Monday, August 24, 2015

Psych Headline NewsLlinks 8-24-2015

If anybody sees anything resembling an Actual Cure for any of the Mental Health Movement's Star Chamber Writs in here, well, your eyes are better than ours.

August 24, 2015
Writing for GreenBiz, Elizabeth Grossman reports on research on the increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals making their way into the environment.  “They report on opiods, amphetamines and other pharmaceuticals found in treated drinking water; antibiotics in groundwater capable of altering naturally occurring bacterial communities; and over-the-counter and prescription drugs found in water leeching from municipal landfills.”
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August 24, 2015
“Stress damages the integrity of the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that deals with memory and emotions,” Thor Benson writes for Salon. “Hormones like Cortisol and other biological reactions created by stress essentially disrupt the balance of how much white and grey matter the brain is creating, which affects how the brain operates.”
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August 24, 2015
In this week’s NY Times Modern Love blog Hannah Louise Poston tells the story of living with her severely depressed boyfriend, Joe, and how her decision to buy a kitten improved their relationship.  “The next morning when we woke up, the first words out of Joe’s mouth were, ‘Where’s the kitten?’ And the kitten’s first act, when she heard his voice, was to ice-pick her way up the quilt and jump on his face. That same summer, Joe mustered the energy to make major changes in his life…”
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August 21, 2015
Paul Thacker and Charles Seife provide an update on the ongoing battles over transparency in science, writing for the PLOS Biologue blog. While transparency is important for accountability and the public trust, some have begun to argue that requests for personal communications between companies and researchers have gone too far.
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August 21, 2015
In an Op-Ed for The Advocate, activist Ally Nugent relates her experience of post-acute withdrawal syndrome and says that our mental health institutions disproportionately affect those who deviate from the cultural norm.  “The ghost of the past lingers on in,” she writes, in “psychiatry’s continued failure to recognize the humanity in emotional responses to extraordinary adversity — evident in its swift diagnoses of those of us who face it.”
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August 17, 2015
A study in PLoS One shows that the number of National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded drug trials reporting positive results declined precipitously after the implementation of the clinicaltrials.gov registry, which requires researchers to record their trial methods and outcome measures before collecting data.  Of the 55 studies examined, 57% percent of those published before the implementation of clinicaltrials.gov in 2000 yielded a positive result.  After 2000, only eight percent of trials claimed a significant benefit to the intervention examined.
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August 13, 2015
Julia Belluz at Vox interviews Russ Poldrack, the director of the Center for Reproducible Neuroscience, on recent efforts to “clean up the house of neuroscience and improve transparency and the reliability of research.”More →
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August 12, 2015
Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove discuss their new book  Psychiatry Under the Influence in an interview with psychologist and social critic Bruce Levine for Truthout. In the book, Whitaker and Cosgrove apply the institutional corruption framework, developed by Larry Lessig, to psychiatry and determine that “just as elected officials develop dependency on special interests and become beholden to these funders instead of the citizenry,” psychiatry has “had its social mission subverted by drug companies as well as by the psychiatry guild's self-preservation and expansionism needs.”
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August 11, 2015
Australian trade minister, Andrew Robb, spoke about inadequate government funding for mental health at a summit of mental health experts on Monday. Canberra related his own personal experience of struggling to seek treatment for depression and counseled that “stigma has been such a massive deterrent” both for individuals in need of help and for government funding of mental health programs.  
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August 11, 2015
In a blog post for The Guardian’s Healthcare Professionals Network, frontline worker Tim Smith takes on the oft-heard metaphor that “mental health problems should be seen like a broken leg.”  Smith explains how this metaphor, while intended to reduce stigma, negatively impacts mental health care by creating the expectation that treatments will follow a set course and that patients will respond uniformly and predictably.  
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August 9, 2015
From Marlo Thomas on HuffPo: "For those taking medication or anti-depressants, orgasm can seem even more unattainable. Reduction in both sexual desire and orgasms is a very common side effect with certain SSRI's, as the increase in serotonin tells the body that it's 'fully satisfied.'"
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August 8, 2015
"Mary Ann DeBernardis of Utica knew her mother was dying when she left the hospital on the evening of July 5, 2013. Burdened with a number of health problems, she died in the middle of the night. Wanting to know more about what caused her death, DeBernardis and her family asked for her medical records. 'And that’s when we learned about Haldol.'" (From the Utica Observer-Dispatch)
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August 7, 2015
"Older women who eat white bread and rice found to have greater risk of depression, according to research ... But whole grain foods, roughage and vegetables could cut it" the U.K.'s The Telegraph reports. "The findings, published in journal The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, could pave the wave for depression being treated and prevented using nutrition."
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July 30, 2015
Fox 5 Atlanta featured a back to school story about the growing percentage of preteens and teens being prescribed antipsychotic medication for ADHD.  They report:  "Nobody, whether you're a mom trying to advocate for your child, or you're a physician trying to decide what's best for the child, nobody wants a child on a medication with long-term side effects that may even affect their development. Nobody wants that. We have to create a system that really digs and looks for other options for these kids."
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July 30, 2015
On The New York Times Opinionator Blog, Diana Spechler has written a series entitled “Going Off,” relating her experience transitioning to a life without prescription medications for her anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
This week’s installment, “10 Things I’d Tell My Former (Medicated) Self,” marks Diana’s final entry for the series which began in February.  In it she she gives voice to her own confessions and reminiscences and encourages others to do the same.
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July 28, 2015
"I’ve eaten mushrooms ... dropped LSD ... taken MDMA ... I’ve done everything adults always told me not to do in my youth, and I ended up fine. And now, the only drug to ever have an addictive and negative effect on me, is the one that has been shoved down my throat by dozens of medical professionals and teachers throughout my adolescence," reports Daniel Tobin on the website Elite Daily.
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July 24, 2015
High Times takes a good look at the chemistry and epidemiology of "America's Favorite Amphetamine": "If you’re one of the roughly 6.4 million kids or 10 million adults in the U.S. diagnosed with the condition, you’ve probably taken adderall."
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July 24, 2015
"Sales for drugs like Vyvanse and Adderall are growing rapidly. To those who have experienced the dark-side of regular amphetamine use, that’s concerning," says the U.K.'sGuardian. "In 2014, the adult market for pharmaceutical stimulants in the US overtook the long-reigning children’s market. Thanks to the eagerness of many doctors to prescribe so-called ADHD drugs, every high school in the country is sloshing with enough amphetamine to keep five Panzer divisions awake during an extended Africa campaign. But now, for the first time, you are more likely to find drugs like Vyvanse and Adderall in a corporate office park than a classroom."
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July 24, 2015
"In an article published this month in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, McGill University psychiatrist Dr. Joel Paris says the diagnostic criteria for adult ADHD are so broad they could easily describe anyone who has trouble focusing," says the Canadian National Post. The article goes on to quote Allen Frances: "'Pharma has already created a wild and dangerous epidemic of prescription narcotics. Next on its agenda is pushing the sale of prescription speed.'"
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July 20, 2015
Eleanor Longden and John Reed look at the "relationships between childhood adversity and the presence of characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia."  They conclude: "The current data are consistent with a model of global and cumulative adversity, in which multiple exposures may intensify psychosis risk beyond the impact of single events."

Thank You MIA.


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