Health Spending in U.S.
From the Center for Health Journalism: In 2015, the U.S. spent a staggering $3.2 trillion on health care. This budget is often spent ineffectively; our spending...
Amphetamines Have Long-Term Effects on Adolescent Brain, Study Finds
A new study published in the journal Neuroscience finds that rats given regular doses of amphetamines during adolescence have brain and behavioral changes in adulthood....
Prozac Nation is Now the United States of Xanax
In this piece for The New York Times, Alex Williams discusses the social, political, cultural, and economic trends that have led to the recent rise in...
An Alternative Perspective on Psychotherapy: It is Not a ‘Cure’
Kev Harding argues against conceptualizations of therapy as a ‘cure’ to an ‘illness’ and instead offers alternative approaches.
What If We Are All Wrong About Mental Illness?
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...
Neoliberalism Drives Increase in Perfectionism Among College Students
Meta-analytic study detects upsurge in patterns of perfectionism in young adults and explores how neoliberalism contributes to this trend.
Coroner Warns of Deaths Involving Young People and Drugs
From The Irish News: Steven Coyle, a 27-year-old father of two, recently died of complications resulting from a cocktail of prescription medications for depression, anxiety,...
”Broken Brains” and “Beautiful Minds”
When I first interviewed Brandon Banks, in the spring of 2008, while researching Anatomy of an Epidemic, he had recently entered Elizabethtown Community College...
Skin-to-Skin Contact Benefits Mothers with Post-Partum Depression
In a study of 90 new mothers in Nova Scotia, five hours per day of skin-to-skin contact (SSC) reduced mothers' depression scores in their...
Tripping for Knowledge: The Psychedelic Epistemologist
In this interview for 3:AM Magazine, Chris Letheby argues that even though psychedelics may induce delusions or imaginary phenomena, their use can also lead to accurate...
Quebec Launching a Publicly Funded Psychotherapy Program
From CBC News: The Quebec government has announced that it will be making a recurring investment of $35 million into the province's first publicly funded...
Half of Opioid Prescriptions Go to People With Mood Disorders
From STAT: A recent study found that 51 percent of all opioid prescriptions in the U.S. are written for people diagnosed with anxiety, depression and other...
Study Explores Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence in College Women with Disabilities
A new study explores sexual violence and intimate partner violence in college women with mental health related disabilities.
“Are Anxiety Drugs Making Us Less Eager To Lend A Helping Hand?”
For the Huffington Post, David Freeman asks “By tamping down anxious feelings, could it be that these so-called “anxiolytic” drugs are blunting our empathy and...
More Evidence for the Lasting Psychological Impact of Lead Exposure in Childhood
New research points to numerous harmful effects of high-level lead exposure in childhood on adult mental health and personality characteristics.
Living Through the Catastrophe
In this piece for ROAR Magazine, Jerome Roos explores the psychological, social, and economic impact of living under the imminent threat of catastrophic man-made climate...
No Support for Antidepressants Over Benzodiazepines for Anxiety
A review of all the relevant research comparing benzodiazepines (BDZ) to antidepressants (AD) for the treatment of anxiety was published Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics this Friday....
“Terror Management Theory and our Response to the Paris Attacks”
In this short audio clip, psychologist Sheldon Solomon discusses what research on our unconscious fears about death can tell us about terrorism, intolerance, and radicalism. “In the wake of the Paris attacks, we examine the worm that some people think is eating away at our core — our fear of death.”
The Rise of Solitary
From Dissent Magazine: In her recently published book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement, scholar and advocate Keramet Reiter discusses the...
Deconstructing Psychiatric Diagnoses: An Attempt At Humor
Based on my experience both as a therapist and client in the mental health field, I have learned that when therapists or psychiatrists give you the following diagnoses all too often here is what they really mean:
Treating Anxiety by Tapering Off Antidepressants
Researchers from Samaritan Mental Health in Corvallis, Oregon successfully treated 12 patients for anxiety by discontinuing their antidepressant medications. Some received alternative medications for...
Child Poverty Linked to Early Neurological Impairment
A new NIH-funded study suggests that children from low-income environments are more likely to have neurological impairments. The researchers claim that these neurodevelopmental issues are “distinct from the risk of cognitive and emotional delays known to accompany early-life poverty.”
