APA to Release Guidelines for Fat-Shaming Kids for Profit
From Ravishly: The American Psychological Association has released a draft of their "Clinical Practice Guideline for the Behavioral Treatment of Obesity and Overweight in Children...
Expectations Modulate Social Perception Differently in Schizophrenia, Autism
Writing in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College in London review the evidence that both attention and...
Teacher Wellbeing Matters for Student Mental Health
Teacher’s personal wellbeing plays a role in students’ mental health outcomes, suggests a new study.
“Companies Seek FDA Approval for Brain Games to Treat ADHD”
Two companies have committed to FDA review for video games that they claim can be used to treat “ADHD,” but many scientists remain skeptical. “At the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry on Wednesday, Akili Interactive Labs presented data from a pilot study of its video game, Project: EVO, that showed some positive results in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).”
International Review of Psychiatry Focuses on Recovery
The February International Review of Psychiatry focuses on recovery, from mental health "Trialogues" in Austria, to social equality in Canada, to policy shifts from...
Quiet Your Anxiety by Talking to Yourself in the Third Person
From Today: A new study suggests that talking about one's negative feelings and experiences in the third person can help reduce fear and anxiety.
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World Mental Health Day
In this piece written in honor of World Mental Health Day, Peter Kinderman emphasizes the importance of challenging the biomedical model of mental health and paying...
Medicine Can Soothe a Troubled Mind, but Not Without Costs
From The New York Times: In a new book, Blue Dreams, psychologist and patient Lauren Slater critiques the drug-based model of psychiatric care, debunking the chemical...
It’s Easy to Get Caught Up in Constructing Our Selves
In this video for Aeon, clinical psychologist Daniel Brown discusses the ways that the construction of a fixed selfhood can limit the possibilities of our...
Duty to Warn – 14 Lies That Our Psychiatry Professors in Medical School Taught...
Revealing the false information provided about psychiatry should cause any thinking person, patient, thought-leader or politician to wonder: “how many otherwise normal or potentially curable people over the last half century of psych drug propaganda have actually been mis-labeled as mentally ill (and then mis-treated) and sent down the convoluted path of therapeutic misadventures – heading toward oblivion?”
On the Urge to Take My Life, and My Decision to Take It Back...
I am alive today in the most intense, sometimes painful, always beautiful of ways, and one of the many reasons I credit for my life is this: I am a failed product of ‘Suicide Prevention.’ For this, I am eternally grateful. While this statement may sound like a confusing paradox, I’d like to explain what I mean.
Creative Approach to Mental Health Underfunded
From Stuff: Ōtautahi Creative Spaces, a center that offers art therapy workshops, was recently set up in response to the earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, where...
The History and Effectiveness of Peer Support from 18th-Century France to Today
Yale's Program for Recovery and Community Health will publish in World Psychiatry's June issue a review the history of peer support, from its roots...
“Medication and Female Moods”
Listen: NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook discusses the new book “Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, The Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy,” by the psychiatrist Julie Holland.
Free Your Mind! These Online Documentaries About Festivals Give Me Hope
For too long we have considered mental well-being to be about the five, ten, fifteen, or twenty percent of us that gets a psychiatric label each year. But really, if you look around at out world for a moment, you can easily see that to be alive, to be human, to exist, one must have support and healing. Festivals like this one give a glimpse of what the world can be like and I recommend this experience for envisioning a future mental health system or any futuristic vision of change.
Philosophers Question the Separation of Medicine and Culture
Radically questioning the distinction between the objectivity of science and the subjectivity of culture can give way to powerful biocultural methods of healing.
Book Review: “Overmedicated and Undertreated”
A former pharma executive has broken ranks with the industry in a new book by reporting how multiple psychiatrists, schools, and his desperate hopes pressed him to allow higher and higher doses of antipsychotic medications. The result: his 15-year-old son's death from Seroquel.
Telephone Therapy is Effective for Depression
A study of 325 Chicago-area patients with major depression, published today in the Journal of American Medical Association, finds that cognitive behavioral therapy administered...
Experts Concerned That Depression Screening Will Lead to Overdiagnosis
Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.
Aliveness and Social Justice: Teaching the Principles and Practices of Open Dialogue
Over the past seven years, I have been teaching open dialogue principles and practices in a variety of settings. This blog will focus on the development of a training program, now based in Manhattan, and what I’ve learned from running this program and teaching this approach in the US.
Has Evidence Based Medicine Been Hijacked?
John Ioannidis claims that the idea of evidence based medicine has been “hijacked to serve agendas different from what it was originally aimed for,” in a newly published critical essay in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Ioannidis frames the essay as a continuation of a conversation with David Sackett, widely considered the founder of evidence based medicine.
Sunday History Channel: Did Ancient Buddhist Tales Prophesy the DSM-5?
On the Sri Lankan social media platform LankaWeb, medical doctor Ruwan M. Jayatunge recounts stories of difficult states of mind described in the ancient...
Differing Depression Diagnostic Tools May Influence Research Findings
The type of diagnostic assessment used in research settings, either fully structured or semi-structured interview, may affect which participants in receive a diagnosis of major depression.
What Care for the Criminally Insane Can Teach Us
In this piece for The Pew Charitable Trusts, Michael Ollove reports on Oregon's model of intense care and supervision for those found guilty except for insanity.
"Oregon’s model...
Bruce Levine speaks about Nelson Algren, Phil Ochs, Marginalization and the Mental Health Industry...
Bruce Levine speaks about Nelson Algren, Phil Ochs, Marginalization, the Mental Health Industry, and the Occupy Movement at the 23rd Annual Nelson Algren Birthday...
