Alternatives to Suicide: Strategies for Staying Alive
For more than 7,300 days of my life, waking up the next morning required me to make a conscious choice to diligently pursue something — anything — other than my impulse to die. Maybe the best teachers of how to avoid suicide will not be the people who are afraid someone else will die, but those of us who can explain how and why we regularly choose to live.
International Study Documents Widespread Distress in College Students
An international study of college students reveals ubiquitous social and emotional challenges faced by young adults.
What Does Social Justice Really Mean for Psychologists?
Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.
Out-of-home Placements for Children Increase Odds of Psychiatric Issues
When controlling for social and family characteristics, separating children from parents into out-of-home care increases psychiatric issues, prescriptions, and criminal activity.
David Foster Wallace: Suicide and the Death of Agency
Today is the 10th anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s suicide. While it’s not fair to build an entire theory on an incredibly complicated issue like suicide around one person, Wallace’s death should challenge the common narratives around suicide — that “mental illness” causes it and that “we can’t ever know why people do it.” Both of these are self-serving platitudes that are simply not true.
Study Finds Greening Urban Land Improves Mental Health
Remediating dilapidated physical environments in urban settings can contribute to better mental health.
Challenging Resilience as a Buzzword: Toward a Contextualized Resilience Model
Researcher Dr. Silke Schwarz highlights how Western psychology’s construction of individual resilience deflects emphasized individual pathology and deflects efforts at structural change.
Exploring the Tension Between Educational Psychology and Child Psychiatry
Researchers explore efforts to integrate educational psychology and child psychiatry.
Researcher Critically Examines Movements for Global Mental Health
China Mills raises concerns that global mental health movements obscure social determinants of health and naturalize Western mental health concepts.
The Impervious Surface of Professional Help: A Letter to My Therapist
Why is it that members of the community who have no formal education in psychology or counseling or therapy like myself are receiving more training in compassion and effective responses to the public health crisis that is suicide than “professionals?” My coworkers at the crisis center are far less pathologizing, cold and judgmental than those with licenses to “help.”
Adolescent Suicide and The Black Box Warning: STAT Gets It All Wrong
STAT recently published an opinion piece arguing that the black box warning on antidepressants has led to an increase in adolescent suicide.
It is easily debunked, and reveals once again how our society is regularly misled about research findings related to psychiatric drugs. STAT has lent its good name to a false story that, unfortunately, will resonate loudly with the public.
What Stops People From Using Exercise to Treat Depression?
New research examines important factors of adherence when prescribing exercise to treat depression.
Review Examines Causes and Consequences of Overdiagnosis in Primary Care
A new review in BMJ investigates overdiagnosis in primary care settings, where the majority of mental health care is provided in the U.S.
Prolonged Exposure Reduces Dropout Rates and Symptoms for Individuals with Complex Trauma
New study finds that intensive prolonged exposure is a promising treatment option for individuals with multiple trauma experiences.
Waiting for Gravity
Of course one wishes for an easy answer, but the things that conspire to drive a person over the edge are too numerous and varied ever to point and say, it was this one; one can never really be so certain. No one can say it wasn’t that one, or that it wasn’t really all of those together, or that, when it came my own turn for “insanity,” I wasn’t standing halfway over the edge already, waiting for gravity to kick in and for me to fall.
Suicides Are Increasing – And So Are Antidepressant Prescriptions
Disturbingly, our study and others reveal that the black box warning is now ignored in many countries, since antidepressant prescriptions for children are on the rise again. Despite increasing certainty that antidepressants are ineffective and likely cause suicidal behavior in young people, psychiatry continues to claim that they reduce suicide risk.
Sociologist Questions Effectiveness and Ethics of Mental Health Services
Medical sociologist David Pilgrim argues that mental health care is neither effective nor “kindly,” as it often relies on flawed research and ineffective treatments.
Call to Monitor Adverse Effects of Antipsychotics in Youth
Researchers point to the risks of using antipsychotics with youth and caution against the practice.
Prescripticide: A Proposal for Action and a Request for Your Help
The primary factor protecting psychiatry’s unwarranted power and authority is that it is perceived as shielding society from folks who are believed to be dangerous. It would seem, then, that one logical step toward reducing society’s trust in biological psychiatry would be to reveal the evidence of a significant correlation between the use of prescribed psychoactive drugs and the commission of violent acts against oneself or others.
Deadly Serious: Talking Openly About Suicide
The suicide crisis is real. The pain is real. The deaths are real. None of us can afford to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this isn't happening. But the helplessness and confusion about what to do about it are also real. And that's why peer relationships and peer-developed modalities can be so helpful. Many of us have been there and are still alive to talk about it. We know what ways of relating gave us hope and helped us to continue on.
The Creativity and Suicide of Robin Williams: A Phenomenological Study
My purpose in writing this case study is not to suggest that creativity is a mere byproduct of trauma, or to deny the role of so-called mental illness in suicide, but to situate these phenomena within the context of human lives. To render them humanly (rather than medically) intelligible. With his mind and body disintegrating, Robin Williams took his life to thwart the eradication of self.
Hegemonic Sanity and Suicide
The “good” suicide attempt survivor wakes up in a hospital bed bathed in beautiful natural light, surrounded by the people who love them most, and they realize that their thinking was flawed and all those unsolvable problems can actually be solved if they are just compliant with medication and therapy. And then there's the “bad” suicide attempter who is angry that they lived, who challenges the status quo.
Suicidal Tendencies, Part III: So, When Do I Get to Call the Cops?
What if the key to saving someone is to admit you are powerless to save anyone at all? What would that beckon us to change? A few years ago, I spent a substantial amount of time talking with a man who entered my life because someone in the mental health system told him I might be the one who could save him (or at least, that’s how he heard it). His name was David.
Study Explores Pain Assessment for Medically Complex, Nonverbal Children
To what extent are healthcare providers equipped to assess nuance in the experiences of pain among nonverbal children?
Study Reduces Over-prescription of Antipsychotics in Older Adults
New intervention shows promise in reducing over-prescription of off-label antipsychotics in older adults.
