Anxiety

A new NIH-funded study suggests that children from low-income environments are more likely to have neurological impairments. The researchers claim that these neurodevelopmental issues are “distinct from the risk of cognitive and emotional delays known to accompany early-life poverty.”

When controlling for social and family characteristics, separating children from parents into out-of-home care increases psychiatric issues, prescriptions, and criminal activity.

From FEE: School may have a negative impact on children's and teens' mental health: children's psychiatric emergency room visits drop precipitously over the summer and increase...

Children diagnosed with ADHD who are prescribed stimulant drugs have more sleep problems than those with ADHD that do not take these drugs.

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...

Researchers in China found that among 27 young adults with early-onset major depressive disorder matched against 25 healthy controls, MRI detected elevated response in...

In his NY Times article “A Drug to Cure Fear,” Richard Friedman noted: “It has been an article of faith in neuroscience and psychiatry that, once formed, emotional memories are permanent.” This has not been a principle of these disciplines, including clinical psychology, for many years. Consolidation-reconsolidation-extinction models have been around for some time now, applied in particular to persons suffering from traumatic memories; e.g., Holocaust survivors, war and genocide survivors, etc.

New review ties increased screen time to increasing anxiety and depression among young adults throughout the United States.

Data drawn from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project show that children raised in institutions in Romania exhibit elevated symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, depression, and...

New research identifies poor long-term outcomes for both CBT and medications for treating anxiety disorders in childhood.

On November 12th, 2015, the third anniversary of the day that I abruptly stopped taking benzodiazepines, my dear friend, J. Doe, published a two-part article here on Mad in America examining the language that is commonly used to describe benzodiazepine (benzo) iatrogenesis. I wanted a summary of these articles captured in a Youtube video so that those in the thick of benzo neurotoxicity could tune into these ideas in a way that might be more easily digestible. I hoped more benzo sufferers would begin to question how they describe (and allow others to describe) an illness that remains decades behind in understanding and recognition. I also wanted to draw attention to the content again in hopes that more medical professionals would read and understand the crucial distinctions in language surrounding this problem.

This month’s issue of JAMA Psychiatry ran an editorial commenting on recent research revealing that the majority of youth prescribed antipsychotics have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Here, Dr. Ben Furman offers a creative approach to helping children who struggle with OCD. Explaining why behaviors like reasoning, reassuring, and superstitious rituals don’t work, he suggests engaging alternatives that teach kids how to manage their “worry monster” and make sense of their distressing experience.

In this piece for The Guardian, a schoolteacher explains how unrealistic expectations of students' academic performance as well as a strong emphasis on test scores have harmed students'...

A new study published open-access this month in Community Mental Health Journal finds that the increased financial difficulties facing college students lead to greater...

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Writing Therapy both reduce PTSD symptoms in children who experienced a single traumatic event.

“This research points to the inadequacy of asking the simple question: ‘Do antidepressants work?’ Instead, the value or otherwise of antidepressants needs to be understood in the context of the diversity of experience and the particular meaning they hold in people’s lives.”

Researchers from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre of King's College's Institute of Psychiatry in London, publishing in the Journal of Affective...

"Is this the future of medicine?" asks Stephen Armstrong in the British Medical Journal. "Little Artie has been left at the doorstep of his...

New research examines factors that make mindfulness interventions in school most effective for adolescent’s mental health outcomes.

From The Guardian: According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the number of children and young people seeking mental health support has spiked since recent...

A study out of the University of Buffalo explores the use of Narrative Exposure Therapy to treat youth PTSD and substance abuse. “Trauma is...

Why do ineffective classification and intervention processes linger in school psychology, and what’s the alternative?

A new study investigates the relationships between early-home environmental factors and later-life physiological response to psychosocial stressors.

When I lived in Massachusetts I taught yoga and led writing groups for alternative mental health communities. While the organizations I worked for were alternative, many of the students and participants were heavily drugged with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. There was one skinny teenager I'd never have forgotten who listed the drugs he was on for me once in the yoga room after class: a long list of stimulants, neuroleptics, moods stabilizers; far too many drugs and classes of drugs to remember. I was at the housewarming party of an old friend, and who should walk in but that boy who used to come to my yoga classes and writing groups religiously. And he was no longer a boy; he was now a young man. “I'm thinking yoga teacher,” he said. I nodded. Did he remember where? “I'm not stupid,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I'm not on drugs anymore. I'm not stupid anymore.”