Ian Thorpe coming out as gay during an interview with Michael Parkinson last night was both the most ordinary of stories and the most extraordinary. It also showed how deeply homophobia is ingrained in…
Therapy helps patients gradually confront situations, places and activities they’ve avoided since the traumatic event.
Bill Strain/Flickr
While human beings have always known about the mental health effects of trauma, it was only in 1980 that the term post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was coined. This acceptance spawned an explosion…
People who attribute mental illness to brain disease or genes tend to blame affected people less, but see them as more hopeless and dangerous.
lauren rushing/Flickr
Depression, schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions are increasingly linked to abnormalities in the brain and in our genes. Many professionals believe these developments hold the key to better treatments…
Suicides among mental health patients under home treatment are double the number of suicides in in-patient units, according to a new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry which looks at suicide rates…
Hormones are one of many factors that can trigger or perpetuate mental ill health.
Sascha Kohlmann/Flickr
Political controversies often use the suffix “gate” to embellish their significance. In pop psychology, the equivalent is the made-up “syndrome”, which involves a combination of symptoms and circumstances…
If spotting future problems were that easy.
Anon Photography
Mass murders lead inevitably, if not entirely reasonably, to the question of what is wrong with the American mental health system and how it can be made better. This has happened most recently with the…
We often use the weather as a metaphor for how we’re feeling: gloomy, sunny or under a cloud. But how does it actually affect us? In this episode of TCTV, Nick Haslam describes the influence of sunny skies…
Additional expenditure, such as that on youth mental health, is arguably not in areas where need is greatest.
JLM photgraphy/Flickr
Despite widespread analysis of the federal budget, measures affecting mental health services have received little attention. But, like other aspects of the budget, there’s serious concern about the lack…
Elliot Rodger’s behaviour points to other problems.
Michael Nelson/EPA
The news that Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old confirmed by police as a suspect in the violent rampage which left seven people dead and 13 injured in Isla Vista, southern California, had Asperger’s Disorder…
The proportion of women experiencing depressive symptoms is higher among mothers of four-year-olds, than among mothers with a newborn baby.
Arjun Karkhanis/Flickr
Becoming a parent is a journey into unchartered waters – the physical and emotional demands of looking after a newborn are exhausting and constant. Not surprisingly, depression and anxiety are common among…
The biodiversity of our planet sustains us. From the air we breathe and the water we drink, to the soil we sow and the fuel we use. But Earth does more than provide the basic necessities that allow humans…
It is still not clear how the experience of being bullied in childhood translates into long-lasting health problems. A new US study has found that victims of bullying have high levels of a protein in their…
Our use of anti-depressants continues to rise. Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre revealed that in just three years – between 2010 and 2013 – prescribing in England rose by 25…
Imagine your partner experiences extreme mood swings: you’ve seen them at their lowest, you’ve seen them at their highest, you’ve seen them when they are well. You’ve “monitored” their mood, checked they’ve…
A 20-year decline in suicide in the UK came to an end in 2007. Since then the suicide rate has been rising, especially among men, who are three times more likely than women to take their own lives. The…
While The Shock of the Fall, Nathan Filer’s recent Costa book winner, portrayed a system in which mental health staff spend too much time talking to other professionals rather than to patients, a report…
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary