How Many Deaths Will It Take Till We Know?
Each time I see the initials for Mad In America, MIA, I think of the Vietnam war and lost young men. I remember engraved...
Mental Illness is the Leading Cause of Military Hospitalizations
Since 2001 almost $2 billion have been spent on drugs to treat mental illness and PTSD in soldiers, but mental illness is still the...
Dissociative Experiences Mediate Childhood Trauma/Auditory Hallucinations
Researchers in SpainĀ assessed 71 patients diagnosed with psychoses for dissociative experiences, trauma, delusions and hallucinations. Childhood trauma was positively associated with dissociation (r =...
Behavioral Therapy (Including Parents) More Effective for ADHD than Drugs
Stimulant medication does not improve the academic performance or test scores of theĀ 9% of all children in the U.S. diagnosed with ADHD, according to...
Cognitive Remediation with Functional Skills Training Effective in Schizophrenia
Researchers from Canada and the U.S. report, in findings published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, that cognitive remediation robustly improved neurocognition after 12...
Pain Predicts Psychopathology
Researchers from Italy, Hungary, and the U.S. investigated the extent that the subjective experience of pain in 575 psychiatric outpatients (without comorbid physical diagnoses)...
Is Psychiatry “Salvageable”?
A reader in the commentary here asked me if I think āpsychiatry is salvageable.ā This is a timely question that requires careful consideration.
First, Iāll...
Motherhood in Illness & Recovery
Researchers in Norway, publishing in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, Ā explore the experiences of being a mother with mental illness; "their way...
Mad Pride and Spiritual Community: Thoughts on The Spiritual Gift of Madness
Let our Mad Pride movement be grounded in humility and kindness for each other in our diversity of life experiences, a recognition that social movements need good communicators and organizers more than charismatic leaders and messianic visions, and that the beautiful language we use to describe ourselves is only as powerful as the grounded actions we take to back up our words.
Robert Whitaker: “Imagining a Different Future in Mental Health”
Robert Whitaker on Imagining a Different Future in Mental Health, Philadelphia May 6, 2012
Generalized Anxiety Disorder Does Not Meet Criteria for a Disorder
Researchers in Italy found that of 105 subjects who met criteria for the DSM diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), only 18 had no...
Does Everyone Have a Mental Illness?
Psychiatrist and author Allen J. Frances, former chair of the DSM-IV task force, outlines why he thinks the DSM-V will lead to millions of...
Motherhood: Pride & Recovery
Researchers at the Rockland Psychiatric Center in New York found that of the 39% of female inpatients who were mothers, the majority reported having...
Laura Delano, David Oaks, Ted Chabasinski and Adina Lambert in Philadelpha
Laura Delano at Occupy the American Psychiatric Association, May 5, 2012, in Philadelphia
David Oaks at Occupy the American Psychiatric Association, May 5, 2012
Ted Chabasinski...
Imagining A Different Future in Mental Health
Robert WhitakerĀ speaks about how the data shows we could have far better outcomes for people diagnosed with mental illness by going to a selective...
Attachment & Psychosis: Implications for Therapeutic Alliance
In what they say is the first study to investigate relationships between emotion regulation, attachment and the therapeutic alliance, researchers in Northwest EnglandĀ recruited 49...
Loneliness and Mental Illness
Based on interviews with 7,461 adults randomly selected from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey in England, researchers found that interventions addressing maladaptive social cognition...
My “Head in a Bucket” Metaphor
āHow could I not have known?ā This question has been asked of me, as a psychiatrist, with regard to prescribing psychiatric drugs. All those...
Incoming APA President Emphasizes “Positive Psychiatry”
President-elect Dilip Jeste intends to lead the APA into an era of "positive psychiatry." Ā "We should not be satisfied merely with treating symptoms in...
Recovery through Learning Creatura, a Language of Life
There is a language underneath our familiar verbal language. Ordinarily it is called nonverbal communication. It is also called body language. I came to...
The Pond, Learning and Humility
What an amazing ride Iāve had in the past few days on the tsunami of commentary from myĀ previous post. While itās been fun (dare...
High-Fat Diet and Obesity Contribute to Depression, Brain Changes
"Chronic consumption of high-fat food and obesity induce plasticity-related changes in reward circuitry that are associated with a depressive-like phenotype," says a study appearing...
Pharmacology Gets More Cooperation Than Psychosocial Advice
In a study of conformance to evidence-based treatment recommendations at mental health clinics among people diagnosed with schizophrenia, Canadian researchers found that conformance to...
People With Schizophrenia Diagnoses Actually Do Listen
Contrary to the hypothesis that delusional beliefs in schizophrenia are a persistent general deficit, patients using a well-documented advice-taking task revise their beliefs, taking...
Skin-to-Skin Contact Benefits Mothers with Post-Partum Depression
In a study of 90 new mothers in Nova Scotia, five hours per day of skin-to-skin contact (SSC) reduced mothers' depression scores in their...
