People Age Better if They Have a Purpose in Life
From TIME: Living purposefully may help people maintain their physical function and independence as they age. According to a new study, older adults with a...
A Different Mental Health Approach Could Have Saved My Mother
In this piece for The Independent, Nick Webb tells the story of his mother's suicide and explains how a more trauma-informed, community-oriented approach to mental...
Cognitive Enhancement With Yoga
From Psychiatric Times: A recent study suggests that Kundalini yoga may be at least as effective as memory training in improving cognitive resilience in older adults with...
Eating Vegetables, Fruit & Whole Grains May Combat Depression
From The Telegraph: A recent study found that participants who avoided red meat, saturated fats and sugar, and stuck to healthy vegetables, fruit and whole grains were...
Lifestyle Changes, Not a Magic Pill, Can Reverse Alzheimer’s
From Aeon: A recent study at UCLA found that lifestyle changes including diet modifications, exercise, stress management, and increased sleep can significantly improve the memory and...
Suffering From Nature Deficit Disorder? Try Forest Bathing
From NPR: People who live in urban areas may experience a poorer quality of life due to spending insufficient time outdoors. In a new book, Forest...
Creatively Managing Voice-Hearing Through Spiritual Writing
I am a psychiatric survivor of over thirty-six years. Since my nervous breakdown in 1978, I have undergone multitudinous experiences ranging from the subtly humiliating to the horrifically debilitating at the hands of incompetent psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists who, in the name of medicine, did more harm than good.
The Effects of Exercise on Depression
From CNN: Exercise may help in reducing depression. Click here for a video on the benefits of exercise for people struggling with depression, including one man's...
The Fictions and Futures of Transformative Justice
In this interview for The New Inquiry, two co-editors and three writers of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements discuss prison abolition and...
The Social Life of Opioids
From Scientific American: Increasing prescription rates of opioid painkillers are often blamed for America's current opioid crisis. However, a growing body of research suggests that...
Vikas Saini: Protecting Patients From Excessive Medicine
In this piece for the BMJ, Jeanne Lenzer profiles Vikas Saini, a cardiologist who is working to fight against excessive medical treatment. His work with...
Call For Abstracts: Philosophical Perspectives on Critical Psychiatry
The Association for Advancement in Philosophy and Psychiatry is issuing a call for abstracts, with a particular interest in submissions from service users. The...
Yoga and Meditation Can Change Your Genes, Study Says
From TIME: A new scientific review suggests that yoga, meditation, and other mindfulness activities can reverse stress-related changes in genes linked to health problems and...
“New Research Links Contact with Nature to Community Cohesion and Reduced Crime”
The Pacific Standard highlights new research out of the University of Cardiff that found the more green space there is in a neighborhood, the less crime. “The more a person felt connected to nature, the more they felt connected to others in their neighborhoods.”
How to Cope With Social Anxiety Over Thanksgiving
In this piece for Medical News Today, Jasmin Collier describes five non drug-related ways to cope with social anxiety over the Thanksgiving holiday: preparing in...
REFOCUS Psychosis Recovery Intervention Ready for Trials
A new pro-recovery manualized intervention – called the REFOCUS intervention – has been developed and will now be evaluated in a multisite randomized control trials. The strengths-based intervention, which focuses on promoting relationships, is outlined in the latest issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Is Mindfulness Meditation Good for Kids?
From Vox: Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being introduced in schools and touted as helpful methods of reducing students' anxiety and attention problems. However, the research...
Parents Tinker With Diet to Treat ADHD
From STAT: Concerned about the potential adverse effects of ADHD medications, some parents are addressing their children's ADHD through nutrition-based approaches.
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Gut Feelings on Parkinson’s and Depression
From Cerebrum: Modulating the gut microbiota may be an effective strategy to treat both Parkinson's disease and depression.
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Launching Our Peer Respite Initiative
This week we launched PeerRespite.net, a website dedicated to information and resources regarding peer respites in the U.S. As part of the initiative, recruitment is open for the 2015 Peer Respites Essential Features Survey.
The Town That’s Found a Potent Cure for Illness – Community
From The Guardian: In 2013, general practitioner Helen Kingston launched the Compassionate Frome Project, which provides the town's patients with social services and community support...
“Is Time Outdoors the Key to Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD?”
Abbie Hausermann, MSW, LICSW, discusses why ecotherapy works for former service members. “The aim of these ecotherapy programs and services is to connect veterans...
To Treat Pain, PTSD and Other Ills, Veterans Try Tai Chi
From NPR: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has launched a new program that offers wheelchair tai chi classes in order to help veterans manage...
Inside Croatia’s Pioneering Mental Health Center
From The Guardian: The oldest asylum in the Balkans has now been transformed into an unlocked mental health center. The patients have begun living in...
“Meditation Plus Running as a Treatment for Depression”
“Meditating before running could change the brain in ways that are more beneficial for mental health than practicing either of those activities alone,” Gretchen...
