Mind/Body

It's clear that different people relate to the idea of "mental illness" and labeling differently. Many people find the experience of being diagnosed with...

-Two Harvard University psychologists discuss how to be a more "mindful" clinician.

From CBS Radio: U.K. doctors are increasingly prescribing social interventions — community based solutions such as art classes, gardening clubs, and walking groups — as an alternative...

In a review of randomized controlled trials, researchers in Belgium and the Netherlands found that yoga significantly improved both positive and negative symptoms as...

The only way out of the epidemic of feeling-people-turned-medicated-psychiatric-patients is to rebrand and reframe feeling as a cultural collective. And I believe it starts with our messaging as parents and our orientation toward shadow elements like anger and sadness. We have to model a conscious relationship to our own dark parts, and we have to show our children what it looks like to move through these spaces. Feelings can be messy, wild, and sometimes ugly to our constrained sensibilities.

The Guardian reports growing concerns from the Buddhist Society conference: “Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts medical school, warned last week that some people feared a ‘sort of superficial ‘McMindfulness’ is taking over, which ignores the ethical foundations of the meditative practices and traditions from which mindfulness has emerged, and divorces it from its profoundly transformative potential.’”

For The Lancet, Jules Morgan reviews a new book, “The Brain’s Way of Healing,” by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge. Doidge challenges current understandings...

From The New York Times: Clinicians have long known that sleep schedules and levels of exposure to sunlight can have a significant impact on...

From Aeon: In addition to creating the discipline of psychoanalysis and developing psychological theories, Freud played a major role in challenging the common philosophical assumptions...

When patients come to me with complaints of low libido, low or flat mood, weight gain, hair loss, and cloudy thinking, one of my first questions is “Are you on the Pill?”. When they come complaining about premenstrual irritability, insomnia, tearfulness, bloating, and breast tenderness, requesting that I sanction beginning a course of oral contraceptives and perhaps an antidepressant, the one-size-fits-all-cure-all of psychiatrists and gynecologists nationwide, my first comment is “There’s a better way.”

56 patients in an acute care setting for psychosis in Western Australia reported that a formal exercise program helped to manage their psychiatric symptoms,...

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

Can a renewed biopsychosocial approach, grounded in an updated philosophy, foster person-centered medicine, and psychiatry?

There is a substantial body of evidence suggesting that not getting enough omega-3 fatty acids in your diet may be connected to a diverse array of psychiatric symptoms. In a new study published this month, psychiatrist Robert McNamara and Erik Messamore provide an overview of the evidence and call for screening of omega-3 deficiency in people experiencing symptoms associated with ADHD, depression, mood disorders, and psychosis.

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

Robert Whitaker extended one of his core arguments from Anatomy of an Epidemic in a blog post last week. His argument revolves around the claim that psychiatric drugs are the principal cause of increasing psychiatric disability, as measured by U.S. social security disability claims. But does this really explain the rise in recipients of these SSI & SSDI benefits?

A new study out of the University of Manchester found that personalized exercise programs reduced the symptoms for young people suffering from their first episode of psychosis. Researchers also conducted an accompanying qualitative analysis and found that the participants experienced improved mental health, confidence, and a sense of achievement and felt that autonomy and social support were critical to their success.

The conventional Western classification systems of health conditions are based on flawed science shaped by reductionist, hierarchical, and profit-driven ideologies. THEN wants to create a new paradigm built upon principles drawn from systems science, the life course perspective, developmental neurobiology, and other evidence-informed studies.

A new study finds that for those experiencing symptoms associated with psychosis, a low-level of physical activity is associated with receiving a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder.

Shamans are the magician spirit healers in tribal, non-technological societies around the world. Anthropologists use the word “shamanism,” from the Tungus people of Siberia, to mean the commonalities between different traditions. Shamans find their calling through a life-threatening initiatory illness or crisis, go into visioning and trance to connect to other realities, shapeshift out of their regular identity to identify with animals, spirits, and even illnesses, and return to the ordinary world to share skills of healing and creativity. Living at the edge of society and defying conventional norms, conduct, and even gender, shamans are respected as a powerful community link to the divine.

Group-based MBSR and PCGT therapies effective as a complementary treatment for PTSD.

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 review of dietary drug supplements for depression in the May issue of the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services finds that...

From Science Blog: According to a new meta-analysis, sleep deprivation reduces symptoms in nearly half of depression patients. Partial sleep deprivation (sleep for three to...

In the April issue of Science News, Laura Sanders covers recent studies that have begun turning up tantalizing hints about how microbes, the bacteria...