Lori Drew, the alleged perpetrator behind a slate of nasty Myspace messages Megan Meier received from “Josh” that appear to have led to her suicide hours later, has been indicted by federal prosecutors in Missouri. We previously reported on the Megan Meier murder and noted last December how cowardly local prosecutors declined to prosecute Drew.
Drew […]

With the rising movement of e-patients and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace, a question has recently surfaced on a mental health mailing list I subscribe to where a professional asks, “When should I accept a ‘friend’ request from a patient or former patient?”
It’s a good question and one that sheds some light […]

Some people wrap themselves in marketing phrases and feel-good privacy statements which mean little in the real world. So just a reminder to our regular readers about what online anonymity entails.
You can’t be anonymous online if you…
1. Join virtually any social network (since, by their very nature, they encourage you to share as much […]

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) got some grant money from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to produce an updated brochure on Women and Depression. The result?
A publication that is largely information that’s been regurgitated time and time again (you can see many of the same topics in NIMH’s Women and Depression brochure), culled from a myriad […]

The Second Annual Summit on Behavioral Telehealth: Technology for Behavior Change & Disease Management is June 2-3, 2008 at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. Psych Central is proud to be a supporting publication for this event, and we encourage our readership that’s interested in getting an update on what’s going on in “behavioral telehealth” […]

Well, maybe not all teens, but I mistakenly thought that something like 80% or 90% of teens were strongly into social networking sites like Myspace and such, given how much you hear about the two being connected.
So I was a little surprised with the release of the Pew Internet and American Life report last week […]

Back in December 2007, the British Journal of Psychiatry published an editorial examining the use of computers to help aid people with mental health concerns. Most of these programs focus on psychoeducational techniques (sort of like distance learning) of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). One of the things that CBT is well-known for, compared to many other […]

In the mental health blogosphere this week my favourite post came from Dr. Shock, in a post that is part of the cool Research Blogging initiative. He reported on a new paper published in Cyberpsychology & Behavior called Lighting in Digital Game Worlds: Effects on Affect and Play Performance, by Igor Knez and Simon […]

One of our favorite blogs (in fact, one of the ones we named “Best of the Web” in the Depression category) is back — depression introspection.
I very much like her response, Response to “Mental Health Blogs Going Bye-Bye?”, to Philip’s Furious Seasons’ entry about where do mental health blogs go to, since it seems like […]

Despite much research in recent years, including a study that establishes the heritability of bipolar disorder at 85% (confirming what families and clinicians have known for decades), the precise genetic basis of bipolar disorder remains elusive. Single-gene studies have identified promising candidates here and there, but genome-wide association studies have failed to produce replicable results. […]

After being in a 9-month “under review” limbo, HealthyPlace’s HONcode accreditation was revoked last month by the Health on the Net Foundation for multiple violations of the HONcode over time. The HONcode principles are a set of voluntary guidelines that suggest areas of transparency and information for medical and health oriented websites.
Here’s an example […]

You’d think the sky was falling by the way some news media are reporting on a study published recently by the British Medical Journal about online suicide searches:

People searching the web for information on suicide are more likely to find sites encouraging the act than offering support, a study says.
Researchers used four search engines to […]