Researchers Call for Structural Competency in Psychiatry

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Structural competency in psychiatry emphasizes the social factors shaping patient presentations and encourages physician advocacy.

Debate Ensues Over Rights-Based Approach to Mental Health

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Debate ensues as scholars and policymakers discuss how to bring a rights-based approach to mental health policy.

The Conflicts That Result From Globalizing Euro-American Psychology in India

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Researchers examine the transformation of work, life, and identity in India as a result of Western corporate and psychological culture.

Experts Raise Ethical Concerns About Machine Learning in Medicine

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The use of machine learning algorithms (known as artificial intelligence) in the medical field raises a slew of ethical concerns.

New Review Suggests Higher Recovery and Remission Rates for Psychosis

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Meta-analysis gives updated recovery and remission rates for persons identified as having a first-episode psychosis and those diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Case Study of Liberation Approach to International Mental Health Care

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Study in Brazil demonstrates how the exploration of contextual determinants of distress in mental health care can inform therapeutic change.

Decontextualized Depression and PTSD Diagnoses Fail Indigenous Communities

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A case analysis of an American Indian woman illustrates how the DSM diagnostic criteria misrepresent the lives of indigenous people.

Loneliness as Lethal: Researchers Name Social Isolation a ‘Public Health Threat’

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Researchers present loneliness as a health threat facing a growing number of Americans.

Researcher Critically Examines Movements for Global Mental Health

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China Mills raises concerns that global mental health movements obscure social determinants of health and naturalize Western mental health concepts.

More to Happiness Than Feeling Good, Study Finds

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Cross-cultural data suggest that happiness involves feeling the emotions one deems as right, in accordance with personal and cultural values.

Study Finds Deteriorating Mental Health Among Poor White Americans

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Researchers find evidence of low socio-economic status White Americans’ rising distress and declining well-being since the mid-1990s.

Exporting Psychological Concepts Associated With Gender May Have Unintended Consequences

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New qualitative research finds a shift in the meaning of gender as it enters the local lexicon of people in rural Malawi, in turn having negative ramifications for those it is meant to help.

Medical Students’ Racial Biases Lead to Failure to Adequately Treat Patients

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False beliefs about biological differences between races are associated with a failure to provide recommended pain treatments to Black people.

Experts Concerned That Depression Screening Will Lead to Overdiagnosis

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Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.

Researchers Present Structural Competency Training Model for Psychiatrists

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Researchers argue that a structural competency and social determinants of health approach must be made central to psychiatry training.

Traditional South African Healers Use Connection in Suicide Prevention

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Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.

Psychology Must Become a Sanctuary Discipline to Heal Racial Trauma

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Researchers explore pathways of healing racial trauma in Latinx immigrant communities.

Study Explores Meanings of Bipolar Disorder to Those Diagnosed

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The narratives about Bipolar Disorder promoted by drug companies may influence how those diagnosed understand themselves.

Researchers Critique WHO Mental Health Technology

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Researchers critically examine the underlying assumptions and implications of a new WHO mental health technology designed to streamline psychiatric assessment internationally.

VA Hospitals Perform Worst on Inpatient Psychiatric Care

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The results of the cross-sectional study show that U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) owned hospitals perform worst on most measures.

Sense of Purpose Reduces Negative Effects of Social Media Use

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New research shows that having a strong sense of personal meaning and purpose can reduce the negative effects of social media use.

New Review Finds Lancet Global Mental Health Report Misguided

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A new critical review of the latest Lancet global mental health report finds that while the movement claims to take a public health approach in its rhetoric it continues to focus on culturally inappropriate individual-level interventions.

Underestimating Social Determinants of Health Linked to Right-Wing Authoritarianism

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Social determinants have been seen to have an equal, if not greater, influence on health as individual behaviors, yet this evidence is largely ignored. Researchers investigate why this is the case.

Mobile Apps for Mental Health Lack Transparency in Data Sharing

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Research illustrates privacy concerns with how mental health applications collect and share users’ data.

Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia? What About Black People?

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In many respects it is difficult to fault the report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, recently published by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP)[i]; indeed, as recent posts on Mad in America have observed, there is much to admire in it. Whilst not overtly attacking biomedical interpretations of psychosis, it rightly draws attention to the limitations and problems of this model, and points instead to the importance of contexts of adversity, oppression and abuse in understanding psychosis. But the report makes only scant, fleeting references to the role of cultural differences and the complex relationships that are apparent between such differences and individual experiences of psychosis.