Adult

Researchers in Spain and the U.K. find a similar pattern of brain volume changes in a group 76 controls and 109 patients with schizophrenia...

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

The Mail sent three women to their doctors, reporting fictional symptoms of short-term, mild depression.  Two walked out with prescriptions for medication, despite expressions...

Psychiatric Times chronicles the peripatetic progress of "schizophrenia" research, from schizophrenogenic mothers to unspecified genetic lesions and back again via second-trimester embryonic insults, to...

Bloomberg reports that "The European debut of a pill to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder faces a major hurdle: convincing people the...

Noting a "striking incongruity between the wide use of and the weak evidence base for the efficacy and safety of antidepressant drugs in bipolar,"...

I think it is time to reclaim the word disability. Disability needs to be appreciated. To the extent we value community over isolation, anything anyone cannot do, or needs help with, builds community. There are infinite examples in every career and walk of life of how necessary “disability” (since we're calling it that) is for connection, service and meaning in life. Without it we'd have absolutely no need for each other. And the fastest way to despair is to feel unnecessary.

Brainblogger considers the possibility that the primary characteristics of schizophrenia - deficits in affective, social, physical and intellectual functioning - may actually reflect the...

"For drugs designed for a relatively small number of very disturbed patients, antipsychotics are now among the most profitable drugs in the world, just...

First episode psychosis (FEP) and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) remain the foci of great numbers of early intervention programs in Western countries. “Untreated” in DUP-anese is synonymous with unmedicated, which often creates a sense of urgency and a myopic fixation on getting these youth started on anti-psychotics and keeping them on. What is the impact of this medical model and its accompanying chemical imbalance narrative on these emerging adults? How often does it set them on a course of regained functioning and restored hope, or does it serve as a gateway into a lifetime of disability and discouragement?

The core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is the idea of simply accepting, rather than trying to get rid of, disturbing or unwanted inner experiences like anxiety or voices, and then refocusing on a commitment to take action toward personally chosen values regardless of whether that seems to make the unwanted experiences increase or decrease. This idea is consistent with the emphasis in the recovery movement of finding a way to live a valued life despite any ongoing problems, but ACT has value because of the unique and effective strategies it offers to help people make this shift.

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....

In a recent interview, Nancy Andreasen, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, reaffirmed her earlier findings that antipsychotics shrink brain tissue. "We spent a couple...

As we approach world hearing voices day 2013 Karen and I are in Canada. We have just enjoyed running a preconference workshop for about 100 people in Winnipeg. I am sitting in my room before breakfast writing this piece and as I sit I am thinking back twenty-three years ago; I am in a psych unit in Manchester and I have a new support worker called Lindsay. By then I had been a psych patient for almost ten years and was fast approaching spending the rest of my life in the system. My support worker had convinced me to go to a new group that was starting in Manchester called a hearing voices group.

It took over twenty years for the state medical board to sanction a Minnesota psychiatrist who was responsible for the deaths and injuries of 46 patients. Today, in the Markingson case, it looks as if history is repeating itself. How many patients die while bureaucrats delay?

What does the new DSM-5 have in common with an Alfred Hitchcock mystery?  They both use a plot device, a “MacGuffin,” to drive the story. Hitchcock explained a MacGuffin as on the one hand “ridiculous”, “non-existent”, “empty” and inherently without meaning, and at the same time the central point around which the entire story turns.  Which narratives, and whose, are served by the "diagnosis MacGuffin”? Are there more socially desirable alternatives to replace this particular plot vehicle? 

A 28-week randomized controlled study by researchers in Japan, Canada and the United States finds that a 50% reduction of risperidone or olanzapine significantly...

The Wunderink study has been discussed here in other blogs. In brief, using a randomized control design, Wunderink found that in adults diagnosed with a psychotic disorder continuous use of neuroleptics was associated with worse functional outcomes. Is this study relevant to those who do not experience psychosis?

The idea of spending more time as a bureaucrat in the US Embassy in Iceland did not appeal to me. I longed for the freedom that academics have. While pursuing that dream I stumbled into the world of international media, “chemical imbalance”, book publishing and a greedy professor of psychiatry which was a prelude to my second annus horribilis.

What would happen if professionals opened their minds about the nature of madness?  What new possibilities might be created if they questioned labels such...

While increasing numbers of Americans are being prescribed antidepressants, the Centers for Disease Control reports that suicide rates increased 28% from 1999 to 2010. Trained professionals remain unable to predict who is at risk. Their guess is as good as chance.

In 1988, the introduction of Prozac was hailed as a breakthrough in the treatment of depression. A quarter of a century later, the prospect of a similar breakthrough in psychiatric medications seems remote. On August 19, 2013, the New York Times ran an article called, “A Dry Pipeline for Psychiatric Drugs".

A study comparing the effects on cognition of major depression (MDD) vs. SSRIs finds that healthy subjects learn significantly better from positive feedback than...

Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), acknowledged yesterday in his "Director's Blog" that the long-term outcome studies of...

Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark find from a 10-year follow-up of participants in a randomized controlled study of brief antipsychotic medication (the OPUS...