Schizophrenia and Psychosis

There is a substantial body of evidence suggesting that not getting enough omega-3 fatty acids in your diet may be connected to a diverse array of psychiatric symptoms. In a new study published this month, psychiatrist Robert McNamara and Erik Messamore provide an overview of the evidence and call for screening of omega-3 deficiency in people experiencing symptoms associated with ADHD, depression, mood disorders, and psychosis.

While most of the sting is gone, even now — almost sixty years on — I can’t get through a single day without thinking about shock treatment and the state hospital. I regularly have dreams or nightmares about being lost in a strange place and someone making me feel like dirt.

Researchers examine the relationship between vitamin D and clinical and cognitive symptoms in first-episode psychosis.

Researchers found some antipsychotics to be worse than others for causing sexual dysfunction.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) has a complicated and controversial history. In this study, published in PLoS 1, researchers from London and the Netherlands explore...

Children who lose a parent before the age of 3 are 84% more likely to experience psychosis as adults, according to research published in...

Despite little evidence for benefit, and substantial risk of harm, antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to children diagnosed with ADHD

A common practice when antipsychotics are found to be ineffective for schizophrenia is to prescribe a second, additional psychoactive medication. Now, a new study suggests that this practice is not supported by the research.

The traumagenic neurodevelopment model of psychosis, introduced in 2001, highlighted similarities between brain abnormalities found both in people who have been abused and those...

The first time I heard someone labeled schizophrenic I was about 10 years old. A man was talking to himself and appeared to be house-less and perhaps on drugs. My mom, a very good teacher and explainer of things to me, said, “That man is schizophrenic. That means he can't tell the difference between what's inside of himself and what's outside.” In retrospect this seems like a relatively sophisticated and sensitive explanation; Falling in love, hearing music that enters our heart, having children/giving birth, connecting powerfully with another person in a meeting of the minds, feeling empathy, deeply caring about something, experiencing oneness with nature, are all examples of times when the line between inner and outer reality is blurred.

The Cannabis and Psychosis Awareness Project, a four-year study from Canada that was released on Tuesday, finds that smoking marijuana - particularly heavy use in...

In 2004, a patient was given an experimental antipsychotic called bifeprunox and died of hepatorenal failure nine days later. But the sponsor apparently did not investigate the death for three years. In late 2007 the sponsor issued a safety alert and suspended all bifeprunox studies. This is where things get interesting.

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.

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%.

What would happen if professionals opened their minds about the nature of madness?  What new possibilities might be created if they questioned labels such...

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.

Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of hearing voices

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

Twice as many teenagers with ADHD experienced severe psychosis when taking Adderall, as compared to Ritalin, according to a new study.

Psychiatrist outlines varying roles in Open Dialogue model, fostering service-user and family agency through meaningful conversations with a team of providers.

A new study to be published in the next issue of Schizophrenia Research examines patients suffering from a first-episode of psychosis who stop taking any antipsychotic drugs. The researchers attempt to identify variables that can serve as predictors of the successful discontinuation of antipsychotics. They find, for example, that those who discontinue the drugs have, on average, the same outcomes as those who stay on them, and that those who have better social integration are more likely to discontinue without relapse.

My mother was once a bright, creative, beautiful young woman, a promising artist and a poet, who was captivated by the hippie movement. She was a creative bohemian artist, defying the conventions of our middle-class Jewish Midwestern family, which had carried a tradition of holding emotions inside and acting stoic. One day, soon after my grandparents’ divorce, she left. She hitched a ride to California, and from that point on, was never the same. The police picked her up on a park bench in Arizona, and she was committed for the first time at age 18. She rotated in and out of mental hospitals, the streets, and jail until her death.

Individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders have an earlier onset of psychosis if they have previously been exposed to prescription stimulants, according to new research currently in press in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Researchers (including Jim van Os) find, in a three-year cohort study of 1272 people at possible genetic risk of psychosis, that "most transitions (to psychosis)...

In the first analysis of 30 years of studies, including 46 studies (selected from 27,000) involving 80,000 subjects, researchers in the U.K. and Australia...