Psychotherapy

A new meta-analysis finds that DBT reduces self-harm, suicide attempts, and reduces the frequency of psychiatric crisis service utilization.

Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.

Hearing Voices Network self-help groups are an important resource for coping with voice hearing, study finds.

Researchers report that sexual minority adolescents have considered, planned, and attempted suicide substantially more than their heterosexual peers.

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...

Dr. Raskin discusses psychotherapists’ dissatisfaction with current psychiatric diagnostic systems and explores alternatives.

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.

A new study, published in Psychotherapy Research, explores how having a career in psychotherapy affects therapists’ personal lives.

A new article suggests counselors and psychotherapists are dissatisfied with current diagnostic systems and outlines some potential alternatives.

New meta-scientific review questions the evidence for the gold standard psychotherapies and empirically supported treatments.

Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.

Researchers explore neoliberal influences on interactions in psychotherapy and question whether the radical potential of psychotherapy can counter prevailing social systems.

New data fails to support the promotion of manualized psychotherapy as superior to non-manualized forms of psychotherapy.

In recent months, two teams of researchers in the UK and the US published complementary findings about the epigenetic origins of schizophrenia that have scientific communities who indulge in ‘genetic conspiracy theories’ abuzz. While these results are intriguing, and no doubt involve pathbreaking research methodologies, this line of thought represents a decontextualized understanding both of the symptoms that are typically associated with schizophrenia, and their causes.

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.

In an interview with MIA's Akansha Vaswani, narrative therapist Jennifer Freeman calls for a shift away from individualistic approaches to 'eco-anxiety' and toward responses that connect us all to a counter-tsunami of action for the planet.

We are profoundly social beings living not as isolated individuals but as integral members of interdependent social systems—our nuclear family system, and the broader social systems of extended family, peers, our community and the broader society. Therefore, psychosis and other forms of human distress often deemed “mental illness” are best seen not so much as something intrinsically “wrong” or “diseased” within the particular individual who is most exhibiting that distress, but rather as systemic problems that are merely being channeled through this individual.

Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.

Criticisms of the DSM-5 spark alternative proposals and calls to reform diagnostic systems in the mental health field.

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.

Researchers argue for plurality and diversity among psychotherapy approaches and question the perceived superiority of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Utilizing Maslow’s published books and essays, psychologist William Compton delineates common myths and attempts to respond to them.

MIA’s Micah Ingle interviews Mary Watkins about reorienting psychology toward liberation and social justice.

Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.

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.