I spent many months, as a fetus, in a mental institution, listening to the world shuffling outside. I don’t know what meds were administered to me in that developing stage. I lived in the belly of a woman I would never know. But my relationship...
In a survey released today by the Pew Research Center, 87 percent of people characterized drug abuse is either a "crisis" or a "serious problem" in the U.S. That number hasn't changed much in nearly twenty years. What has changed is how Americans are...
A high-resolution map of the human brain in utero is providing hints about the origins of brain disorders including schizophrenia and autism. The map shows where genes are turned on and off throughout the entire brain at about the midpoint of...
We’ve written before about the groundbreaking research from San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance Project, and interviewed the project’s director, Caitlin Ryan about the difference supportive families can make for...
Is a picture worth only a thousand words? According to Dr. Carmit Katz of Tel Aviv University's Bob Shapell School of Social Work, illustrations by children can be a critical tool in forensic investigations of child abuse. Dr. Katz's study, published...
Research on human attachment has improved the practice of psychotherapy in part because attachment theory gives therapists permission to be "real" people with their clients. One of my favorite books on the subject is David Wallin's Attachment in...
Earlier this week, President Barack Obama signed into law H.R. 4302, a bill to temporarily stave off Medicare physician payment cuts that also includes the Excellence in Mental Health Act, a $900-million, two-year demonstration program that will...
Late last month, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy convened a round-table discussion to solicit input on potential solutions to the issue of gang violence in New Haven. In attendance was Yale Child Study Center researcher Steven Marans, who shed light on...
Robert Block, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote about the various ways the AAP is helping transform adverse childhood experience research into practice. Here's the beginning: The Academy has always been at the...
Nine years ago Molly Baldwin found herself in a curious position. Roca , the teenage pregnancy and violence prevention program she’d founded in her 20s, had a multimillion-dollar budget, a two-story building in downtown Chelsea, Mass., a...
Lawmakers, patient advocates and the millions of Americans living with a psychiatric diagnosis agree that the nation’s mental health care system is broken, and on Thursday, Congress will hear testimony on the most ambitious overhaul plan in...
ALBUQUERQUE — James Boyd, a homeless man camping in the Sandia Foothills here, could hear the commands of the police officers who were trying to move him out. The problem was that Mr. Boyd, 38, had a history of mental illness, and so was living...
Movies like Mean Girls have told us that the popular crowd rules, and the nerds and nonconformists get picked on. But even the top rungs of high school social ladder aren't immune to bullying, researchers say. Becoming more popular can...