Privacy & Surveillance

Part one of a two-part Mad In America investigation into the expansion of psychological screening and electronic surveillance of children and youth. A new government-funded mental health training program for British Columbia family physicians and school staff promotes screening for mental disorders in all children and youth. Critics say the program omits key scientific evidence, seems more like drug promotion than medical education, and downplays serious potential harms. Nevertheless, programs like it are rolling out across Canada and the US.

How does social network site use influence well-being? Researchers suggest this depends on the extent to which site use is “connection-promoting."

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...

“We Americans are living through a dread-inducing age,” Jessica Stern writes in the ‘Times, and our feelings of vulnerability have psychological and political consequences. Terror Management Theory, “which suggests that much of human behavior is motivated by an unconscious terror of death,” provides an explanation for the xenophobia and culture wars that often follow the dread of an attack.

Participatory action approaches in bioethics research used to decrease coercion and seclusion in psychiatric treatment.

Only months after the American Psychological Association voted to ban psychologists from “advanced interrogation” facilities like Guantánamo Bay prison the Pentagon is asking them to...

Loneliness has been linked to negative health outcomes, but there are no interventions clearly proven to ‘fix’ the problem.

Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, writing for Counter Punch, take on those who have criticized the Hoffman Report, which found that the APA had actively colluded in the US Torture program. “They have not credibly refuted these core findings of Hoffman’s seven-month investigation, nor have they even attempted to do so.”

From Pacific Standard: Technology is increasingly collecting and sharing data on individuals' mental and physical health, which is then converted into useable knowledge, such as recommendations about...

Research illustrates privacy concerns with how mental health applications collect and share users’ data.

-Motherboard reports on an implantable chip that can hold hundreds of doses of drugs and be activated by remote control.

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...

From TechCrunch: Facebook's new artificial intelligence technology will now scan all posts for suicidal thoughts and send mental health resources or contact local first-responders for users...

Colorado police trained in crisis intervention infrequently use force or arrest individuals experiencing a mental health crisis and are likely to transfer individuals to a treatment facility.

“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...

In JAMA, several Texas medical doctors and health information experts discuss the rapidly expanding number of "medical scribes" being hired by physicians to enter medical information into electronic health records (EHRs). Many doctors are finding electronic health records to be inefficient and unhelpful, they write, yet governments continue to mandate them.

From TruthHawk: Facebook's technology has an unprecedented ability to surveil and manipulate people. Article →­  

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...

Meta-analytic study detects upsurge in patterns of perfectionism in young adults and explores how neoliberalism contributes to this trend.

From Slate: The death of Charleena Lyles, who was shot by the police after she called them to report a burglary, serves as a reminder...

Findings point to association between race and the mental health care experiences of African-American and White veterans.

China Mills raises concerns that global mental health movements obscure social determinants of health and naturalize Western mental health concepts.

New study examines how increased screen time and social media may be contributing to depressive symptoms and suicide risk in teens

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...