Researchers Identify 27 Categories of Emotion

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A new study finds that emotions may be represented by 27 categories, with each category relating to others in a more complex and continuous fashion than previously understood.

Inner Fire: Healing and Recovery Without Meds

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For five years, I and others worked to create a residential healing community in Brookline, Vermont, where people could recover from debilitating and traumatic life experiences, which often lead to addiction and mental health challenges, without the use of psychotropic medications. We welcomed our first six seekers to a yearlong, therapeutic and farm-based, day program last September, and we now can report on what we have learned during this time.
envisioning psychiatric drug freedom

Envisioning Psychiatric Drug Freedom

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Psychiatric meds can shut down the emotions and consciousness enough to make it possible to tolerate dynamics that would inspire rage or surges of empowered activity without the meds. It can be helpful to look closely at these blocks and start to create a map to freedom, understanding that it is a complex process that involves not only the physiology of the body of the individual taking meds, but the architecture of the social system around that person.

Birthday Letter: Sylvia Plath and “Daddy”

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In this pieceĀ forĀ The Paris Review, Belinda McKeon analyzes the poetry and letters Sylvia Plath wrote in the few months just before her suicide.

Karen Pence Picks a Cause, and Art Therapists Feel Angst

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From the New York Times:Ā On Inauguration Day, Karen Pence announced her support for the mental health profession of art therapy. While many art therapists...

Study Finds No Correlation between Personality at 14 and 77

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This result calls into question popular notions about the correlations between personality and later-life achievement and health outcomes.

ā€œMedication and Female Moodsā€

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Listen: NPRā€™s On Point with Tom Ashbrook discusses the new book ā€œMoody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs Youā€™re Taking, The Sleep Youā€™re Missing, the Sex Youā€™re Not Having and Whatā€™s Really Making You Crazy,ā€ by the psychiatrist Julie Holland.

Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm

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In this interview for theĀ Los Angeles Review of Books,Ā cultural theorist and philosopher Erin Manning discusses neurodiversity, a movement that seeks toĀ depathologize traits, experiences, and...

ā€œConstructing the Modern Mindā€

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Psychiatrist and historian George Makari tries to illuminate the historical evolution of our understanding of the conscious mind and how it relates to the...

Mad Economy: Let’s Change the World!

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Everyone in the world is either touched by their own mental health issues or have had a family member affected. What if they directed their buying power to an organization that would use the profits to fund exciting mental health & recovery projects both in the developing world and in their own countries; projects that would be ethical, non-coercive, personal recovery-based, and were aimed at creating recovery communities? What if they could buy products, crafts, services, art, music, books from people who had experienced mental health issues, enabling them to set up their own businesses or buy from social co-operatives that enabled distressed people to work and earn a living wage?

Using Shakespeare to Ease the Trauma of war

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FromĀ The New York Times:Ā Learning Shakespeare can be a valuable way for veterans to begin to understand and heal from the trauma of war. Article ā†’Ā­

Online Collective Art Gallery Created in Crisis

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The New York Times Magazine reports on how a woman suffering in depression ended up founding an online art gallery for photographers struggling through...

ā€œCan Madness Save the World?ā€

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Writing for CounterPunch, Paris Williams writes that when an individual is experiencing what has been termed ā€œpsychosis,ā€ it is important to recognize that this may also be the manifestation of a breakdown in their larger social groups, the family, society, and even the species.

Creativity and Feelings of Madness Closely Linked in Most People

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In his Scientific American blog, Scott Barry Kaufman discusses a study that provides new perspectives on the controversial question of the links between "mental...

Video Games By Prescription Continue Developing

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"Is this the future of medicine?" asks Stephen Armstrong in the British Medical Journal. "Little Artie has been left at the doorstep of his...

Agency and Activism as Protective Factors for Children in the Gaza Strip

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Researchers recommend a ā€˜politically-informed focus', including activism, when assessing children and designing interventions in areas of chronic political violence.

Rap Embraces Schizophrenia and Owns It

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Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, author of The Protest Psychosis, has published a brief history of "schizophrenia" in relation to African American culture in...

It’s Easy to Get Caught Up in Constructing Our Selves

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In this video forĀ Aeon, clinical psychologist Daniel Brown discusses the ways that the construction of a fixed selfhood can limit the possibilities of our...

To the Bone: The Trouble With Anorexia on Film

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FromĀ The Atlantic: The new Netflix filmĀ To the Bone, which tells the story of a woman's struggle with anorexia, reflects our culture's morbid fascination and...

Re-telling Our Stories: Liberation or Re-oppression?

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-When we "re-narrate" our own stories and identities, it may be an opportunity for either liberation or re-oppression.

Hip Hop Therapy Psychiatrists Ask Media to Keep It Real

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The Guardian and other media outlets ran articles about two psychiatrists promoting "the use of hip-hop as an aid to the treatment of mental...

Sunday Music: “Even Out of Severe Depression There Comes Insight”

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Maria Popova provides some excerpts about music, madness and therapy from the new book, Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, from the iconic Canadian...

What Role Can Video Games Play in Psychiatric Treatment?

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-Psychiatry Advisor reviews the scientific evidence about using video games and virtual reality tools in psychiatric treatment.

The Therapist who Saved my Life

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In this creative nonfiction piece forĀ Literary Hub, one woman shares her story of trauma, depression, and suicidality, and recounts the unconventional approach of the...

Why ā€œStabilizingā€ People is Entirely the Wrong Idea

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If human beings were meant to be entirely stable entities, then ā€œstabilizingā€ them would be an entirely good thing; a target for mental health treatment that all could agree on. But itā€™s way more complex than that: healthy humans are constantly moving and changing. They have a complex mix of stability and instability that is hard to pin down. All this relates to one of my favorite subjects, the intersection of creativity and madness.