An excerpt from my book review on the new book by the Brafman brothers, Sway, in bookstores shortly:
The one place the authors don’t really sway me is their attempt to explain why bipolar disorder is diagnosed so much more often than it was a decade ago. Unmentioned by the authors is the fact that many […]

Knowing that most people initially seek out treatment for their mental health concerns through their general practitioner or family doctor, you have to wonder how many of them feel about being the front line in the war on depression and such.
Dr. Rob is such a physician and wrote an entry today about dealing with […]

Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who took her own life after being bullied online, is hopefully at peace. But her mom fights on in her name, having recently created a foundation to help reduce and prevent online bullying (”cyberbulling”). The Associated Press has the story:

But in recent months, the Missouri woman has focused on ways to […]

Positive messages and success stories about individuals with mental illness who have found hope and recovery are helpful for other who may feel less optimistic. They can help ease worry about future outcomes, and provide role models.
Here are a couple of videos that provide very sunny stories to inspire you: the first is a production […]

Today I participated on a U.S. Army-sponsored conference call to discuss their reaction to data showing that 115 active soldiers took their own lives last year (nearly double the rate from 2005) and approximately 17 U.S. veterans commit suicide each and every day (significantly more than reported to Congress last year). Statistics also show a […]

“Sleep-driving” while under the influence of Ambien has captured wide attention and continues to be an alarming problem. Ambien (zolpidem) is one of the new “Z” drugs used as sleeping pills that are popular in commercials and doctors’ sample cupboards. But alternatives exist (most obviously the other Z’s - zopiclone/Lunesta, and zalepron/Sonata).
There have been newspaper […]

Pages: 1 2 Next »     Single Page Every treatment has its downsides. Medications have side effects and it can often feel like a revolving door trying to find one (or a combination of a few) that work for any particular person. And while medications’ side effects are well-publicized, few articles are written […]

Ron Kessler is one of the world’s leading psychiatric epidemiologists, studying data trends in mental and behavioral health around the world. He is a 61-year-old professor at Harvard Medical School, and boils down the research data on large populations of people to figure out what’s underlying the data.
The Boston Globe has a nice piece […]

Philip over at Furious Seasons thinks that antidepressants shouldn’t be made available over-the-counter in the U.S. (e.g., without a prescription). His entry was based upon this article over at Time magazine that interviews Josephine Johnston, an associate for law and bioethics at the nonpartisan research institute, the Hastings Center.
The real question you have to […]

The Princeton Review publishes annual “Best of…” college lists based upon a now-online survey of students at each college. They describe the survey process as:

The Princeton Review survey asks students 80 questions about their school’s academics / administration, campus life, student body, and themselves. Tallies for this edition’s rankings are based on surveys of 120,000 […]

On Memorial Day, it seemed appropriate to mention a volunteer project called, Give an Hour.
As the Washington Post notes, thousands of private counselors are offering free services to troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems, jumping in to help because the military is short on therapists:

There are only 1,431 mental health […]

Frank L. Schmidt, a respected professor and researcher at the University of Iowa, gave a talk at the Association for Psychological Science’s 20th convention on Saturday about how scientific data can lie. Yes, that’s right, empirical data — even that published in respected, peer-reviewed journals — regularly do not tell the truth.
Schmidt’s talk was well-attended […]