Children and Adolescents

Antipsychotics present a known risk for major side effects. A new study suggests that certain antipsychotics may present a greater risk for cardiovascular disease than others.

An article on contributory injustice describes the clinical and ethical imperative that clinicians listen to service users experiences.

A network analysis of participants’ social media use and well-being reveals complex links with social capital but a minimal association with attentional control.

In recent months, two teams of researchers in the UK and the US published complementary findings about the epigenetic origins of schizophrenia that have scientific communities who indulge in ‘genetic conspiracy theories’ abuzz. While these results are intriguing, and no doubt involve pathbreaking research methodologies, this line of thought represents a decontextualized understanding both of the symptoms that are typically associated with schizophrenia, and their causes.

As we develop critical awareness about the mental health “treatments” that don’t work and that often make things much worse, the question inevitably comes up, what can those who want to be helpful be doing instead?

A study published this week in the Annals of Family Medicine reveals that opioid painkillers, when used long-term, can lead to the onset of depression. The researchers found that the link was independent of the contribution of pain to depression.

An international group of researchers from multiple disciplines has published a historical, qualitative, and quantitative investigation into voice-hearing in women. The interdisciplinary project, freely available from Frontiers in Psychiatry, explores how sexism, exploitation, and oppression bear on women’s’ experiences of hearing voices.

In today’s Boston Globe (April 14), Dr. Dennis Rosen, a pediatric lung and sleep specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, reviews my new book,...

Here I was, 15 years old and already in a long-term treatment facility. I was, on paper: crazy! This entire time, all the adults in my life had been speaking for me. I never felt like I was any of the things they said, but I went along with it. What else could I have done? Every time I rebelled, it only confirmed to my mother what she thought of me.

PsyBlog reviews a recent study that found people who feel depressed are more effective and efficient than others at certain types of activities. "The researchers...

Thirty years ago, the prescription of neuroleptic drugs to children under 14 years of age was almost unheard of. It was rare in adolescents, and even in adults was largely confined to individuals who had been given the label schizophrenic or bipolar. By 1993 about a quarter of 1% of the national childhood population were receiving antipsychotic prescriptions during office visits. The percentage for adolescents was about three quarters of 1%. By 2009, these figures had increased to 1.83% and 3.76% respectively. The devastating effects of these neurotoxic drugs are well known, and it is natural to wonder what forces might be driving this trend.

-The Wall Street Journal asks why some 274,000 infants and 370,000 toddlers in the US are taking antianxiety sedatives and antidepressant drugs.

In a sample of 236 children recruited from the Environmental-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, researchers from Duke University and King's College London found that children...

A Molecular Psychiatry study found that people who had recurrent depression developed smaller hippocampi and antidepressants protected against that effect -- except insofar as the study evidence seemed to show the opposite of what the media reported on it.

A sea change is needed in the evaluation of children with perceived psychological disturbances. Parents are told that their child has a fictitious biochemical imbalance in the brain while real medical disorders are overlooked. In our family's case, it was Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Strep (PANDAS).

From Massive: Increasing evidence suggests that psychedelics may revolutionize mental health care. In order for this "psychedelic renaissance" to last, scientists and citizens will need...

A commonly used ADHD diagnostic measure may find overlapping symptoms in autism and ADHD, resulting in over-diagnosis.

From CNN: According to a new study, exposure to unprescribed ADHD drugs has increased by more than 60% among U.S. children since 2000. "The study, published Monday...

In the past six years, I have had the opportunity to speak at several conferences or meetings that I felt had particular potential to stir some political activity that would challenge current psychiatric practices, and one of those events was the meeting convened in the U.K.’s Parliament on May 11th, which had this title for the day: Rising Prescriptions, Rising Mental Health Disability: Is There a Link?

New study finds children who have been exposed to discrimination show higher likelihood of anxiety, depression, and ADHD.

The authors of the report expand upon the traumatic and sociopolitical factors underlying presentations of psychosis and “schizophrenia.”

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

Study reveals data suggesting yogic breathing may be helpful in treating depression for patients who have not respond to antidepressants

About 65% of preschool children who were diagnosed with ADHD and given stimulant drugs were still taking those drugs six years later.

From BBC: The abuse of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax is becoming widespread among children and adolescents as young as 11 years old. "To gain an idea of the...