Schizophrenia and Psychosis

Children who lose a parent before the age of 3 are 84% more likely to experience psychosis as adults, according to research published in...

Although psychosis is more common in the parents of people with psychosis than those without, the difference cannot be attributed to genetics, research from...

Comedians score high on scales of psychotic traits, according to research published today in British Journal of Psychiatry. "The creative elements needed to produce humor...

Giulietta Carelli started the Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club and, inadvertently, San Francisco's craze for artisanal toast.  "More than a café, the shop is a...

Research from the University of Maryland finds that "Although 'psychosis-like experiences' (PLEs) may reflect elevated risk for onset of serious mental illness," further examination...

In "the largest assessment of substance use among individuals with severe psychotic illness to date," researchers from Washington University and the University of Southern...

Schizophrenia Bulletin wrestles with its identity and mission in light of current challenges to the diagnostic categories. Article →

Noted schizophrenia researchers Robin Murray, Robert Zipursky and Thomas Reilly write in Schizophrenia Bulletin that "mental health professionals need to join with patients and...

A blog in Scientific American reviews sleep’s role in "Obesity, Schizophrenia, Diabetes... Everything".  The article notes  a tight link between depression and sleep apnea,...

In our last blog, we focused on the fact that nutrient supplementation has not only been accepted in the realm of physical health in the past, but it has actually been endorsed by reputable sources such as the Journal of the American Medical Association editors who published the Fairfield and Fletcher articles 11 years ago recommending that all adults take a multivitamin to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis (note that this is completely inconsistent with very recent studies reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine --- but that’s just the way science works, using different nutrients and different methodologies, coming up with discrepant findings, until facts finally emerge).

Heavy pot users were found to have working-memory deficits and associated changes in brain morphology that were consistent with changes found in persons with...

I received the following question from a reader regarding the controversial CAFÉ – Comparisons of Atypicals in First Episode of Psychosis - study. (This was the study in which Dan Markingson committed suicide.) "It appears that there was no head-to-head with a control group taking a placebo pill. Nor was there a control group featuring 'old' types of 'antipsychotic'. If that was the case then it is very poor study . . . what on earth can you hope to show from the data?" I started to write a response, but the subject is complex, and my response became the following 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...

Attorney Lynn Garson memoir of escape from psychiatric drug treatment, "Southern Vapors", is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's highlighted book of the month.  "The idea that...

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

I really valued the massive Melbourne Hearing Voices conference last week. The theme of reconciliation between voice hearers and mental health workers was a powerful one. This emphasis on creating understanding conversations at the conference was encouraged with dialogues between people on specific subjects - medication, spirituality, psychological approaches to voices etc. - rather than keynotes. It seemed a move away from presentations of competing knowledges, toward a more dialogical conference; a respectful exchange of different viewpoints, feelings and values. When you have a range of views in a presentation it’s less easy to adopt a “good guys vs. bad guys” mentality; you start to see the complexities in more relief. The surprise for me was that I liked it.

Modern “civilized” cultures do not have a good relationship with the wild. It seems we are always doing everything possible to shut it out of our lives, or to kill or tame it to the point where it is unrecognizable. Yet that which is wild is always still lurking, somewhere over the edge of our boundaries and frontiers, and also inside people, both inside the “others” we might approach warily on the street, and even inside our family members and ourselves.

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.)

For a scathing, 11-minute overview of the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, and new allegations of coercion into psychiatric clinical trials, you can't do much better than this excellent investigative report by Jeff Baillon.

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...

E. Fuller Torrey has a new book. While I was not thrilled to support the Treatment Advocacy Center, I was curious as to what he had to say. Where Torrey has clarity, I contend there is much that we still do not understand. I worry that a perspective that suggests the answers are clear cuts us off from inquiry into alternate approaches.

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)...

Britain's The Independent tells the story of Lloyd Dres, a 44-year-old former stock trader, who has been trying to make sense of the "paranoid...