Treated Infections in Childhood Linked with Later Mental Health Service Use

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Severe infections requiring hospitalizations increased the risk of hospital contacts due to mental disorders by 84% and the risk of psychotropic medication use by 42%.

The Empathy Machine

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From Aeon: We typically think of empathy as an emotions-based state that involves feeling another's distress or joy. However, cognitive, rationalist empathy involving reasoned perspective-taking may...

“The Rise and Fall of the Blockbuster Antipsychotic Seroquel”

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Martha Rosenberg highlights how the popular antipsychotic Seroquel is a perfect example of how direct-to-consumer advertising made billion dollar blockbuster drugs possible before side-effects...

Top Ten Things You May Not Know About the ICD-10

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In this piece for Psychology Today, Dr. Jonathan D. Raskin lists 10 facts about the current version of the International Classification of Diseases, which is...

Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm

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In this interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books, cultural theorist and philosopher Erin Manning discusses neurodiversity, a movement that seeks to depathologize traits, experiences, and...

“Autism’s Lost Generation”

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“Some autistic adults have spent much of their lives with the wrong diagnosis, consigned to psychiatric institutions or drugged for disorders they never had,” Jessica Wright writes in The Atlantic.

Abilify: The Drug That Could Gamble Your Life Away

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On this episode of America's Lawyer, Mike Papantonio discusses the numerous lawsuits pending involving the anti-psychotic drug Abilify, which has caused plaintiffs to develop serious...

Early Brain Injury and Autism

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A pediatrician writing for The Daily Beast discusses a recent study in the journal Neuron that found links between autism and brain injury during...

The Autism Paradox

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In this piece for Aeon, Bonnie Evans chronicles the history of the diagnosis of autism, from its establishment as a marker of dysfunction and impairment to the...

Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy and Childhood Autism Spectrum Disorders

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"Objective  To systematically evaluate whether prenatal exposure to antidepressant medications is associated with increased risk of autism spectrum disorder ... Conclusion  Although the number of children exposed...
neurodiversity

Neurodiversity is Dead. Now What?

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The neurodiversity movement is a public relations campaign that emphasizes the positive qualities associated with some presentations of autism—creativity, increased tolerance for repetition, enhanced empathy, and exceptional memory—while erasing or minimizing the experiences of autistics who are severely disabled.

When Disability is Misdiagnosed as Bad Behavior

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From Pacific Standard: People with hidden or invisible disabilities are often subjected to violence and verbal abuse, as well as denied accommodations and asked to...

Smash the Blue Lights: Autism Speaks is a ‘Danger to Self and Others’

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There are few around Mad in America territory who would argue against the dangers of the National Alliance for Mental Illness. But as a movement, we often fail to recognize the dangers of their much younger sibling named ‘Autism Speaks’.

Antidepressants, Pregnancy, and Autism: Why Wouldn’t Antidepressant Chemicals Affect a Developing Baby’s Brain?

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This week another study was published showing that SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with increased rates of autism in the children.  By my count, this is now the tenth study on this topic and it follows on the heels of previous studies – all of which found links between SSRI antidepressant use in pregnancy and autism in the offspring.  Most of these studies were recently reviewed by Man, et al, who also concluded that SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with autism in the children. So we now have numerous studies in different human populations all showing a link between SSRI use in pregnancy and autism in the children. Yet, much of the news and blogosphere focus on casting doubts about these findings. What is going on here?

Does My Algorithm Have a Mental Health Problem?

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From Big Think: As our algorithms are increasingly being made in our own image, they are at heightened risk of experiencing "mental health problems." "Take the...

Risperdal for a 2-year-old? Turning the Tide, One Interaction at a Time

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Amidst a reported leveling in medication usage among young children, a disturbing side trend has emerged. Antipsychotic medication use in preschoolers has soared over the past decade, to the upwards tale of a two- to five- fold increase despite lack of FDA approval in almost all of these medications for this age group and little to no information about long-term side effects. In addition, researchers have noted that most antipsychotic medications were being used off-label, and increasingly for the treatment of behavioral issues that many argue are both developmentally inherent and often a product of significant environmental dysfunction.
child looking at smartphone

“Virtual Autism” May Explain Explosive Rise in ASD Diagnoses

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New clinical case studies have found that many young children who spend too much screen time—on TV’s, video games, tablets and computers—have symptoms labeled as “autism.” When parents take away the screens for a few months the child’s symptoms disappear.
drug pushers

Keeping Meili Off Psychiatric Drugs

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We first came under pressure to give our developmentally disabled and autistic daughter a psychiatric drug when she was in her mid-teens. She was attending a local school for autistic children but was unable to adapt to their program, and we were urged to consult a psychiatrist. What enabled us to resist the pressure to put our daughter on drugs?

A Lifetime of Personal Lessons from Raising an Autistic Child

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The Lancet Psychiatry has a book review of Ron Suskind's memoir of raising his autistic son, Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and...

No Brain Connectivity Differences Between Autism, ADHD, and “Typical Development”

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Neuroscience researchers find no differences in brain connectivity between children with diagnoses of autism, ADHD, and those with no diagnoses.

The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark

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In this piece for The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar profiles the philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, whose work argues that our minds are inseparable...

Neuroleptics and Tardive Dyskinesia in Children

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There's an interesting February 11, 2014, article on Peter Breggin's website: $1.5 Million Award in Child Tardive Dyskinesia Malpractice. Apparently the individual in Dr. Breggin's paper was diagnosed with autism as a child and was prescribed SSRI's before the age of seven. The SSRI's caused some deterioration in the child's behavior and mental condition, to combat which his first psychiatrist prescribed Risperdal (risperidone). Subsequently a second psychiatrist added Zyprexa (olanzapine) to the cocktail. Both Risperdal and Zyprexa are neuroleptics (euphemistically known in psychiatric circles as antipsychotics), and are known to cause tardive dyskinesia.

Therapists Are Using Dungeons & Dragons to Help Kids

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From Kotaku: Therapists across the country are running Dungeons & Dragons therapy groups to help socially isolated kids open up by participating in role-playing games. "There...

The Non-Binary Brain

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From Aeon: Although many misogynists justify their prejudice by arguing that men and women are biologically different, the evidence shows that our brains are neither...

If Autism Isn’t a Brain Structure Difference, Then What?

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In Discover magazine, Neuroskeptic examines a new, large-scale study of brain anatomies of people with autism, calling it an "earthquake" in autism research and...