Community

Dear Senator Deeds: Hello from another fellow Virginian. First, I want to extend my deepest condolences for the horrific tragedy that befell your family last year, and for the loss of your precious son Gus. I think I know, at least in part, how agonizing it is when our loved ones cannot access helpful supports, and how it feels to watch in horror as they spiral downward into darkness and despair. We all agree that our mental health systems are broken. Those of us who have been down the hellish road of struggling with our mental health and have found recovery have developed a new vision that will take us forwards, not backwards. Please give us the opportunity to share that new vision with you.

Contrary to the hypothesis that delusional beliefs in schizophrenia are a persistent general deficit, patients using a well-documented advice-taking task revise their beliefs, taking...

In Europe, millions of people live in segregated institutional settings, excluded from mainstream society. Without adequate, person-centered support in the community, institutionalisation will sadly continue.

From Metro: Poverty can have a dramatic effect on people's mental and physical health, as it can impact diet, healthcare access, sleep, and socialization. "There are plenty...

A team from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Britain's University College of London found, in a study of 1.3 million people in Sweden's national register,...

About a year ago, my partner Ron Coleman said to me "let's have a recovery camp." I said "what’s one of those?" and he said "I'm not sure, but let's invent it." And so, from June 7^th to 12^th 2015, we created a community of recovery for a week. The next step is to create communities of recovery around the world — not just as temporary camps, but long-lasting oases within our communities.

From Aeon: The finding that only one in five people avoid any kind of mental health problems or psychiatric diagnoses through their lives has prompted...

In this piece for Rooted in Rights, s.e. smith chronicles the life of Judi Chamberlin and discusses the important role she played at the intersection of...

Boston.com has published an article about the Mad In America Film Festival, running through this weekend in Medford, Massachusetts. "Making people rethink psychiatry —...

The percentage of clients who have experienced racial trauma far exceeds the percentage of counselors who are trained to identify and treat it.

In this month’s issue of Psychological Medicine, researchers from King’s College London found evidence for associations between different types of childhood adversity and specific symptoms associated with psychosis. As current categorical approaches to psychosis and schizophrenia diagnoses come under increasing scrutiny, this study adds support to sociological and psychological theories and treatments.

From Openforwards: The biomedical model of mental illness does not reduce prejudice against those who are suffering from mental health concerns. Words like "illness" and...

In this interview for Thrive Global, psychoanalyst Robert Stolorow explains why we should not seek to heal or fix the grief we experience from trauma...

There is a language underneath our familiar verbal language. Ordinarily it is called nonverbal communication. It is also called body language. I came to...

Long-term treatment with antipsychotic drugs is currently considered the standard treatment for patients diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia.’ A new study challenges this practice, however. The...

We are wired for community. If we disconnect, our bodies will call us back to the sense of human connection that we are wired for, using the unexpected language of inflammation.

Coordinated care with employment support and family therapy leads to superior outcomes for those diagnosed with psychotic disorders.

Increasing the minimum wage - even modestly - can lead to less cases of child abuse in the home.

I have written this story, a story of Exodus to Freedom, a thousand times. I retell it to myself late at night while I lie on my air mattress. In the mornings I may recall these amazing events while running along the beach straight into the sunrise. I walk my dog and tell the story again, hoping passers-by don’t think I’m talking to myself, lest I be called “loco.” But that has never happened. The one aim I had when coming to Uruguay has come true: Not one person here considers me crazy.

When Linda Sarage and Jake Powers first approached me about writing a section for the fantastic manual developed by the addictions community — From the Ground Up: How to Build Your own Peer-to-Peer Recovery Center — that would help connect this manual to the mental health community, I envisioned writing a section that would serve as some sort of translation tool that could connect two very different communities toward a common purpose.  After reading the manual, however, I quickly remembered how much the mental health community has in common with the substance abuse community and how little “translation” is actually needed.

Results from a pilot study called Imagining Autism suggests that drama workshops help children with autism-spectrum disorders. Drama Helps Kids with Autism Communicate Better (New Scientist)

If you’ve been paying attention the last two years, you’ve seen the new DSM-5, as well as its predecessors, taking a beating from a variety of critics pre- and post-publication. Most have begun by noting the lack of construct validity of DSM’s diagnoses, dating from the landmark DSM-IIIR in 1987. Given the absence of scientific evidence to support their existence, these diagnoses were less likely to represent the neurobiological phenomena claimed by the DSMs’ several authors than to be products of their collective imaginations.

Researchers find few existing "psychopathology scales" are appropriate for global utilization.

In this interview for Vox, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom provides a critical perspective on empathy and explains why empathy may be harmful in the long run. "My beef...

The Society for International Psychology, Division 52 of the American Psychological Association, will host a webinar entitled “The Humanistic, Vigorous and Universal Approach of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.”