Non-drug Approaches

In The American Journal of Psychiatry, a longitudinal study of 114 persons at high risk for depression found that those who reported more religiosity...

Interviews with 30 individuals three to five years after initial treatment for a first-episode psychosis found that a majority considered themselves to be recovered,...

The basic idea of the experiential democracy project is to supplement conventional legislative or other forms of diplomatic and moral deliberation with person-centered (“I-Thou”) principles of encounter. These principles, which derive from existential-humanistic psychology and person-centered therapy, stress the attempt to engage participants to more intimately understand each other, and through this context to more intimately understand each other’s often conflicting positions on issues of moral import.

Mothers’ loss of group membership impacts their social identity and linked to postpartum depression.

A very gifted and compassionate friend recently said that she feels enslaved to Abilify - that she has tried to taper off it several times but always ends up slipping into an extreme state, no matter how slow she tapers. She said this repeated experience makes her feel like a slave, because she has to go back on the drug to stop the very intense extreme state induced whenever she tries to stop taking it.

Earth Day 2013 is a good time to reflect on how problems in our mental health system reflect deep flaws in “normal” conceptions of what it means to be a human being. These flawed conceptions then contribute in a critical way to the climate crisis that threatens us all.

From GoodTherapy.org: Cultural competence is the standard set by the mental health profession that deems therapists capable of providing services to clients from diverse backgrounds. However,...

Psychotherapist Chantal Marie Gagnon voices her frustration with social media posts and stigma reduction ads that perpetuate the belief that all mental health issues...

From Sapiens: Researchers are increasingly recognizing the role that social and environmental factors, including childhood abuse, stressful events, and poverty, play in the development of...

Researchers in Australia and the U.K. found that a basic disruption of the sense of ownership of one's experience and a lack of self-agency...

Recovery is adapting to how your brain works. You accept how it works, observing what makes it worse or better, and learn to navigate the triggers and symptoms you experience. As you do things differently, these 'corrective experiences' begin to undo the negative beliefs you have internalized.

This piece for The Philosophers' Mail profiles Melanie Klein, a Viennese psychoanalyst best known for applying the principles of Freudian psychoanalysis to children. Klein's work primarily focused...

Researchers explore efforts to integrate educational psychology and child psychiatry.

From Red Pepper: Capitalism produces much of the mental distress that is categorized as "mental illness" by turning human creativity and connectivity into social isolation,...

In this piece for Medium, Brendan O'Neill critiques campaigns that aim to de-stigmatize "mental illness" and the trend toward identifying as "mentally ill." "The problem here...

From Healio: Preliminary research results presented at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in San Diego, California suggested that integrating spirituality into mental heath services...

ACES Too High, the blog about Adverse Childhood Experiences, recalls the excruciating experiment and films concerning the impact of childhood neglect.  A one-year-old baby...

This week we e-release a new free booklet, Pathways to Enhance Well-Being. Its creation began with my colleague Linda Lentini sharing with me some of the barriers she experienced as she moved towards bringing alternative approaches such as meditation and breath practices into state psychiatric institutions.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. So I’ve chosen pictures to distill the mountain of mental health research I’ve examined over the last eight years. Three infographics summarize research on psychiatric drugs, and one asserts why I think Integrative Mental Health is the best path available for mental health recovery.

A study demonstrates a 7% reduction in suicide attempts for teens in states that had legalized same-sex marriage.

From USA Today: Gratitude has been shown to have both physical and mental health benefits. Here are a few ways to cultivate our feelings of gratitude...

Direct access to care in safe locations is key in reducing healthcare costs and increasing quality of life for homeless populations.

Time magazine reviews the evidence on exercise for depression, finding that exercise alters brain chemistry such that the brain shows less stress in response...

The traumagenic neurodevelopment model of psychosis, introduced in 2001, highlighted similarities between brain abnormalities found both in people who have been abused and those...

The Guardian reports growing concerns from the Buddhist Society conference: “Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts medical school, warned last week that some people feared a ‘sort of superficial ‘McMindfulness’ is taking over, which ignores the ethical foundations of the meditative practices and traditions from which mindfulness has emerged, and divorces it from its profoundly transformative potential.’”