Issues

-An anonymous mental health nurse describes how struggling with her own depression has given her new insights into the state of mental health care.

The pilot who deliberately crashed a Germanwings commercial airplane was questioned by the Federal Aviation Administration and denied a license to fly. The Agency...

-Psychologist Laurence Palfreyman critically reviews a recent study that made global headlines, purporting to have found that depression made people three times as likely to commit violent crimes.

The person living on the streets with whom no one will make eye contact, or who the police hassle for requesting spare change from passersby. The individual who has learned to cut themselves to manage emotional pain, and so is punished by emergency room staff who sew them up without anesthetic (both physical and emotional pain disregarded), or confuse their efforts for suicide and contain them against their will. The person of color who some might cross the street to avoid, or who is arrested for lashing out when another is murdered at the hands of those employed to ‘serve and protect.’ Each is only looking for a way to survive, but instead finds themselves ignored or blamed.

-Does prominent Canadian child psychiatrist Stanley Kutcher have different standards for evidence depending on whether he's evaluating psychotherapy or psychotropics?

-BBC psychologist Claudia Hammond discusses topics such as what psychology can tell us about how we decide to vote and portrayals of mental health in comedy.

A report and national map showed which US states have been implementing new Medicaid provisions that buttress mental health care access, and which states haven't.

-A selection of recent commentaries from around the web about the Germanwings plane crash...

-Psychiatrist Allen Frances discusses his mixed feelings about many commonly used but misleading psychiatric terms.

-"I knew my psychiatric practice was forever changed the day a patient arrived with a manila folder stuffed with printouts and announced that it contained the contents of a Google search that he had done on me."

-Pacific Standard examines the research into teenagers who commit violent crimes, and finds that their "brains" seem less to blame than their economic status.

An editorial in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has called for a ban on advertisements about testosterone replacement therapy, and the FDA has issued warnings about the practice.

-Various experts weigh in on whether the boom in diagnosing psychological and physical problems as being caused by "low testosterone" is "disease-mongering."

I thought I would make a small contribution to the discussion about how coverage of the recent airline tragedy focuses so much on the supposed ‘mental illness’ of the pilot and not so much on the possible role of antidepressants. Of course we will never know the answer to these questions but it is important, I think, to combat the simplistic nonsense wheeled out after most such tragedies, the nonsense that says the person had an illness that made them do awful things. So, just to confirm what many recipients of antidepressants, clinicians and researchers have been saying for a long time, here are some findings from our recent New Zealand survey of over 1,800 people taking anti-depressants, which we think is the largest survey to date.

-Gary Greenberg points out that mental health professionals aren't particularly good prognosticators.

-The director of the Office for Civil Rights discusses the latest wave of data breaches of American citizens' health information.

With the current focus on the possible contribution of psychoactive drugs to the crash of GermanWings flight A320 on Tuesday, March 24, it is useful to identify potential links between the effect of the antidepressants and the events.  In all 47 cases listed on SSRIstories, the pilots were taking antidepressant medications, mostly SSRIs, often in combination with other medications and sometimes with alcohol.

The crash last week of the Germanwings plane has shocked many. In view of the apparent mental health record of the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, questions have been asked about the screening policies of airlines. The focus has generally been on the conditions pilots may have or the arguments they might be having with partners or other situational factors that might make them unstable. Even when the issue of the medication a pilot may be taking is raised, it is in the context of policies that permit pilots to continue on drugs like antidepressants to ensure any underlying conditions are effectively treated. But fewer treatments in medicine are effective in this sense than people might think and even when effective they come with effects that need to be balanced against the likely effects of the underlying condition.

The German pilot who apparently deliberately crashed a passenger plane reportedly had antidepressant drugs in his home, use of which is restricted or disallowed by many aviation regulators.

Antipsychotic medications that are commonly being used to help control behaviors in elderly people with dementia seem to be causing premature deaths at high rates.

-The iPhone is becoming a diagnostic tool drawing medical and mental health data from millions of potential customers.

-Attorney Charles Kels analyzes recent legislation requiring health care providers to disclose mental health information about patients to government.

A literature review found that the extensive off-label use of antipsychotic medications in nursing homes is causing many adverse effects and providing limited benefits.

I have written this story, a story of Exodus to Freedom, a thousand times. I retell it to myself late at night while I lie on my air mattress. In the mornings I may recall these amazing events while running along the beach straight into the sunrise. I walk my dog and tell the story again, hoping passers-by don’t think I’m talking to myself, lest I be called “loco.” But that has never happened. The one aim I had when coming to Uruguay has come true: Not one person here considers me crazy.

-New Scientist discusses the reasons that eight US professional health organizations "collectively took a stand against a law that on the face of it, seems like plain common sense."