Non-drug Approaches

Note: This post originally appeared on August 18, 2014 on dxsummit.org. On August 5 and 6, 2014, a group of roughly twenty persons met in Washington, DC...

On December 12-14, California's Esalen institute will host a conference called, Re-Visioning Madness: Compassionately Responding to People in Extreme States. "Esalen co-founders Richard Price...

"Robin Williams’s body was scarcely cold when liberal commentators began using the tragedy of his death as publicity for suicide hotlines and professional mental...

The Economist reports on "Ellie," a programmed, virtual psychologist designed by researchers at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, who has a...

A new documentary coming to theatres around the US over the next few months explores Dan Cohen's Music and Memory program and its emotional...

Nearly 150 people taking antidepressants had more robust alleviations of their depression after participating in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI), according to research...

Newsweek writer Alexander Nazaryan overviews the recent "kick in the rear" provided to brain science by hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, and...

Trees reduce anxiety, stress and distress, and improve memory and concentration, says an op-ed published in Business Insider that includes links to many other...

It’s funny how things turn out. I would never have anticipated becoming interested in the way in which psychological treatment is provided to people. A benign comment by a manager at the beginning of my clinical psychology career, however, piqued my interest and things have never been the same since.

"If you’re feeling overwhelmed, there’s a reason: The processing capacity of the conscious mind is limited. This is a result of how the brain’s...

Recent years have seen an influx of numerous studies providing an undeniable link between childhood/ chronic trauma and psychotic states. Although many researchers (i.e., Richard Bentall, Anthony Morrison, John Read) have been publishing and speaking at events around the world discussing the implications of this link, they are still largely ignored by mainstream practitioners, researchers, and even those with lived experience. While this may be partially due to an understandable (but not necessarily defensible) tendency to deny the existence of trauma, in general, there are also certainly many political, ideological, and financial reasons for this as well.

King5 News reports on video games that are being designed by psychologists to help players deal with emotional problems like anxiety and depression. Cheri...

Newborn rats can "learn" the fears their mothers have, and then will carry those same fears for the rest of their lives, according to...

The New York Times Magazine reports on how a woman suffering in depression ended up founding an online art gallery for photographers struggling through...

Britain's National Health Service is adopting a "lifestyle medicine program" that was developed in Australia for young people taking antipsychotics, according to The Guardian....

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.

In his Alternatives Conference 2012 Address, Will Hall called attention to the ongoing phenomena of “medicalizing poverty and calling it mental illness.” Mental health systems and practitioners often tend to perceive and identify the myriad ways that impoverished people cope and adapt to adverse environments (such as food and housing insecurity) as pathological indicators of mental illness. A poor child who does not pay attention to the day’s lessons at school may be diagnosed with ADHD, yet focuses intense attention on how he will return home safely, take care of his siblings and get a meal. A young woman may be labeled as Oppositional/Defiant who bravely copes with an erratic mother and her abusive boyfriend. Behaviors that can make sense in one context (home, neighborhood), are flagged as dysfunctional and impaired in another (school & work).

Psychiatrists Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg will be giving a Breath~Body~Mind workshop live online August 16 and August 17, 2014. According to a press...

Two opinion articles discuss the unscientific aspects of psychology and psychiatry, and posit ways for overcoming some of the conundrums... In Nature, a group...

In his Scientific American blog, Gary Stix reviews the latest investigations into the impacts of comprehensive lifestyle change approaches to preventing dementia. "Results of...

A New York Times Sunday Review op-ed discusses the frustrations of the wealthy and powerful ruler Abd Al-Rahman III, an emir and caliph of...

In a Scientific American blog post, Gary Stix reviews some of the latest research into brain "neuroplasticity," including an experiment where mice with induced...

Spirituality and transcendental experiences are even more important than religion to the psychological well-being of many Black American women, according to a study in...

Researchers from the University of Bonn and King’s College London were “amazed” at the range of experiences associated with schizophrenia that were induced in...

British psychologist Jay Watts explores the impacts of spontaneous recollections of songs and poems on people struggling with different types of mental distress in...