How Does Mindfulness Work?

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A new study explores how mindfulness impacts self-compassion and meaning in life to increase mental health and wellbeing.

Rethinking Therapy: Making Our Worlds as We Would Like Them to Be

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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.

Deprescribing: How to be on Less Medication for Healthier Aging

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In this post for Better Health While Aging, Dr. Leslie Kernisan discusses the importance of making sure that older adults are taking the minimum amount...

A Suicide Therapist’s Secret Past

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In this piece for The New York Times, suicidologist and psychotherapist Stacey Freedenthal tells her story of having struggled with suicidality and discusses the importance...

Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Interventions Target Depressive Symptoms

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A new study finds self-coldness predicts depressive symptoms and supports self-compassion as a buffer.

Pharmacology Gets More Cooperation Than Psychosocial Advice

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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...

The ADHD Drug Abuse Crisis on College Campuses

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The abuse of ADHD drugs on college campuses has reached epidemic proportions, according to the authors of a recent review in the journal of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. ADHD drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall, have become so commonplace on college campuses that students abusing these drugs for studying, weight loss and partying have underestimated their risks. As a result, we have seen exponential increases in emergency room visits, overdoses, and suicides by students taking these drugs.

Trauma Resiliency Model: A New Somatic Therapy for Treating Trauma

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Report presents new body-based therapeutic approach for shock and complex developmental trauma.

How Feedback Can Improve Psychotherapy Treatment

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Researcher examines the impact of client feedback and progress assessment on improvement in outcomes.

Existential Therapy Assists Patients Withdrawing From Psychiatric Drugs

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Confronting existential anxiety through “Basal Exposure Therapy” shows promising results in people withdrawing from psychotropic drugs.

Psychotherapists Reflect on Lack of Improvement in Therapy

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Qualitative research examines the experiences of psychoanalytic therapists in their work with patients whose symptoms either failed to improve or worsened.

Susie Orbach’s Guide to Books to Understand Yourself

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In this piece for The Guardian, Susie Orbach argues that we should not turn to the DSM to understand ourselves, but instead to the work of...

“Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy”

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The Atlantic interviews Raj Raghunathan about his new book, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? “If you were to go back to the...

Few Counselors Are Trained to Treat Racial Trauma

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From ThinkProgress: A new study found that the majority of counselors in the United States are not prepared to identify or treat race-based trauma, which...

Hearing Voices, Emancipation, Shamanism and CBT: Thoughts After Douglas Turkington’s Training

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When Doug Turkington, a UK psychiatrist, first announced to his colleagues that he wanted to help people with psychotic experiences by talking to them, he was told by some that this would just make them worse, and by others that this would be a risk to his own mental health, and would probably cause him to become psychotic! Fortunately, he didn’t believe either group, and in the following decades he went on to be a leading researcher and educator about talking to people within the method called CBT for psychosis.

Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry

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Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry is a "book of alternatives around the world. (Ex-) users and survivors of psychiatry, therapists, psychiatrists, lawyers, social scientists and relatives report...

The Power Threat Meaning Framework One Year On

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The team that developed the Power Threat Meaning framework as a diagnostic alternative reflects on the response to the framework after one year.

Study Investigates Long-Term Effects of Social and Emotional Learning Programs

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs have gained popularity in U.S. schools in recent years. A new study examines the nature and longevity of their impact on students.

Do We Really Need Mental Health Professionals?

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Professionals across the Western world, from a range of disciplines, earn their livings by offering services to reduce the misery and suffering of the people who seek their help. Do these paid helpers represent a fundamental force for healing, facilitating the recovery journeys of people with mental health problems, or are they a substantial part of the problem by maintaining our modestly effective and often damaging system?
projective identification

Letting Negative Projective Identifications Come, and Letting Them Go

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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.

Professionals Push Back on Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual, Propose Alternatives

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

Madness and the Family, Part III: Practical Methods for Transforming Troubled Family Systems

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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.

Patients with OCD Prefer Psychotherapy

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A new study in Psychiatric Services examines patient preferences for the myriad treatments available for Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Meditation and Exercise Reduce Depression Symptoms 40%

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A combination of exercise and meditation done twice a week over two months may reduce depression symptoms by 40 percent, according to a new study published open-access this month in Translational Psychiatry. Following the eight-week intervention, the student participants that had previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) reported significantly less symptoms and ruminative thoughts and students without any such diagnoses also showed remarkable improvements.

REFOCUS Psychosis Recovery Intervention Ready for Trials

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A new pro-recovery manualized intervention – called the REFOCUS intervention – has been developed and will now be evaluated in a multisite randomized control trials. The strengths-based intervention, which focuses on promoting relationships, is outlined in the latest issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.