“The Big Business of Selling Prescription-Drug Records”
Bloomberg Businessweek investigates the companies involved in buying and selling mass databases of people's prescription-drug histories, and the new ways in which that information is being used by skirting privacy protections.
“When psychiatrists are on Facebook, their patients can get a case of TMI”
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...
Smartphone Mental Health Apps — Effective Treatment or Just Invasive and Misleading?
Wired examines some of the latest self-surveillance mobile apps that people are using to help themselves manage their own behaviors.
"Through the discreet and...
Research Suggests that Forensic Psychological Examinations are Unreliable and Biased
Concerns have been raised about inconsistent and unreliable results, which may lead to injustices in sentencing or even wrongful convictions.
“Big Pharma and the Big Push for Patients to Take Their Meds”
“The pharma industry loses tens of billions in worldwide sales each year when patients don’t fill, or refill, their prescriptions,” Rebecca Robbins reports for STAT. So...
The Psychology of Torture
“An ordinary person becomes a torturer with surprising ease. The hard part comes when it’s time to be human again,” neuroscientist Shane O’Mara writes...
“Rutgers Professor Taken for Pysch Evaluation by NYPD After Political Tweets”
“According to Allred's tweets from Tuesday night, the New York Police Department visited him at home to investigate ‘political statements’ he made ‘on campus...
“A Psychiatrist Opposes H.R. 2646: Here’s Why”
Writing for the Campaign for Real Change in Mental Health Policy, psychiatrist Coni Kalinowski implores others not to support the Murphy Bill “or any other legislation that encourages the use of involuntary outpatient commitment for psychiatric treatment.” “For 9 years, I trained and worked in Wisconsin where involuntary outpatient commitment has been used to force people into treatment for over 30 years, and I can tell you first hand, it does far more harm than good to individuals, it is very expensive, and it does not address the public health and safety issues that people hope it will.”
Agency and Activism as Protective Factors for Children in the Gaza Strip
Researchers recommend a ‘politically-informed focus', including activism, when assessing children and designing interventions in areas of chronic political violence.
Doctors Frustrated With Electronic Medical Records
"Disappointing" and "tragedy" are some of the descriptives everyday doctors are using to describe the expanding use of electronic medical records, according to The...
Scales Assessing Child and Adolescent Psychopathology Lack Cross-Cultural Validity
Researchers find few existing "psychopathology scales" are appropriate for global utilization.
“Why US Law on Guns and Mental Health Needs to Change”
-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."
Treating Addiction With an App
From MIT Technology Review: A new app, Triggr, is using smartphone data to track the behavior of people struggling with substance use and addiction, with...
The Dangers of Over-Policing Motherhood
In this piece for The Atlantic, Chris Millard discusses how increased medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic scrutiny of motherhood in the 20th century set the stage...
Leah Harris and Tim Murphy Talk “Mental Illness and the Law”
Today on Radio Times, U.S. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), Mark Salzer, professor and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at Temple University, and Leah...
“The Devil is in the Details: How Patients’ Mental Health Data is at...
The Intercept illustrates the growing insecurity of our medical and mental health data in an age of privacy breaches. Individual stories detail instances of electronic therapy notes being shared between all doctors in a practice, employees being fired after mental health information is disclosed through workplace wellness programs, and police data on past suicide attempts being used to prevent Canadian citizens from crossing the US border.
“Clients and Suicide: The Lawyer’s Dilemma”
If their clients admit to having suicidal feelings or show evidence of serious psychological problems, how do lawyers' legal responsibilities to their clients change...
Experts Stress Importance of Social Networks for Psychosis and Bipolar Interventions
Researchers develop a novel approach to mapping personal well-being networks for those diagnosed with severe mental illness (SMI) that incorporates social ties, connections to place, and meaningful activities.
The Other Foucault
From The Nation: In two new books, Foucault: The Birth of Power and Foucault's Last Decade, Stuart Elden investigates some of the unexplored aspects of Michel Foucault's...
Russian MP Proposes Psychiatric Exams for All Election Candidates
"A nationalist lawmaker suggests making politicians disclose their psychiatric problems to the public and punish those who try to hide them by removing them...
United Nations Rep Brings Attention to Human Rights Violations in Psychiatry
Dr. Dainius Pūras argues that the status quo in mental health treatment is no longer acceptable and demands political action to promote human rights.
Samaritans’ Online Suicide Surveillance App an Ethical Minefield
In Gigaom, privacy and security journalist David Meyer discusses the release of a new app from the UK Samaritans called "Radar." The app monitors...
Is Facebook a Structural Threat to Free Society?
From TruthHawk: Facebook's technology has an unprecedented ability to surveil and manipulate people.
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When Algorithms Are Running the Asylum
From Neo.life: The emerging discipline of computational psychiatry, which aims to use machine-learning algorithms to recognize patterns of mental distress and identify treatments that may be...
“Would Washington’s FDA Fix Cure the Patients or the Drug Industry?”
Legislation is being advanced that would speed up the FDA’s approval process for new drugs and medical devices, according to a report by the Pacific Standard. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies have been lobbying heavily to reduce regulations and are winning over bipartisan support by attaching these measures to increased mental health funding.