Children and Adolescents

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.

I walked in on my teenaged daughter cutting her upper leg with a razor. I have also noticed multiple cuts and what look like cigarette burns on her wrists and torso. She’s always made excuses about them, but now I realize she has been self-harming for a while. She swears she isn’t suicidal. What’s this all about, and what can I do?

An international group of researchers, including several with financial ties to manufacturers of antidepressants, explore possible explanations for why long-term users of antidepressants become chronically depressed.

The researchers theorized that this increased effectiveness was due not to “antidepressant” properties, but rather to the drug’s side effects, which include insomnia, drowsiness, and nausea.

Researchers report that dangerous side effects are not being adequately reported in the trials of ketamine for depression.

A new study, published this week in BMJ, found no major differences in the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and antidepressants. When the researchers compared previous studies, they found no major differences in relapse rates or level of treatment response between those taking antidepressants and those undergoing CBT.

Researchers in Finland reviewed questionnaires filled out by 911 primary and psychiatric care patients over 16 years of age. They found that more than...

-John Horgan criticizes psychiatrist Richard Friedman's effusive portrayal of a study that allegedly identified the "feel-good" gene in humans.

A new review finds preliminary evidence for yoga and mindfulness-based interventions for youth diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Researchers from Philadelphia and Baltimore find, in a study of Medicaid records for 50 states and the District of Columbia, that antipsychotic prescribing to...

For nearly two decades, Big Pharma commercials have falsely told Americans that mental illness is associated with a chemical brain imbalance, but buried SAMHSA survey results tell us that depression and suicidality are associated with poverty, unemployment, and mass incarceration. And these results also point us to the reality that American society has now become so especially oppressive for young people that an embarrassingly large number of American teenagers and young adults are depressed and suicidal.

"The name of a 'new attention disorder' sounds like an Onion-style parody: sluggish cognitive tempo," writes Slate. "It also sounds like a classic case...

Researchers at Harvard Medical School highlight the need for mental health clinicians to explore the meaning of physical symptoms and pain

Popular addiction news outlet, the fix, interviews Dr. Gabor Maté on addiction, the holocaust, the "disease-prone personality" and the pathology of positive thinking. “Until...

A new study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, found no link between genetics and the occurrence of depressive symptoms.

The FDA released a report in July of a trial on children and adolescents of the selegiline (Emsam) transdermal patch for treatment of depression,...

Daniela Drake, MD, writes on Salon about her son's misdiagnosis of ADHD - later found to be an auditory processing disorder and an allergy...

From The Lily: In light of the recent New York Times article highlighting the effects antidepressant withdrawal, Ashley Abramson shares her personal story of deciding to...

Reuters reports that a new drug for major depression failed to improve symptoms in two late-stage clinical trials sending the manufacture’s stock into a...

On Wednesday, JAMA Psychiatry released a meta-analysis comparing the results of cognitive-behavioral therapy and antidepressant medication in severely depressed populations. Currently, many practice guidelines suggest that antidepressants be used over psychotherapy for major depressive disorder. The analysis, however, found that “patients with more severe depression were no more likely to require medications to improve than patients with less severe depression.”

New data shows that calls to US poison control centers have increased significantly for children taking stimulant ADHD drugs.

“Overall, this study showed that the information and awareness campaign had almost no significant effects on the general public's attitudes toward people affected by either schizophrenia or depression,” the researchers, led by German medical sociologist Anna Makowski, wrote. “One could assume that deeply rooted convictions cannot be modified by rather time-limited and general activities targeted at the public.”

New study examines how increased screen time and social media may be contributing to depressive symptoms and suicide risk in teens

From Discover Magazine: Some children's symptoms of psychiatric disorders, including OCD, psychosis, and eating disorders, are caused by an autoimmune response to infections resulting in brain inflammation. "PANS...

Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), authored an editorial for BMJ this month warning that the opioid abuse epidemic could have dangerous consequences for pregnant women. While the effects of opioid exposure on the developing brain are yet unknown, research suggests that infants may suffer from withdrawal syndrome, nervous system defects, and impaired attachment with the mother.