Dialogical Practice

Researchers explore neoliberal influences on interactions in psychotherapy and question whether the radical potential of psychotherapy can counter prevailing social systems.

A new meta-analysis finds that DBT reduces self-harm, suicide attempts, and reduces the frequency of psychiatric crisis service utilization.

Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.

Hearing Voices Network self-help groups are an important resource for coping with voice hearing, study finds.

New research examines factors that make mindfulness interventions in school most effective for adolescent’s mental health outcomes.

A new study, published in Psychotherapy Research, explores how having a career in psychotherapy affects therapists’ personal lives.

CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.

Researchers find that nearly half of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) patients experience treatment side effects.

An updated meta-analysis reveals that therapist empathy is a predictor of better psychotherapy outcomes.

As the Global Mental Health Movement attempts to address cross-cultural mental health disparities, a new article encourages integrating traditional healing practices with psychotherapy.

It has been five years since I traveled to Western Lapland in Finland to film my documentary “Open Dialogue” on their Open Dialogue Project—the program, as I stated in the film, presently getting the best long-term statistical results in the world for the treatment of first-episode psychosis. My film came out four years ago, and since then I have been screening it around the world, giving lectures about Open Dialogue and my experience in Finland, participating in regular conferences and Q&A sessions about it, receiving daily emails, Facebook messages, blog and Youtube comments about it (as it’s now been free on Youtube for a year), and keeping in regular contact with some of the folks who work there. But I haven’t shared many of my updated opinions in writing, so I wish to do so now.

Study finds that 74% of patients with a psychotic disorder off antipsychotics at end of 10 years are in remission.

Practitioners and public leaders identify methods and barriers for integrating those diagnosed with mental health issues into community life.

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

We are profoundly social beings living not as isolated individuals but as integral members of interdependent social systems—our nuclear family system, and the broader social systems of extended family, peers, our community and the broader society. Therefore, psychosis and other forms of human distress often deemed “mental illness” are best seen not so much as something intrinsically “wrong” or “diseased” within the particular individual who is most exhibiting that distress, but rather as systemic problems that are merely being channeled through this individual.

Criticisms of the DSM-5 spark alternative proposals and calls to reform diagnostic systems in the mental health field.

Researchers argue for plurality and diversity among psychotherapy approaches and question the perceived superiority of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Men who report being self-reliant may be at greater risk of suicidal thinking.

An article on contributory injustice describes the clinical and ethical imperative that clinicians listen to service users experiences.

In-depth interviews find that those who screened positive for depression did not explain their experience in terms of diagnostic symptoms.

Trauma-informed approaches have the potential to promote recovery but must involve survivors and service-users to prevent the experience of retraumatization within psychiatric and mental health services.

A leading US journal published an extensive literature review and analysis of currently available research on Open Dialogue. An accompanying commentary concludes, “The present data on Open Dialogue are insufficient to warrant calls for further research on the program other than those projects that are currently under way.”

Knowing the client’s history can help foster genuine empathic responding, a key component to child-centered play therapy.

Study reveals data suggesting yogic breathing may be helpful in treating depression for patients who have not respond to antidepressants

Professionals across the Western world, from a range of disciplines, earn their livings by offering services to reduce the misery and suffering of the people who seek their help. Do these paid helpers represent a fundamental force for healing, facilitating the recovery journeys of people with mental health problems, or are they a substantial part of the problem by maintaining our modestly effective and often damaging system?