Causation Theories

A study in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology finds that in a sample of 641 adopted adolescents, an increase in the level of ADHD...

Nature tells of Richard Tremblay, who explores the effects of trauma and aggression on the life course — and beyond, through the influence of epigenetics. Article →

Research from the U.K. shows that involvement in bullying between the ages of 8 and 11, whether as victim or perpetrator, is linked to...

A New Zealand judge has upheld the appeal of a sexual abuse survivor against a decision that sexual abuse cannot cause schizophrenia.  The judge...

A review of the literature from 2001 to 2011 on child abuse, neglect, and psychiatric disorders finds that early life stress subtypes can predict...

Yes, the boycott of the DSM-5 continues. I can’t tell you how many fewer DSMs have so far been purchased as a result of the boycott; and conversations I have had with professionals in New York’s public mental health system lead me to believe that the great majority continue to accept the validity of the biomedical model and the centrality of psychoactive medications in the treatment of persons caught up in the public system. Perhaps that’s the most important argument in support of the boycott’s continuation – we have so many more folks to reach.

Allen Frances adds to his catalog of DSM-5 mistakes with the return of the controversial - and ultimately rejected - "Psychosis Risk Disorder", under...

Presentation by John Read at the Meanings of Madness Conference. (Presentation begins at 5 minutes in.)

A 48-year longitudinal study of 244 subjects, published in Schizophrenia Research, finds that those with schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses had had the worst social functioning scores at...

Researchers (including Jim van Os) find, in a three-year cohort study of 1272 people at possible genetic risk of psychosis, that "most transitions (to psychosis)...

Research on a sample of 587 patients with DSM-IV defined bipolar disorder finds that an earlier age at onset of bipolar illness - along...

eCPR is a public health education program designed to teach people to assist others through emotional crisis through three steps: C = connecting, P = emPowering, and R = revitalizing. eCPR recognizes that the experiences of trauma, emotional crisis, and emotional distress are universal; they can happen to anyone, at anytime, anywhere.

Analysis in the British Medical Journal concludes that the lowered thresholds for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder diagnosis in DSM-5 will mean "that many children...

When I lived in Massachusetts I taught yoga and led writing groups for alternative mental health communities. While the organizations I worked for were alternative, many of the students and participants were heavily drugged with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. There was one skinny teenager I'd never have forgotten who listed the drugs he was on for me once in the yoga room after class: a long list of stimulants, neuroleptics, moods stabilizers; far too many drugs and classes of drugs to remember. I was at the housewarming party of an old friend, and who should walk in but that boy who used to come to my yoga classes and writing groups religiously. And he was no longer a boy; he was now a young man. “I'm thinking yoga teacher,” he said. I nodded. Did he remember where? “I'm not stupid,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I'm not on drugs anymore. I'm not stupid anymore.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reviews Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test", which chronicles the meteoric growth of the DSM in "chaotic editorial meetings in a small...

This blog was prompted by an invitation to do a guest post on the site of one of my favorite bloggers, 1 Boring Old Man. This is my response to the notion that there are certain conditions - Schizophrenia among them - that correspond more directly to biomedical conditions

Research from the universities of Cardiff, Cambridge and Bristol finds no evidence of a link between genetic associations with schizophrenia and adolescent psychotic experiences....

Research drawing on the British national survey finds that, despite the fact that psychotic conditions and mood disorders have historically been approached as separate...

Researchers from Taiwan and the United States find, in a study of 1,752 inner-city infants born between 1960 and 1965 (the Johns Hopkins Pathways...

According to a leading group of psychiatric genetic researchers, writing in 1999, “From the perspective of psychiatric genetics, the Human Genome Project is an immense factory producing and refining the tools we will need to discover the genes that cause mental illness.” A 2002 “speculative outline” by a group helping to revise the DSM envisioned a future DSM-5 practice of classifying disorders on the basis of "the patient’s genotype, identifying symptom- or disease-related genes, resiliency genes, and genes related to therapeutic responses and side effects to specific psychotropic drugs.” A dozen or so years ago, at least some of the DSM-5 architects believed that genes would at long last be identified and would be integrated into the next version of the DSM. As we know, this did not happen.

Research from UCLA finds that rats exposed to early life trauma showed aberrations  of stress hormones, receptors in the amygdala, and inhibited or avoidant...

Psychiatric molecular genetic research has failed to discover genes that underlie the major psychiatric disorders, the existence of which twin and adoption studies are assumed to have established. "Genome-wide complex trait analysis" (GCTA) was developed a few years ago as a means of solving what researchers call the "missing heritability" problem. One researcher believed that the new GCTA method would “drive a stake through the heart of” criticism of behavioral genetic theories and methods, and would finally put criticism of twin studies “to rest.” The opposite scenario appears to be playing out, however, as leading behavioral genetic and psychiatric genetic researchers struggle to prevent some recent negative GCTA findings and the obvious false assumptions underlying twin research from driving a stake through the heart of twin studies themselves.

Sera Davidow, MIA Blogger and Director of The Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community (RLC), discusses her lived experience within the psychiatric system.

Researchers from the University of Toronto departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, publishing in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, propose that various forms of stress,...

Living in this very complex, demanding, stratified modern society has produced an epidemic of personal alienation. There is often a tragic gulf between our emotional experience and our awareness of it. 1 in 5 Americans are now taking a psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 women are now taking a psychiatric medication. All of those medications suppress, modify, or block emotion.