Issues

"I feel uncomfortable about the use of the word stigma in mental health campaigns. But, I haven’t been able to put my finger on...

"The stigma suffered by people identified as experiencing psychiatric problems is often described as more disabling than the actual mental disorder," writes retired psychologist...

In The National Psychologist, forensic psychologist David Kirschner writes about his experiences evaluating young murderers, and discusses the negative role that he feels prior...

The popular smoking cessation drug Chantix is the medication that most frequently makes people feel suicidal or homicidal, according to figures gathered by the...

John Albers was completely surprised when police came to his home at midnight and insisted on taking him to a psychiatric hospital, where he...

"A nationalist lawmaker suggests making politicians disclose their psychiatric problems to the public and punish those who try to hide them by removing them...

The provincial government health service of Alberta, Canada recently concluded a successful pilot project that reduced the use of antipsychotic medications for patients with...

Since many more Americans now have mental health coverage as a result of the US Affordable Care Act, mental health services will soon begin...

According to a study in the British Medical Journal, benzodiazepine use is associated with a significantly increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Some experts...

In a commentary in the American Journal of Psychiatry, George Washington University psychiatrist Amir Afkhami writes that the US State Department-funded Iraq Mental Health...

In an article published by the Treatment Advocacy Center, The Shortage of Public Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons, the authors (D. J. Jaffe and E. Fuller Torrey) present the idea that we have far too few hospital beds in this country, and because of that there has been a dramatic shift towards the diversion of people labeled with mental illness into prisons and homelessness. Their answer to this issue is that we should radically increase the amount of hospital beds and we should also dramatically increase our reliance on outpatient treatment in the form of mandated involuntary medication programs. As many people know here, the TAC has been highly influential politically and the authors of this paper have been instrumental in getting laws passed that mandate the outpatient use of psychiatric drugs for people who have been civilly committed.

Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow gets a friend recommendation from Facebook, and it turns out to be his current psychotherapist, who isn't using any...

In MinnPost, Susan Perry discusses a JAMA Internal Medicine study that found that, within 48 hours of being hospitalized, almost half of adults aged...

"Evidence from longitudinal, cross-sectional, and prospective cohort studies suggests that the use of antidepressants at therapeutic doses is associated with decreased bone mineral density...

The Economist reports on "Ellie," a programmed, virtual psychologist designed by researchers at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, who has a...

A new documentary coming to theatres around the US over the next few months explores Dan Cohen's Music and Memory program and its emotional...

High-tech surveillance could help improve people's mental health cost-effectively, according to a commentary in The Guardian. "any existing capacities of tablets, smartphones and even...

I’ve been very, very sad lately. Some might even call me “depressed.” There are a lot of reasons. Robin Williams’ suicide is not one of them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy about what has come of him. I have fond memories of Mork and Mindy, just like everyone else over the age of 30 or so. It is unquestionably sad to learn he was hurting so much, and even harder to reconcile that with his relentlessly upbeat public persona. On a personal level, it hurts at least a little to know that someone who experienced that level of success (about which most can only dream) also fell so far and experienced so much despair.

Like millions, I am sitting with the fact that one of the funniest people to grace the planet has died by his own hand. Robin Williams’ death has hit people of my generation, Generation X, especially hard. After all, his face flashed often across our childhood screens. Mork and Mindy episodes were a source of solace for me as a little girl, as I bounced around between foster homes and family members' homes, while my single mother cycled in and out of the state mental hospital, fighting to survive. I could laugh and say “nanu, nanu - shazbot” and "KO" and do the silly hand sign and forget for just a little while about living a life I didn’t ask for.

Blogging from the American Psychological Association annual convention, Lisa Bowen reports on a panel session entitled, "Mental Illness and Violence: Toward Research-Informed Policies and...

In a follow-up to an earlier commentary on the topic, Paula Span discusses the widespread use and negative effects of sleeping pills among the...

Anne Skomorkowsky of the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry writes in Truthout about a recent case of a psychiatrist who shot a patient. Skomorkowsky...

A blog post from AbleChild raises questions about efforts in Connecticut to expand psychiatric screening and treatments for children and youth. "Since the...

In his Scientific American blog, Gary Stix reviews the latest investigations into the impacts of comprehensive lifestyle change approaches to preventing dementia. "Results of...

Massachusetts State Representative Paul Heroux' Huffington Post blog concludes that "We need to realize that high-profile events are high-profile because they are unlikely. And trying to...