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World of Psychology


Brooke Shields on Postpartum Depression

Brooke Shields speaks candidly to ABC News about her own postpartum depression (PPD) experience after the birth of her first child. An edited transcript of this video follows below:

Shields: I was not really aware that I had it [postpartum depression]. It was devastating to my whole family. I had gone through numerous attempts to have a baby and when I did finally have this perfect, beautiful, healthy baby and it all but destroyed me. I couldn't hold...
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Are In-Store Clinics an Answer?

The Boston Globe yesterday published an editorial arguing that in-store clinics are no quick fix:


CVS's basic premise for the concept is that people's lives have become too busy for doctors visits, and that patients are too impatient to wait the days or weeks it takes to get an appointment. So customers can head to the clinic at their local CVS, the first of which is proposed for Weymouth, and for $59 and a wait of under 20 minutes, they can get to see...
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Crime, Consequences and Mental Illness

Sometimes you wake up feeling refreshed from a good night's rest. Other days you wake up feeling a little groggy and less put together.

I can only hypothesize that the latter occurred when the author wrote this post in response to our post pointing out the flaws of associating violence with mental illness based upon the CATIE data.

One of the biggest problems with the violence study done on the CATIE data, which I didn't explictly mention in my prior post (but which...
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Violence and Mental Illness: Simplifying Complex Data Relationships

The blog depression introspection has an entry about this unfortunate post by the Treatment Advocacy Center, an advocacy organization that basically wants to paint some serious mental disorders as medical illnesses and demonize them (in order to increase access to medical treatments for them, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to us too).

When people make outrageous statements like this one,


The CATIE violence study found that patients with schizophrenia were 10 times more likely to engage in violent behavior than the...
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Sensationalizing Murder and Mental Health

As predicted, the media is now making some very generalized and meaningless connections between Cho's hospitalization 16 months ago in 2005, and his actions on Monday. The Los Angeles Times leads the charge,


Weary with grief and struggling to explain their failure to monitor Seung-hui Cho upon his release from a mental hospital 16 months ago, the leaders of Virginia Tech sought Thursday to begin the healing process for their shattered university.


"Failure to monitor?" Since when is it a university's responsibility to...
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Virginia Tech Shooting Questions Loom

Another sad school shooting has occurred (New York Times), this time at Virginia Tech, and with it, millions of Americans will ask the simple question, "Why?" Why do people want to kill so many others? Why do they get away with it? Why can't we do more to stop such tragedies?

But as I've pointed out previously here and here (just 3 months ago),


The sad truth is that no amount of analysis of a person’s possible [illness or motivations] explains criminal...
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If Everyone Does It, Is It Abuse?

In a recent article on Internet addiction, I will give David Greenfield the benefit of the doubt when quoted in this article over the weekend where he states,


“It’s almost impossible to self-limit and monitor your Internet use,” says Greenfield. “Almost everybody abuses the Internet, even if they’re not addicted. Even I do.”


Honestly, if everyone is engaging in a behavior, it's neither addiction nor abuse, by very definition. It's "normal." Unless you're the morality police or something, when someone chooses to spend...
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Lighting the Way

Reader Phil left this comment on my earlier post Light and Dark, in response to Hank Roberts who's been sharing valuable info, like a link to the Center for Environmental Therapeutics on light therapy and negative ions for depression. Phil's comment:

This DESPERATELY needs to be more widely talked about, and tried. I followed Hank’s directions- and for the first time in 15 years, I am able to sleep without medication. Do you understand how astonishing that is?

What happened 15 years...
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The Infancy of Brain Studies

In a recent CNN article:
Are Humans Hard-Wired for Faith?

After noting that similar areas of the brain 'light up' during contemplative or prayer activity, the researcher goes (as is common with brain scan studies) a bit too far:

"Newberg calls religion the great equalizer and points out that similar areas of the brain are affected during prayer and meditation. Newberg suggests that these brain scans may provide proof that our brains are built to believe in God. He says there may be universal features of...
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