Adult

Research from the University of Maryland finds that "Although 'psychosis-like experiences' (PLEs) may reflect elevated risk for onset of serious mental illness," further examination...

A study of 1,128 adults drawn from Canada's National Population Health Survey finds that more than three quarters (77%) recovered from depression in 2...

A study in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology finds that in a sample of 641 adopted adolescents, an increase in the level of ADHD...

Christopher Dowrick and Allen Frances write, in an article for the British Medical Journal, that though the prevalence of major depressive disorder in the...

In "the largest assessment of substance use among individuals with severe psychotic illness to date," researchers from Washington University and the University of Southern...

Schizophrenia Bulletin wrestles with its identity and mission in light of current challenges to the diagnostic categories. Article →

Noted schizophrenia researchers Robin Murray, Robert Zipursky and Thomas Reilly write in Schizophrenia Bulletin that "mental health professionals need to join with patients and...

A blog in Scientific American reviews sleep’s role in "Obesity, Schizophrenia, Diabetes... Everything".  The article notes  a tight link between depression and sleep apnea,...

John Grohol of PsychCentral explains why, while "some well-meaning folks believe that all we need is 'better mental health treatment,' and suddenly we will...

In our last blog, we focused on the fact that nutrient supplementation has not only been accepted in the realm of physical health in the past, but it has actually been endorsed by reputable sources such as the Journal of the American Medical Association editors who published the Fairfield and Fletcher articles 11 years ago recommending that all adults take a multivitamin to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis (note that this is completely inconsistent with very recent studies reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine --- but that’s just the way science works, using different nutrients and different methodologies, coming up with discrepant findings, until facts finally emerge).

Heavy pot users were found to have working-memory deficits and associated changes in brain morphology that were consistent with changes found in persons with...

I received the following question from a reader regarding the controversial CAFÉ – Comparisons of Atypicals in First Episode of Psychosis - study. (This was the study in which Dan Markingson committed suicide.) "It appears that there was no head-to-head with a control group taking a placebo pill. Nor was there a control group featuring 'old' types of 'antipsychotic'. If that was the case then it is very poor study . . . what on earth can you hope to show from the data?" I started to write a response, but the subject is complex, and my response became the following article.

Research from the U.K. shows that involvement in bullying between the ages of 8 and 11, whether as victim or perpetrator, is linked to...

A New Zealand judge has upheld the appeal of a sexual abuse survivor against a decision that sexual abuse cannot cause schizophrenia.  The judge...

Attorney Lynn Garson memoir of escape from psychiatric drug treatment, "Southern Vapors", is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's highlighted book of the month.  "The idea that...

Salon magazine reports on an article in October's Translational Psychiatry that finds "rather than a shortage of serotonin, a lack of synaptogenesis (the growth...

In my work facilitating depression support groups, I have discovered three essential factors to healing from depression, which I call ”the three pillars of mental health recovery.”  In my earlier blogs for Mad in America I wrote about two of these pillars --connecting with community and using a holistic approach to treat symptoms. Now I would like to present the first and MOST IMPORTANT pillar — Setting the Intention to Heal.

Our lives changed the day we began looking inside ourselves for ways to move towards more joy and less suffering for us and those around us. We took ownership of the good and bad from our past and learned that if we came from a place of inner strength we could frame much of our future. The lessons and necessary mentoring that led to us reshaping our experiences happened within the context of addiction treatment. This treatment for us, and many others, consisted of working on ourselves with the guidance of people who had re-built - or built for the first time - daily lives rich in meaning and social connection.

A review of the literature from 2001 to 2011 on child abuse, neglect, and psychiatric disorders finds that early life stress subtypes can predict...

I really valued the massive Melbourne Hearing Voices conference last week. The theme of reconciliation between voice hearers and mental health workers was a powerful one. This emphasis on creating understanding conversations at the conference was encouraged with dialogues between people on specific subjects - medication, spirituality, psychological approaches to voices etc. - rather than keynotes. It seemed a move away from presentations of competing knowledges, toward a more dialogical conference; a respectful exchange of different viewpoints, feelings and values. When you have a range of views in a presentation it’s less easy to adopt a “good guys vs. bad guys” mentality; you start to see the complexities in more relief. The surprise for me was that I liked it.

Modern “civilized” cultures do not have a good relationship with the wild. It seems we are always doing everything possible to shut it out of our lives, or to kill or tame it to the point where it is unrecognizable. Yet that which is wild is always still lurking, somewhere over the edge of our boundaries and frontiers, and also inside people, both inside the “others” we might approach warily on the street, and even inside our family members and ourselves.

Allen Frances adds to his catalog of DSM-5 mistakes with the return of the controversial - and ultimately rejected - "Psychosis Risk Disorder", under...

Presentation by John Read at the Meanings of Madness Conference. (Presentation begins at 5 minutes in.)

For a scathing, 11-minute overview of the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, and new allegations of coercion into psychiatric clinical trials, you can't do much better than this excellent investigative report by Jeff Baillon.

The authors of a paper that endorses a computerized test for depression have acknowledged failure to disclose joint ownership of a company formed to bring the test to...