Children and Adolescents

In the "agreement for corrective action" against CAFE study coordinator Jean Kenney last week, the Board of Social Work cited Kenney's failure to respond to "alarming voicemail messages" from family members of Dan Markingson. Presumably, the Board is referring to a message left by his mother, Mary Weiss, which warned, "Do we have to wait until he kills himself or someone else before anyone else does anything?" The failure of Kenney and Stephen Olson to take the warnings of Mary Weiss seriously has been one of the most disturbing aspects of this case. In a deposition for the lawsuit filed by Weiss, Kenney was questioned about her response. Here is an excerpt. (The initial questions come from Gale Pearson, an attorney for Mary Weiss.)

In the SundayReview section of the New York Times Vicki Abeles discusses Stuat Slavin’s research on depression and anxiety in US schools. “Many of the health effects are apparent now, but many more will echo through the lives of our children,” says Richard Scheffler, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

From Fox43: Last week, two Pennsylvania state representatives, Tom Murt and Stephen Kinsey, introduced a bill to prohibit the use of electroconvulsive therapy on children...

Researchers report that sexual minority adolescents have considered, planned, and attempted suicide substantially more than their heterosexual peers.

An article presents new screening tools for pediatric depression and anxiety—but fails to answer its own questions about efficacy.

When constructing the ADHD diagnosis, progenitors essentially say, "Let's study a group of people who do particular hyperactive, impulsive, and distracted behaviors that are associated with chronic and pervasive problems in school, social life, and work. If the person is an adult, the problems must be present in childhood and show consistency throughout development. We will call this group "ADHD" and study correlated biological characteristics and other associated difficulties. We will continue to tweak the criteria so that the diagnostic net falls on the people with the correlated dysfunctions and patterns of biology that we find in our research.

Citing reasons from weight loss to housecleaning, there has been a 750% increase in the use of Adderall among women in the U.S. aged...

Researchers explore efforts to integrate educational psychology and child psychiatry.

Researchers Identify risk factors for long-term benzodiazepine use to prevent harmful effects.

From the Center for Health Journalism: Different types of childhood adversity shape the developing brain in distinct ways and need to be addressed accordingly. While...

Findings show that despite increases in treatment availability, the prevalence of mental health issues has not decreased.

"What was going on inside Turning Point was an experiment: a community-based treatment center designed to serve low-income African-Americans. After a few bumpy early...

Dr. Mercola writes that "the high rates of psychotropic drug use among foster children and poor children is likely a direct result of drug...

A new review highlights the effects that psychiatric diagnosis has on children and adolescents’ social relationships and views of self.

On the Huffington Post, Tracy Gillett discusses Kim John Payne's book, Simplicity Parenting, and wonders if we are overwhelming children with “the burden of too much.”...

There is an enormous irony in a psychiatrist using the epithet "thought police" to express censure, when it is psychiatry itself that routinely incarcerates and forcibly drugs and shocks people on the grounds that their thoughts and speech don't conform to psychiatry's standards of normality.

"A long-standing enigma in psychiatry has been why no-one has been able to find someone who has both congenital blindness and a diagnosis of...

A systematic review of the limited research available on the long-term effects of antipsychotics finds fewer symptoms in those off of the drugs.

Self-acceptance is a very human experience, and a necessary one in the pursuit of personal happiness. In my experience, the mental health field does an abysmal job of addressing this truth.

The Fix reviews the past and present of the estimated $2 billion/year industry of trying to "improve" the behaviors and attitudes of "troubled teens." Adolescence...

At 12 months, rates of mortality for those diagnosed with first-episode psychosis are 24 times higher than the general population.

Researchers shed light on the precarious nature of evidence from efficacy trials of antidepressant medication to treat symptoms of major depressive disorder in children and adolescents.

A review of treatment guidelines published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics found that guidelines “shy away from stating clearly that SSRIs/SNRIs, like BDZs, are often (though...

The authors of a recent study acknowledge that "social functioning deficits are a core component of schizophrenia spectrum disorders." [Emphasis added] With this in mind, it seems to me that the best and most parsimonious way to conceptualize the research finding is that children who have poor social skills will, in many cases, grow up to be adults with poor social skills. In particular, there seems to me no justification (other than psychiatric dogmatism) to conceptualize the matter in medical terms, and to impose a medical framework – "a marker of vulnerability" – on the data.

"Factors such as genetics, environment, and experiences all have an influence on a person's likelihood of exhibiting signs of mental illness, but the study,...