Challenging the Ongoing ICD 10 Revision: How You Can Help
Mental health policy does not sound exciting. It is - youâll just have to take my word for it-, but even if you donât, you might agree with me that itâs crucial. Mental health policy shapes mental health legislation, and mental health legislation shapes issues such as consent, access, equal opportunities and de-institutionalisation, to name but a few. Influencing policy is key to reframing the debate around mental health, and changing the reality on the ground for people with lived experience. With this in mind, here is an introduction to Mental Health Europeâs work on the revisions to ICD 10, and a call to action, for you to get directly involved in this international debate.
âVeterans Let Slip the Masks of War: Can This Art Therapy Ease PTSD?â
âService members suffering from PTSD often feel like theyâre wearing a mask,â Samantha Allen writes in Invisible Wounds. Melissa Walker, an art therapist, asks them to make one. âThe results are stirring. One mask, striped in red and black with hollow chrome-colored eyes, is wrapped in razor wire with a lock where its mouth should be.â
âHow We Learned to Stop Worrying About People and Love the Bombingâ
For Tom Dispatch, historian Rick Shenkman âexplores the biological phenomena that may well underpin our appalling lack of empathy, the animal instincts that allow so many of us to stand by in the face of unspeakable acts,â and âhow the stories we tell ourselves and others might offer us a path to overcome our utterly human inhumanity.â
âWage Gap May Help Explain Why More Women Are Anxious and Depressed Than Men”
âAccording to a new study, the consequences of this wage gap extend beyond the checking account: women who earn less than their male peers...
âWhy Are Young Westerners Drawn to Terrorist Organizations Like ISIS?â
"ISIS provides existential fast food, and for some of the most spiritually hungry young Westerners, ISIS is like a Big Mac amidst a barren wasteland of an existence,â Omar Hague writes in the Psychiatric Times. âWho actually joins ISIS? Not psychopaths or the brainwashed, but rather everyday young people in social transition, on the margins of society, or amidst a crisis of identity.â
âAttacks on Hoffman Report From Military Psychologists Obfuscate Detainee Abuseâ
Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, writing for Counter Punch, take on those who have criticized the Hoffman Report, which found that the APA had actively colluded in the US Torture program. âThey have not credibly refuted these core findings of Hoffmanâs seven-month investigation, nor have they even attempted to do so.â
âMind Your Own Businessâ
Barbara Ehrenreich weighs in on mass-market mindfulness, Silicon Valley, Buddhism- sliced up and commodified.
âLetter to the Editor: Guns and Mental Illnessâ
The president and president-elect of the American Psychological Association penned a letter to the New York Times calling on âCongress and other policy makers to address these factors with interventions supported by evidence rather than avoiding them by scapegoating the mentally ill.â
Child Poverty Linked to Early Neurological Impairment
A new NIH-funded study suggests that children from low-income environments are more likely to have neurological impairments. The researchers claim that these neurodevelopmental issues are âdistinct from the risk of cognitive and emotional delays known to accompany early-life poverty.â
âHow Terror Hardens Usâ
âWe Americans are living through a dread-inducing age,â Jessica Stern writes in the âTimes, and our feelings of vulnerability have psychological and political consequences. Terror Management Theory, âwhich suggests that much of human behavior is motivated by an unconscious terror of death,â provides an explanation for the xenophobia and culture wars that often follow the dread of an attack.
âPersonalized Medicine: A Faustian Bargain?â
In a guest blog for the Scientific American, Eleonore Pauwels and Jim Drawta write about the âdark side of the data revolution âthe successor to the Industrial Revolution, with personal data as the new coal, oil or shale gas to be extracted or traded away, enshrined in an updated Faustian pact.â
âWhy San Bernardino Polarized America and What It Means for Our Political Futureâ
What does the psychology of terror mean for Americaâs future? Social psychologist Daniel Kort weighs in on what the science of terror management theory, behavioral economics, and political polarization can tell us about where weâre headed.
âPharmaceutical Prosthesis and White Racial Rescue in the Prescription Opioid âEpidemicââ
Critical psychiatry researcher, anthropologist and NYU professor Helena Hansen writes: âOpioid maintenance acts as a kind of pharmaceutical prosthesis which promises to return white âaddictsâ to regaining their status as full human persons and middle-class consumers. Meanwhile, black and brown users are not deemed as persons to be rescued, but rather dangerous subjects to be pharmaceutically contained within the public discipline of the state.â
âPrivacy Not Included: Federal Law Lags Way Behind New Health-Care Technologyâ
âThe federal privacy law known as HIPAA doesnât cover home paternity tests, fitness trackers, or health apps. When a Florida woman complained after seeing...
The Psychology of Terror and Forfeiting Our Civil Rights
Speaking on the Essential Pittsburgh radio show, psychologist Brent Dean Robbins, former president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, discusses how fear drives us toward irrational policies in the wake of terror attacks. He also offers commentary on the Murphy Bill, which he criticizes for unfairly scapegoating those diagnosed with mental illnesses.
Depression Discrimination More Severe in High Income Countries
According to a study published in this monthâs British Journal of Psychiatry, people diagnosed with depression in high-income countries are more likely to limit...
When Psychologists Deny Guantanamo Torture
Psychologist Roy Eidelson comments on the Society for Military Psychologyâs criticism of the Hoffman report, which exposed the collusion between the APA and the CIAâs torture program. He writes, âthe leaders of APAâs military psychology division have offered a very dark vision for the profession of psychology â a vision that we must reject, both individually and institutionally.â
âSuicide, Mental Illness Risks Increase During Recessionsâ
The latest economic recession led to a spike in diagnoses for mental illnesses, suicide attempts, and suicide, according to report out of the University...
âMaybe Companies Should Chill on Employee-Happiness Programsâ
Will Davies, author of The Happiness Industry, does a Q&A on the ways companies are misusing psychological research on happiness. âI think that one thing that often gets lost in lots of the discussions of happiness (especially in the business world) is the possibility that happy work may mean less work.â
âPowerful Pill is Called Toxic Fuel for Fighters in Syrian Warâ
Peter Holley reports for the Washington Post that a powerfuland highly addictive amphetamine drug known as fenethylline or Captagon is being used to fuel ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. âCaptagon has been around in the West since the 1960s, when it was given to people suffering from hyperactivity, narcolepsy, and depression.â
âWe Need REAL Change in Mental Health Policy, Not the Illusion of Reformâ
David Shern, from Johns Hopkins University, writes that the latest mental health âMurphy billâ in Congress is âan expansion of the approaches that got us into our current difficulties.â âEarly intervention and prevention, assessable and patient-focused services with a rehabilitation orientation and increased funding for the community supports needed for successful recovery are the tickets to system improvement.â
âThe Psychology of Terrorism: Q&A with John Horganâ
The Scientific American reprints their interview with psychologist and terrorism expert John Horgan following the attacks in Paris on November 13th. âAn issue I find problematic right now is the idea that to prevent terrorism, we have to first prevent radicalization⊠There are far more people who hold "radical" views than will ever become involved in terrorism, and there are plenty of terrorists (who are already small in number â a point we tend to forget) who donât initially hold radical views but drift into terrorism regardless.â
Experts Call on Presidential Candidates to Improve Study Transparency
In an open letter to all US presidential candidates published Thursday in the BMJ, a group of global health care experts assert that current research regulations allow drug companies to publish incomplete and misleading results. They ask the candidates to declare whether they support improved transparency measures that would make data on drug studies publically available and open to scrutiny.
Ireland: âMentally Ill Still Forced to Endure Shock Treatmentâ
Despite the promises of two successive governments to end forced shock treatment in Ireland, unwilling patients are still being forced to undergo the therapy, according to the Sunday Independent. âWriter Ernest Hemingway, who committed suicide shortly after ECT, is reported to have said before his death: âIt was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient.â"
Disease Theory of âMental Illnessâ Tied To Pessimism About Recovery
Researchers recently completed a first of its kind, large-scale international survey of attitudes about mental health and they were surprised by the results. According to their analysis published in this monthâs issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders, people in developed countries, like the United States, are more likely to assume that âmental illnessesâ are similar to physical illnesses and biological or genetic in origin, but they are also much less likely to think that individuals can overcome these challenges and recover