Children and Adolescents

Benedict Carey of the New York Times reports on the success of new schizophrenia and psychosis programs that provide family counseling and job and...

A recent review of the evidence by the American College of Physicians (ACP) determined that cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants had similar levels of effectiveness for the treatment of depression. In a critical commentary for the Journal of Mental Health, however, Michael Sugarman from Wayne State University challenges these findings. Pointing to differences in research settings and clinical practice, Sugarman asserts that “these head-to-head comparisons are heavily biased in the direction of psychiatric care.”

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.

While antidepressants are the most commonly used long-term treatment for depression, the efficacy of these drugs after one year is unknown. In a commentary for The Lancet, psychiatrists Rudolf Uher and Barbara Pavlova suggest that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) now has the most substantial body of evidence for long-term treatment for major depressive disorder.

A combination of exercise and meditation done twice a week over two months may reduce depression symptoms by 40 percent, according to a new study published open-access this month in Translational Psychiatry. Following the eight-week intervention, the student participants that had previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) reported significantly less symptoms and ruminative thoughts and students without any such diagnoses also showed remarkable improvements.

The Scientific American reports on an in-depth reanalysis revealing widespread underreporting of negative side effects, including suicide attempts and aggressive behavior. Article →

Following an extensive systematic review of treatments for major depression, the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued a recommendation to clinicians suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a first-line treatment for major depressive disorder along with second-generation antidepressants. The results of the review revealed that CBT and antidepressants have similar levels of effectiveness but that antidepressants present serious side-effects and higher relapse rates.

After undergoing a nine-week cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment for social anxiety, patients show changes to both the physical structure of their brain and its activity, according to a new study published in Translational Psychiatry. The amygdala is most closely associated with the experience of fear and this study found that patients receiving CBT with reduced social anxiety had significant changes to this section of the brain.

"Eleanor Longden started hearing voices when she was 18. She was drugged and hospitalised, then told she was schizophrenic. A psychiatrist even told her...

It’s time to change how we think about and relate to people whose makeup is or appears to be different from the norm. Currently, the dominant way in research, practice and the general public is to think of what’s different—let’s say a biological or neurological difference—as the source of disability and difficulty, and to relate to and treat (in various ways) that biological or neurological difference. But there’s another way to go, and more and more researchers and practitioners are taking it.

MIA contributor Jonathan Leo, writing for Slate, weighs in on the research that claims to have discovered a genetic basis for schizophrenia. “We now...

The case of “Beth” depicts, almost innocently, the trials and tribulations of a well-adjusted, talented 15-year-old who developed depression, paranoia, panic attacks, and self-injurious and homicidal behavior, and “bipolar disorder” after being prescribed antidepressants, and then antipsychotics. After Beth decided - on her own - to discontinue psychotropic medications in favor of hormone therapy, she remained free of psychiatric symptoms.

Last week, the headlines blared: "Schizophrenia breakthrough as genetic study reveals link to brain changes!"  We heard that our best hope for treating “schizophrenia” is to understand it at a genetic level, and that this new breakthrough would get us really started on that mission, as it showed how a genetic variation could lead to the more intense pruning of brain connections, which is often seen in those diagnosed with schizophrenia.  “For the first time, the origin of schizophrenia is no longer a complete black box,” said one (while admitting that "it's still early days").  The acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) described the study as “a crucial turning point in the fight against mental illness.” But is all this hype justified?

In a study published yesterday, researchers from the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo bring attention to a condition known as neuroleptic-induced deficit syndrome (NIDS)...

Dutch psychiatrist and epidemiologist, Jim van Os, has renewed his call to drop schizophrenia as a disease classification. “Several recent papers by different authors...

A new documentary “Life, Animated,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of a man with autism who learned to interact...

“A University of Texas Southwestern study will see if giving unborn babies with Down syndrome Prozac in the womb will help improve brain functioning"

I urge parents, doctors, educators and everyone concerned with the well-being of children to take a look at the debate on ADHD presented in the Times. The series of articles makes it clear that the hard line separating ADHD-like behavior from normal childhood reactions to environmental stress or normal developmental phases is beginning to soften. The number of ADHD diagnoses in the United Sates has exploded by 300 percent since 1983.

Last week, after the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) made a recommendation for increased mental health and depression screening “stories in the New York Times,...

Last week a study in BMJ linked antidepressants to the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviors. The Science Media Centre has compiled responses to...

Lawrence Diller continues his series on the uses and abuses of Adderall. "You take some Adderall, go through withdrawal, build up tolerance, take some...

“This is an article about how our education system is ruining young people’s lives. Nobody is listening to the teachers who say it, so perhaps someone will listen to me,” sixteen-year-old Orli writes in the Guardian. “Nothing is so important that it’s worth risking your health over, not even the piece of paper you get, age 16, to tell you whether or not you’re good enough.”

A woman in Texas attempted suicide while in the active group of a clinical trial for smoking-cassation drugs Chantix and Zyban, both known to...

The largest-ever meta-analysis of antidepressant trials appeared yesterday in the British Medical Journal. Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 70 trials (involving 18,526 subjects), to find that - counter to the initially-reported findings - antidepressants doubled the risk of suicide and aggression in subjects under 18. This risk had been misrepresented in the original study reports, the authors say, and suggest that the risks to adults may be similarly under-reported.

“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.”