Anxiety

In this piece for The New York Times, suicidologist and psychotherapist Stacey Freedenthal tells her story of having struggled with suicidality and discusses the importance...

A closer look at a new study reporting that the supplement D-cycloserine improved anxiety when used with exposure therapy.

When I first interviewed Brandon Banks, in the spring of 2008, while researching Anatomy of an Epidemic, he had recently entered Elizabethtown Community College...

Despite safety concerns, a new study reveals that there has been no change in the use of benzodiazepines in the elderly from 2001 to 2010.

$24,000 later and no one knew what was wrong with me. They sent me home with a bag of pills. After being in the hospital, I developed a fear and mistrust of doctors. My general practitioner suggested antidepressants. More pills. It was all they could recommend. I wouldn’t take them. My anxiety worsened. I was obsessed with the idea that if I slept, I would die. So, I stayed awake as much as I could. For an entire year, this was how I lived.

Despite their finding, the researchers suggest that SSRIs be given to people who do not meet criteria for depression or anxiety.

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,...

A new study finds poorer depression and anxiety outcomes in psychotherapy for people in economically deprived neighborhoods and those on antidepressants.

In today’s Boston Globe (April 14), Dr. Dennis Rosen, a pediatric lung and sleep specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, reviews my new book,...

From Metro: Poverty can have a dramatic effect on people's mental and physical health, as it can impact diet, healthcare access, sleep, and socialization. "There are plenty...

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...

A recent review of the research found that benzodiazepine use may have long-term effects on memory and increase the risk for dementia. The study,...

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%).

Experiencing moderate to severe pain, or having at least moderate life interference from pain, doubles risk for anxiety or depression.

New guidelines recommend deprescribing benzodiazepine receptor agonists for adults.

Research from Newcastle University in the U.K. finds that "Increasing attention has focused on the role of emotion and internal experience in obsessive compulsive...

Anxiety can be a clarion call from our better self, a nagging inner tension that will persist until real-life changes are made that attend to deeper needs. When anxiety is reduced to a symptom to be medicated away, or an aberrant emotion based on cognitive distortions in need of correction, the all-important representational value of that anxiety can be lost.

My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

Jürgen Margraf and Silvia Schneider, both well-known psychologists at the University of Bochum in Germany, claim that psychotropic drugs are no solution to mental...

Meta-analytic study detects upsurge in patterns of perfectionism in young adults and explores how neoliberalism contributes to this trend.

Despite concerns about the risk to benefit ratio, the FDA approved flibanserin (Addyi) to treat low female sexual desire in August. In a new...

Research on neurochemicals associated with moods in mice and rats finds that, while less depression-like behavior was observed in those receiving fluoxetine (Prozac) administration...

Recently I wrote an article on MIA entitled Trauma, Psychosis, and Dissociation. Several people responded privately with some very thought-provoking questions that I would like to explore and possibly answer to some extent here. Dedicated readers of the MIA website are all too familiar with the myriad problems that exist with diagnoses in general, the stereotypical (and often untrue) assumptions associated with these various categories, and their lack of scientific validity or reliability. First, though, I want to state that my area of experience and research is with trauma, psychosis, and dissociation . . .

The Chronicle of Education has called the soaring rates of anxiety and depression among college student an “Epidemic of Anguish.” PBS interviews Jennifer Ruark, the editor of the Chronicle series, and Micky Sharma, the director of counseling at Ohio State University. Ruark reports that about “1 in 4 students reporting to campus counseling centers now are already on some kind of psychotropic medication.” Sharma adds that “just because a student is crying does not mean he or she needs psychotherapy. Sometimes that’s actually the type of emotional response that I would want to see.”

Stimulant medication does not improve the academic performance or test scores of the 9% of all children in the U.S. diagnosed with ADHD, according to...