Workplace

Google has hired the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Thomas Insel, with plans to create “a wearable sensor to measure mood, cognition and anxiety.” Gizmodo points out the problems with this idea:“One can easily imagine a message popping up on some poor desk jockey’s monitor: ‘You’re not in the right mood today. Please take a day of unpaid leave.’ Or, worse: ‘We’ve detected signs of mental instability, based on how you’ve been talking and sleeping. Please report to a doctor immediately.’”

“The federal privacy law known as HIPAA doesn’t cover home paternity tests, fitness trackers, or health apps. When a Florida woman complained after seeing...

A new review highlights the effects that psychiatric diagnosis has on children and adolescents’ social relationships and views of self.

From STAT: Last week, the House approved a bill that will grant employers access to employees' genetic test results and other health information. Article →­

From Rabble: The regulatory body for social workers and social service workers in Ontario — the Ontario College for Social Workers and Social Service Workers — is...

From The Guardian: Doctors are increasingly experiencing mental health issues due to the unrelenting pressure, inhumane working hours, brutal competition, and workplace bullying that is...

This week’s issue of the New Yorker examines the treatment of people diagnosed with mental health issues in Florida’s prisons. The horrifying stories of...

We have all become assembly line workers in the factory of mental health. At the facility, I put in at least 50 hours and live with a constant dread of not having clicked a button, of not having made another phone call, of overlooking the sadness in someone’s eyes. The risk of burnout or empathy fatigue is high, yet the machine hums along.

David Shern, from Johns Hopkins University, writes that the latest mental health “Murphy bill” in Congress is “an expansion of the approaches that got us into our current difficulties.” “Early intervention and prevention, assessable and patient-focused services with a rehabilitation orientation and increased funding for the community supports needed for successful recovery are the tickets to system improvement.”

Martin Gottesfeld was charged in October in relation to the hacking of Boston Children’s Hospital in 2014 following the alleged mistreatment of one of...

"Our findings show that empathy with an out-group member can be learned, and generalizes to other out-group individuals," a research team led by Grit Hein of the University of Zurich writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From Business Insider: According to Stanford professor Robert Sutton, some rising workplace trends seem sure to make the office a more toxic place in the...

From VICE: According to Marcus Gilroy-Ware, author of Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism & Social Media, society's widespread use of social media stems from and is exploited...

From The New Yorker: A number of studies show that much of the damage done by being poor comes not from the conditions of poverty itself,...

New research investigates the financial conflicts of interest (FCOI) of patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) in the United States.

From the Boston Review: In his new book Doctors in Denial: The Forgotten Women in the "Unfortunate Experiment," Ronald W. Jones chronicles the history of New...

From Psychological Science: A recent study shows that workplace bullying is associated with significant mental health and physical health problems for employees, including longer sick leaves...

Every one of the Fageda Cooperative’s 300 workers - from milking shed to packing plant - will tell you that this cooperative makes the finest yogurt in all Spain, if not in the world. Last year, they made 1.4 million yogurts every week. In Catalonia, only Nestle and Danone sell more. But Fageda isn’t in business to make yogurt. For over 30 years, its sole mission has been to provide fully-paid, flexible employment to anyone from the region diagnosed with a mental health problem but who still wants to work.

In a guest blog for the Scientific American, Eleonore Pauwels and Jim Drawta write about the “dark side of the data revolution —the successor to the Industrial Revolution, with personal data as the new coal, oil or shale gas to be extracted or traded away, enshrined in an updated Faustian pact.”

From the Toronto Star: According to a new survey of more than 4,000 workers by the Ontario Federation of Labor, precarious jobs can have a significant...

According to new research by Joanna Moncrieff and Sebastião Viola, mental health problems have become the leading cause of disability claims in the UK. While the overall number of claims for other conditions has decreased by 35%, claims related to “mental disorders” have increased 103% since 1995.

Newly elected UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has appointed Luciana Berger to his shadow cabinet as the “Minister for Mental Health,” a new position that has no counterpart in the Conservative government. The Independent reports that Corbyn has devoted considerable attention to mental health issues.

Results reflect moderate to strong evidence in support of the non-pharmacological school-based interventions reviewed in the study.

Pilot study finds school-based humanistic counseling reduces emotional symptoms in students.

High job demands, low job control, and high job strain are associated with the development of a mental health issue at age 50.