Globalization

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 month’s issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders, people in developed countries, like the United States, are more likely to assume that ‘mental illnesses’ 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

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.

“Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask,” Samantha Allen writes in Invisible Wounds. Melissa Walker, an art therapist, asks them to make one. “The 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.”

Transitioning into poverty linked to behavioral issues in children, but may be mitigated by mother’s mental health.

Sarah Kaplan for the Washington Post reports that while “Trump has pledged to cut federal spending he hasn’t offered details on how this will affect funding for scientific research.”

People who are more likely to believe that others’ views will change to match their own over time are less likely to engage in actions to facilitate that change

New meta-analysis of smartphone based interventions demonstrates small-to-moderate effect.

“At a time when Americans pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, this bill provides absolutely no relief for...

Global analysis of 149 countries finds food insecurity is associated with poorer mental health.

Last week, the FDA gave permission for ecstasy to move into Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of PTSD. “If they can keep...

Concerns about the impact of climate change on animals and nature results in more effective coping to reduce hopelessness about climate change and promotes pro-environmental behaviors.

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. “They have not credibly refuted these core findings of Hoffman’s seven-month investigation, nor have they even attempted to do so.”

Nunavut, Canada’s largest and northernmost territory, is suffering from a suicide rate that is 10 times the national average. “In the case of Inuit boys 15 to 19,” CBC News reports, “the suicide rate is 40 times higher than those of their peers in the rest of Canada.”

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. “Writer Ernest Hemingway, who committed suicide shortly after ECT, is reported to have said before his death: ‘It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient.’"

Even thought current mental health treatments are “suboptimal,” there is a lack of attention paid to the preventative effects of diet and nutrition. Recent studies suggests that nutritional changes can influence the risk for mental health issues and that nutritional supplements, called nutraceuticals, can be prescribed for existing conditions.

An international study of college students reveals ubiquitous social and emotional challenges faced by young adults.

McGill University's Laurence J. Kirmayer and Duncan Pedersen examine the core controversies that dog the "global mental health" agenda in a freely available editorial...

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

On Tuesday morning, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of three former detainees against the psychologists who collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to oversee the torture program. According to the Intercept, psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen and their employees collected over $85 million dollars for designing and implementing techniques, based off of the work of Martin Seligman, that combatted torture-resistance techniques by creating a state of “learned helplessness.” There is, however, no evidence that these techniques gleaned any useful intelligence.

“We Americans are living through a dread-inducing age,” Jessica Stern writes in the ‘Times, and our feelings of vulnerability have psychological and political consequences. Terror Management Theory, “which suggests that much of human behavior is motivated by an unconscious terror of death,” provides an explanation for the xenophobia and culture wars that often follow the dread of an attack.

Existential therapist and writer, Jason Dias, claims that there is something deeper and more pervasive than guns, drugs, or mental illness at the bottom of the United States’ mass shooting problem. On aNewDomain he writes: “We have to acknowledge that people who are despairing right now, they’re the sane ones, the normal ones. It makes sense to despair when you’re looked down on, tormented, bullied. When you feel different and you’re alienated. When your culture is alienated. When violence is glorified not by movies and games and television, but by the government, by the news. When violence is fetishized by political parties.”

Will Davies, author of The Happiness Industry, does a Q&A on the ways companies are misusing psychological research on happiness. “I 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.”

Martin Gottesfeld was charged in October in relation to the hacking of Boston Children’s Hospital in 2014 following the alleged mistreatment of one of...

The latest economic recession led to a spike in diagnoses for mental illnesses, suicide attempts, and suicide, according to report out of the University...

From Mail & Guardian: Colonialism today is more entrenched in our society than it ever has been in the past, and traditional psychology and mental...