Traditional South African Healers Use Connection in Suicide Prevention
Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.
Study Finds Hearing Voices Groups Improve Social and Emotional Wellbeing
Hearing Voices Network self-help groups are an important resource for coping with voice hearing, study finds.
Suicide Rates Rise While Antidepressant Use Climbs
Multiple media sources are reporting on new data from the CDC revealing a substantial increase in the suicide rate in the United States between 1999...
Psychotherapy is Less Effective and Less Accessible for Those in Poverty
A special issue explores the connection between poverty, mental health, and psychotherapy.
Study Confirms Higher Suicide Risk for Sexual Minority Adolescents
Researchers report that sexual minority adolescents have considered, planned, and attempted suicide substantially more than their heterosexual peers.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Halves the Risk of Repeated Suicide Attempts
A new study suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) may halve the likelihood of re-attempting suicide, for those who have attempted in the past.
New Book Deconstructs Ideology of Cognitive Therapy
CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.
Therapist Empathy Predicts Success in Psychotherapy
An updated meta-analysis reveals that therapist empathy is a predictor of better psychotherapy outcomes.
Psychologist Debunks Common Misconceptions of Maslow’s Hierarchy
Utilizing Maslow’s published books and essays, psychologist William Compton delineates common myths and attempts to respond to them.
Psychosocially Oriented Psychologists Struggle Against the Medical Model
Interviews with psychosocially oriented psychologists demonstrate their experiences of discomfort with the hegemony of the medical model in their place of work and the conflicts that arise when they attempt to provide alternatives.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Does Not Exist
Since the 1980s, a type of psychotherapy called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has become dominant. Like it or loathe it, CBT is now so ubiquitous it is often the only talking therapy available in both public and voluntary health settings. It is increasingly spoken about in the media and in living rooms across the country. Yet when we speak about CBT, what are we talking of? For CBT only exists - as we will see - as a political convenience.
What Does Social Justice Really Mean for Psychologists?
Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.
Letting Negative Projective Identifications Come, and Letting Them Go
In the instant I perceive that I’ve succeeded in inducing fear and shame in you, I can feel a palpable relief from my own fear and shame. This process is called projective identification. I gradually learned as a therapist to be aware of when a person seemed to be mysteriously able to create distressful emotional states in me — states that they were themselves subjectively feeling, but weren’t fully aware of.
How Psychological Injuries Cause Physical Illness—And How Therapy Can Heal It
How does experiencing physical abuse as an 8 year old shorten one's lifespan? How do insulting words turn into diabetes? Or sexual abuse trigger a heart attack 50 years in the future? Emotional wounds can damage DNA and produce a huge web of destructive effects, but therapy can turn the process around.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Reduces Self-Harm and Suicide Attempts
A new meta-analysis finds that DBT reduces self-harm, suicide attempts, and reduces the frequency of psychiatric crisis service utilization.
Mental Health Professionals Critique the Biomedical Model of Psychological Problems
While a great deal of the excitement about advances in psychological treatments comes from the potential for research in neuroscience to unlock the secrets of the brain, many mental health experts would like to temper this enthusiasm. A special issue of the Behavior Therapist released this month calls into question the predominant conception of mental illnesses as brain disorders.
The Effects of Practicing Psychotherapy on Therapists’ Personal Lives
A new study, published in Psychotherapy Research, explores how having a career in psychotherapy affects therapists’ personal lives.
Does Psychotherapy Reproduce or Disrupt Neoliberal Capitalism?
Researchers explore neoliberal influences on interactions in psychotherapy and question whether the radical potential of psychotherapy can counter prevailing social systems.
Integrating Indigenous Healing Practices and Psychotherapy for Global Mental Health
As the Global Mental Health Movement attempts to address cross-cultural mental health disparities, a new article encourages integrating traditional healing practices with psychotherapy.
New Study Investigates Negative Side Effects of Therapy
Researchers find that nearly half of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) patients experience treatment side effects.
Study Finds Heavy Metal Music Beneficial to Mental Health
A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.
New Data on the Adverse Effects of Meditation and Mindfulness
Study reports on the less-examined findings of difficult and painful meditation-related experiences.
Psychodynamic Therapy Revealed to be as Efficacious as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Meta-analytic study finds that psychodynamic therapy outcomes are equivalent to those of CBT and other empirically supported treatments.
Opening Doors in the Borderlands: An Interview with Liberation Psychologist Mary Watkins
MIA’s Micah Ingle interviews Mary Watkins about reorienting psychology toward liberation and social justice.
Living in One of R. D. Laing’s Post-Kingsley Hall Households
Kingsley Hall was the first of Laing’s household communities that served as a place where you could live through madness until you could get it together and live independently. It was conceived as an “asylum” from forms of treatment — psychiatric or otherwise — that many were convinced were not helpful, and even contributed to their difficulties. By the time I arrived in London in 1973 to study with Laing there were four or five such places. Getting in wasn’t easy.
