Around The Web

In The Opinion Pages of the New York Times, Matthew Epperson discusses the devastating results of police acting as the primary responders to mental health crises. “If we are to prevent future tragedies, then we should be ready to invest in a more responsive mental-health system and relieve the police of the burden of being the primary, and often sole, responders.”

“We are concerned about the implications of this rule,” said Jennifer Mathis, a lawyer at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for patients. “It points a finger inappropriately at people with mental illness as a source of gun violence. It’s a bad precedent to start creating exceptions to the privacy law for people with mental illness, who are responsible for about 4 percent of incidents of gun violence.”

“Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask,” Samantha Allen writes in Invisible Wounds. Melissa Walker, an art therapist, asks them to make one. “The results are stirring. One mask, striped in red and black with hollow chrome-colored eyes, is wrapped in razor wire with a lock where its mouth should be.”

The official voice of the American Psychiatric Association covers the short and long term side-effects of antipsychotics and promotes the use of therapeutic alternatives...

For Tom Dispatch, historian Rick Shenkman “explores the biological phenomena that may well underpin our appalling lack of empathy, the animal instincts that allow so many of us to stand by in the face of unspeakable acts,” and “how the stories we tell ourselves and others might offer us a path to overcome our utterly human inhumanity.”

"HHS said it took pains to avoid any change to gun check reporting that would weaken physician–patient confidentiality and deter individuals from voluntarily seeking...

“Social media’s link to jealousy and depression is well-chronicled,” Kara Baskin writes in the Boston Globe, “and the recent holidays — when all sorts of unsavory emotions bubble forth anyway — amplify it.”

Writing in The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman discusses the comeback of Freud’s psychoanalysis, along with humanistic therapy, interpersonal therapy, transpersonal therapy, and transactional analysis and...

“A little background digging revealed to me that this study is the tip of a new iceberg relative to ADHD diagnosis, stimulant treatment, and...

In the SundayReview section of the New York Times Vicki Abeles discusses Stuat Slavin’s research on depression and anxiety in US schools. “Many of the health effects are apparent now, but many more will echo through the lives of our children,” says Richard Scheffler, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Do they make people less aggressive? Yes, sometimes they do. Will they sedate people? Absolutely. Will they make kids easier to manage? They will,” Robert Whitaker tells Liz Spikol for Philadelphia Magazine. “But I know of no study that shows that medicating these kids long-term will help them grow up and thrive. The developing brain is a very delicate thing. The narrative is that these side effects are mild, and that’s just not true, and that the benefits are well-established, and so often they’re not.”

“In 2014, 10,574 people died of heroin overdose while 15,778 died from an overdose of psychiatric medications, nearly 50% more,” writes addiction specialist Kenneth...

Neuroskeptic covers a provocative paper from psychologist Jan Smedslund which argues that psychology “cannot be an empirical science.” “Psychological findings are in principle historical, and...

Popular addiction news outlet, the fix, interviews Dr. Gabor Maté on addiction, the holocaust, the "disease-prone personality" and the pathology of positive thinking. “Until...

“According to a new study, the consequences of this wage gap extend beyond the checking account: women who earn less than their male peers...

In an Op-Ed in the New York Times, Frank Bruni weighs in on the “concussion crisis,” and the long-term effects that sports-related brain injuries...

"ISIS provides existential fast food, and for some of the most spiritually hungry young Westerners, ISIS is like a Big Mac amidst a barren wasteland of an existence,” Omar Hague writes in the Psychiatric Times. “Who actually joins ISIS? Not psychopaths or the brainwashed, but rather everyday young people in social transition, on the margins of society, or amidst a crisis of identity.”

Speaking to Medscape about PTSD, Jeffrey Lieberman likens our current treatments with SSRIs, tricyclics and therapy to "treating tuberculous by putting people in sanitariums or polio with iron lungs, or Alzheimer's disease with these cholinomimetic drugs.” "They are symptom-improving, but they're not disease-modifying,” he adds. “They're just not sufficient…”

“Those who possess the data control the story.” In the wake of the reanalysis of the infamous Study 329, where scientific data claiming the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teens was egregiously manipulated, researchers are pushing for open access to raw data. “The issue here, scientists argue, is that without independent confirmation, it becomes too easy to manipulate data.”

Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, writing for Counter Punch, take on those who have criticized the Hoffman Report, which found that the APA had actively colluded in the US Torture program. “They have not credibly refuted these core findings of Hoffman’s seven-month investigation, nor have they even attempted to do so.”

Neuroskeptic covers a short article by Susan Lederer that appeared in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics discussing what happens when research participants die.

Martha Rosenberg calls the reanalysis of Paxil and Study 329 “a victory for safety activists, medical reporters, the public and freedom of the press.” But, she warns, “many pro-pill doctors continue to fight evidence of Paxil’s suicide risks and similar SSRIs.”

On his website, Dr. Nardo details the hidden risks and bad science behind the growing practice of using atypical antipsychotics to augment antidepressant treatment for severe depression. The story of Atypical Antipsychotic Augmentation of Treatment Resistant Depression is a “prime example” “to illustrate how commercial interests have invaded medical practice.” “Besides the obvious dangers of the Metabolic Syndrome and Tardive Dyskinesia, these drugs don’t really do what they’re advertised to do – make the antidepressants work a lot better.”

"Our findings show that empathy with an out-group member can be learned, and generalizes to other out-group individuals," a research team led by Grit Hein of the University of Zurich writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The Food and Drug Administration’s approval of pharmaceutical treatment for low sexual desire in women has launched a heated debate over the dangers and benefits of medicalizing sex,” Maya Dusenbery writes in the Pacific Standard. Is “female Viagra” a feminist victory or a product of clever faux-feminist marketing by Big Pharma?