A proposed new definition of depression would include normal bereavement. Why that’s a bad idea.
psychiatry
Drugging the Vulnerable: Atypical Antipsychotics in Children and the Elderly
Pharmaceutical companies have recently paid out the largest legal settlements in U.S. history — including the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations — for illegally marketing antipsychotic drugs.
Do We Really Need Psychiatrists to Do Therapy?
In a front page story headlined “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy,” the New York Times Saturday bemoaned the fact that most psychiatrists now focus on prescribing medications, not practicing psychotherapy.
Why Has Childhood Bipolar Disorder Become an Epidemic?
When a young child’s behavior problems go beyond mere toddler tantrums, parents face bleak choices about how to treat them. Should they seek psychiatric or psychological help? Should the child be put on medication or some other …
Psychology vs. Psychiatry: What’s the Difference, and Which Is Better?
Psychologists and psychiatrists tend to hate each other. The reasons are historical: beginning even before Freud, psychologists held enormous power over the cultural imagination. The whole idea of psychiatry — an explicitly …
Why City Life Adds to Your Risk of Psychosis
Life in the big city can be tough, and as many urban dwellers know, it can lead to feelings of isolation and even promote a greater risk of developing a mental disorder such as depression.
But what accounts for that increased …
Can dreams be a study tool?
Dreaming about tomorrow’s big presentation, or how you’ll tackle certain questions on an exam later this week may seem like a sign that your anxiety over the pending challenge has seeped its way into your subconscious—yet, according to new research published in the journal Cell Biology dreaming about something you’ve learned may
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Sense of fulfillment linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk
Understanding what distinguishes people who battle with dementia and Alzheimer’s as they age from those whose mental acuity remains strong well into their 80s, 90s and even older, is a major focus of current psychiatric research. Previous studies have pointed to the potentially protective value of exercise, social support and even
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DSM-5: Hoarding, binge-eating and hypersexuality
Adding Asperger’s syndrome to the autism spectrum, eliminating the terms “substance abuse” and “dependence” in favor of “addiction and related disorders,” introducing the condition “hypersexual disorder” and introducing an assessment of mental illness based on severity are among the proposed changes for the new edition of the Diagnostic
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Hearing voices in childhood may be common
Many children and adolescents may hear voices that aren’t really there, but most don’t suffer any long-term effects of the imaginary chatter, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. As Reuters reports, a study of 3,870 Dutch preschoolers found that nearly one in ten reported hearing voices “that only you
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