Globalization

Researchers argue that blaming climate change inaction on psychological barriers ignores the effects of neoliberal capitalism and social structures.

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

A new study suggests proximity to green space as a child is linked to lower rates of mental health issues in adulthood.

Depression, serious psychological distress, and suicide attempts have risen substantially since the early 2000s among young adults – what’s changed?

Drugs to treat serious or life-threatening conditions can receive accelerated FDA approval, but may expose patients to increased safety risks and reduced efficacy.

A Nigerian study finds that more than three-quarters of patients improved, even when only 13% were prescribed medication.

In this piece for RT, Slavoj Žižek discusses the impact of capitalism on America's opioid crisis, exploring the factors that have driven people to use drugs...

In Europe, millions of people live in segregated institutional settings, excluded from mainstream society. Without adequate, person-centered support in the community, institutionalisation will sadly continue.

From Aeon: In the early 20th-century Age of Empire, officials in the British Empire sought to better understand their colonial subjects through the use of...

Derek Summerfield, consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation Trust, challenges the assumption that Western depression is a universal condition.

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.”

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.

Researchers investigate the impact of immigration policies on the mental health of arriving Mexican and Central American immigrants.

14-year study of a rural sample in China shows those who were married had higher rates of remission from schizophrenia.

“Overall, this study showed that the information and awareness campaign had almost no significant effects on the general public's attitudes toward people affected by either schizophrenia or depression,” the researchers, led by German medical sociologist Anna Makowski, wrote. “One could assume that deeply rooted convictions cannot be modified by rather time-limited and general activities targeted at the public.”

Critical psychiatry researcher, anthropologist and NYU professor Helena Hansen writes: “Opioid maintenance acts as a kind of pharmaceutical prosthesis which promises to return white ‘addicts’ 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.”

Study finds the incidence of “psychosis” to vary by person and place, corresponding to factors such as race, ethnicity, age, and environment.

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

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

As the Global Mental Health Movement attempts to address cross-cultural mental health disparities, a new article encourages integrating traditional healing practices with psychotherapy.

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.