Saturday, December 2, 2023

Integrating Indigenous Healing Practices and Psychotherapy for Global Mental Health

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

Stigma May Increase Distress in Individuals Who Hear Voices

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Review finds that stigma around voice hearing is connected to isolation, secrecy, and poorer functioning.

Why is the Field of Psychotherapy Still Fractured into Different Approaches?

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Psychotherapy is dominated by contradicting schools of thought, exhibits a gap between research and practice, and repackages old ideas rather than finding clinical consensus.

The Conflicts That Result From Globalizing Euro-American Psychology in India

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Researchers examine the transformation of work, life, and identity in India as a result of Western corporate and psychological culture.

How Feedback Can Improve Psychotherapy Treatment

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Researcher examines the impact of client feedback and progress assessment on improvement in outcomes.

German Psychologists Declare “the Drugs Don’t Work”

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Jürgen Margraf and Silvia Schneider, both well-known psychologists at the University of Bochum in Germany, claim that psychotropic drugs are no solution to mental...

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

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

First-Person Accounts of Madness and Global Mental Health: An Interview with Dr. Gail Hornstein

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Dr. Gail Hornstein, author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, discusses the importance of personal narratives and service-user activism in the context of the global mental health movement.

Data Challenges Superiority of Manualized Psychotherapy

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New data fails to support the promotion of manualized psychotherapy as superior to non-manualized forms of psychotherapy.

The Role of Context, Language, and Meaning in Hearing Voices

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Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of hearing voices

Professionals Push Back on Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual, Propose Alternatives

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

Researchers Question the Utility of an ADHD Diagnosis

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A new article examines the usefulness of the ADHD diagnosis and suggests alternatives

Correcting Misconceptions of Trauma-informed Care with Survivor Perspectives

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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.

JAMA Article Challenges CBT as Gold Standard for Psychotherapy

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A review of CBT research findings raises questions about its status as the “evidence-based” psychotherapy of choice.

Psychologists Push For New Approaches to Psychosis: Part 1

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Psychologists and people with experience of psychotic symptoms publish a report on new ways of understanding psychosis.

What Are Best Practices For Psychosis And What Gets In The Way?

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Research investigates clinicians’ perspectives on best care practices and the complicated realities of providing care in the face of agency limitations and mechanized interventions.

New Medications Fail to Show Efficacy for Alzheimer’s Disease

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Three phase III clinical trials assessing the efficacy of Lundbeck’s investigational drug idalopirdine for Alzheimer’s disease have failed

Existential Therapy Assists Patients Withdrawing From Psychiatric Drugs

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Confronting existential anxiety through “Basal Exposure Therapy” shows promising results in people withdrawing from psychotropic drugs.

Psychodynamic Therapy Revealed to be as Efficacious as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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Meta-analytic study finds that psychodynamic therapy outcomes are equivalent to those of CBT and other empirically supported treatments.

Speaking, Not Texting, May Prevent Dehumanization in Disagreements

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Researchers found participants were less likely to dehumanize those with whom they disagreed when they heard their voices.

Mindfulness Therapy Can Prevent Depression Relapse, Review Finds

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Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) may be more effective at reducing the risk of depressive relapse compared to current standard treatments with antidepressant drugs. A...

Philosophers Question the Separation of Medicine and Culture

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Radically questioning the distinction between the objectivity of science and the subjectivity of culture can give way to powerful biocultural methods of healing.

An Essay on Finnish Open Dialogue: A Five-Year Follow-Up

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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.

Experiences of Depression Connected to Declining Sense of Purpose

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

How to Promote Community Inclusion in Mental Health Practice

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