Disorders

What would happen if the mental health system fully recognized the pervasive and profound impacts of trauma on their clients? How might a deeper appreciation of the multi-faceted sequelae of childhood maltreatment and toxic stressors reshape mental health services? While the implementation of trauma-informed care in mental health programs has made significant inroads, the dominant bio-reductionist model continues to constrain and undermine progress.

Former DSM-IV task force chair Allen Frances takes aim at the “massive overuse of psychotropic medication in children” in an article for the Psychiatric Times. He shares a checklist of questions for doctors to consider before prescribing medication to children. Frances warns: “We simply don’t know what will be the long-term impact of bathing a child’s immature brain with powerful chemicals.”

In this week’s NY Times Modern Love blog Hannah Louise Poston tells the story of living with her severely depressed boyfriend, Joe, and how her decision to buy a kitten improved their relationship. “The next morning when we woke up, the first words out of Joe’s mouth were, ‘Where’s the kitten?’ And the kitten’s first act, when she heard his voice, was to ice-pick her way up the quilt and jump on his face. That same summer, Joe mustered the energy to make major changes in his life…”

I'd like to share some personal thoughts on the nature of the Hearing Voices group method, and the insights that this kind of support generates. Through these groups, a tradition of mutual healing is being created that honors subjective experiences, and sharing our stories with each other in this way propels this exciting movement forward.

“When people with early-stage symptoms took omega-3 supplements for three months, they had much lower rates of progression than those who did not,” according to research out of Australia covered in this month’s issue of the New Scientist.

Seniors are twice as likely to receive psychotropic prescriptions than younger adults but are much less likely to receive mental health care from psychiatrists or to receive psychotherapy, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. "Our findings suggest that psychotropic medication use is widespread among older adults in outpatient care, at a far higher rate than among younger patients," the study’s lead author Dr. Maust said in a press release. “In many cases, especially for milder depression and anxiety, the safer treatment for older adults who are already taking multiple medications for other conditions might be more therapy-oriented, but very few older adults receive this sort of care."

The majority of children, adolescents and young adults prescribed antipsychotic medications have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to a recent study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Research published in the May 2015 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry questions the use of exposure therapy, the "gold standard" treatment for patients...

-Scientific American visits the question of whether exposure to anesthesia during early childhood can lead to cognitive or behavioral problems later in life.

-Business Insider explores some of the psychosocial factors that may be contributing to depression in the high tech industry.

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 survey of 120 psychiatrists found that the more psychiatrists fear death, the more negative emotions they have towards people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

-Salon discusses the ideas of neuroscientist Marc Lewis, a psychologist, former addict, and author of the book, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease.

-On the Oxford University Press blog, a professor of psychiatry and psychology weighs in on recent studies using therapy as a response to problematic psychosis symptoms.

A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey of 1000 US primary care physicians found that many do not understand basic medical facts about the addictive nature of the opioids they are prescribing.

Antipsychotics appear to be too often prescribed to curb aggressive impulses in children and youth, rather than to treat psychosis or any other clinically indicated conditions.

-The most recent issue of the The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies examines the promises and risks associated with mainstream psychiatry's growing interest in ketamine for the treatment of depression.

-She won a seminal court case requiring insurance companies to pay for stays in residential treatment centers for eating disorders, and now Jeanene Harlick has begun an investigative expose on those same centers' poor practices.

-"The push for long-term care facilities to abandon the use of off-label use of antipsychotic medications for residents with dementia will intensify over the next two years."

-SSRI antidepressant medications contribute to a significant worsening of emotional "rapid cycling" in patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

-Mother Jones examines the growing body of research implicating air pollution in dementia.

Several years after the information was first revealed, a published study has shown how an influential NIMH study doctored the real data about antidepressants and suicidal events in youth.

-Daniel Yudkin discusses studies examining some of the ways in which anxiety can change how people think, and inhibit social connections and understanding.

Careful reductions in dosage levels of antipsychotic medications over time improved long-term rates of recovery and functional remission in patients diagnosed with a first-episode psychosis.

-Psychiatrists Ilina Singh and Simon Wessely ask if it would be ethically right to treat a child for ADHD, even if it were possible to definitively identify a biomarker for ADHD.