Photo credit: Moe M,  Flickr [A] new study published in Sleep finds that how you cope with that stress could be behind those sleepless nights. Researchers from the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit had just under 3,000 people report how many stressful events they’d experienced in the last year. Possible stressors included deaths in the family, illnesses, financial problems, and going through a divorce. Participants also reported how severe those...

Photo credit: Pennsylvania National Guard,  Flickr Humans have a remarkable capacity for resilience. Over and over, we hear stories of people who, after trauma and adversity, pick themselves up, put the pieces back together, and go on with their...

Credit: Image courtesy of Cornell University Although feelings are personal and subjective, the human brain turns them into a standard code that objectively represents emotions across different senses, situations and even people, reports a new study...

Credit: Daniel Horowitz for NPR Ask somebody about stress, and you're likely to hear an outpouring about all the bad things that cause it — and the bad things that result. But if you ask a biologist, you'll hear that stress can be good. In fact,...

Photo credit: michael,  Flickr Researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool have discovered that circuits in the brain involved in pursuing and relishing rewarding experiences are more strongly activated in people with bipolar...

Photo credit: Neil Conway,  Flickr More than 6.4 million U.S. children have received a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Despite the prevalence of ADHD,...

Photo credit: robert_rex_jackson,  Flickr The Question:  While more than  two-thirds of youth  diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity use prescription medication to control their symptoms, it’s not uncommon for both...

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks,  Flickr This story was produced for  ACEs Too High  by Rebecca Ruiz and appeared on The Atlantic .  Dr. Nicole Brown’s quest to understand her misbehaving pediatric patients began with...

Photo credit: David Robert Bliwas,  Flickr All Montanans have the power to prevent child abuse. Each year, approximately 1,300 cases of child abuse or neglect are confirmed in Montana. A majority involve child neglect but they also include...

Photo: A scene from the Netflix series  Orange is the New Black.  This primer offers both statistics about the use of solitary confinement and the psychological and emotional harm it can cause.  There may be as many as 80,000 American...

A new book, "Total Recovery: Solving the Mystery of Chronic Pain and Depression," looks at how trauma affects the body and how alternative therapies can alleviate psychological and physical suffering. Integrative medicine is a hot topic in health care...

Understanding the basis of psychiatric disorders has been extremely challenging because there are many genetic variants that may increase risk but are insufficient to cause disease. Now investigators reporting in the July 3rd issue of the Cell Press...

Photo credit: Thomas Leuthard,  Flickr The connection between prostitution and a history of childhood sexual abuse is staggering. Some studies have found that 70 percent of female prostitutes were sexually abused as children; others peg the...

Photo credit: Caroline,  Flickr The other day, a mother of a 15-month-old walked into Andrew Garner’s office, oozing frustration. “Is it normal for them to never sit still?” she asked. Garner, a pediatrician in Westlake, Ohio,...

Photo credit: Matteo Angelino,  Flickr Socioeconomic adversity during childhood increases the likelihood of both depression and higher body mass index (BMI) in early adolescence, which can worsen and lead to illness for young adults,...

  A 3‐D model of a brain in the author's study. Credit: Mike Basher.  In this  Atlantic  feature story, neuroscientist and psychiatrist Nancy Andreasen writes about studying creativity and whether that is at all influenced by...

Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall. Credit: Mike DiNovo/USA TODAY Sports. Following his [borderline personality disorder] diagnosis three years ago, Marshall, now 30 and a Pro Bowl wide receiver for the Chicago Bears, set an ambitious goal: become for mental health what Magic Johnson is for HIV. He wants to make an off-limits subject commonplace. He's reaching out to players who might need help, teaming with mental health organizations through his charity and raising awareness...

Former congressman Patrick Kennedy: "We have a wasteland of people who have died and been disabled because of inadequate care." Photo Credit: H. Darr Beiser,  USA TODAY This lengthy USA TODAY feature looks at mental illness in America from...

Photo credit: TaxCredits.net,  Flickr What some commentators refer to as the "Great Recession" of 2008 resulted in severe job losses across Europe and the US. And researchers know from previous evidence that job loss among workers is...

Photo credit: dchrisoh,  Flickr What social skills does a three-year-old bring to interactions with a new peer partner? If he has strong bonds to his parents, the child is likely to be a positive, responsive playmate, and he'll be able to...

Photo credit: SnapDoc,  Flickr The “parenting divide” between economically advantaged and disadvantaged children is large and appears to be growing over time along these dimensions. Consider the parenting time divide between...

A Minnesota Department of Education report shows this common restraint. The state doesn’t allow prone restraints on disabled children and will ban the tactics altogether after August 2015. Credit: Alberto Cairo,  Propublica The room where...

Photo credit: Gwenael Piaser,  Flickr There is no question among researchers that fathers who spend time with their children instill self-control and social skills in their offspring. Exactly how dads do that, however, is largely a mystery....

The FDA issued warnings in 2003 and 2004 about children taking antidepressants, such as Paxil. Photo credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images .  Government warnings a decade ago about the risks associated with children and adolescents taking...

Characters from the television show Breaking Bad. Photo credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC,  Flickr Young adult men who watched more violence on television showed indications of less mature brain development and poorer executive functioning,...

Photo credit: Tatiana Vdb,  Flickr When a woman experiences a stressful event early in pregnancy, the risk of her child developing autism spectrum disorders or schizophrenia increases. Yet how maternal stress is transmitted to the brain of the...

Photo credit: Namaste, Flickr .  Emotional stress is undeniably uncomfortable. But the real danger it poses is the damage it can do to our bodies, causing or exacerbating health problems ranging from headaches to high blood pressure. If we could...

Individuals going through severe psychiatric crisis often have the experience of feeling not heard, and often feel misunderstood. At the same time, family members often don’t get a chance to participate in their loved one’s treatment plan...

Photo credit: Tambako The Jaguar,  Flickr Do animals experience the equivalent of childhood adverse experiences, and do they develop mental illness as a result? The story of Brian the Bonobo, along with others featured in a new book, Animal...

Photo credit: Chris Stotts,  Flickr Children showing signs of social withdrawal are more susceptible to parental influences than others. These children were also more prone to distress caused by the impacts of guilt-inducing parenting. The...

Photo credit: Tatiana Vdb,  Flickr Pregnant women who had symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder were four times more likely to deliver preterm than women without symptoms, researchers found....

The fraternity quad at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in May. Credit: Armando L. Sanchez for The New York Times .  As policymakers and advocates contemplate how to prevent campus sexual assault, attention is turning to the role...

Inside the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Calif. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli /  AP Photo SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Democrats in the Legislature want the state corrections budget to spend tens of millions of dollars more on mental health...

Photo Credit: Javi.Velazquez,  Flickr When trying to tease out the painful effects of the Great Recession, economists often point to the unemployment rate. The global economic crisis, which first took hold in 2007, left thousands jobless and...

At Bethany Christian Services in Grand Rapids, MI, a teen pregnancy prevention session can feel like a United Nations meeting. Funded by a Competitive Abstinence Education Grant from the Family and Youth Services Bureau’s Adolescent Pregnancy...

Brains of people mistreated in childhood have less brain volume in areas of the hippocampal complex shaded in yellow.  People abused as children show reduced brain volume in regions governing emotion, learning, and memory, deficits that make them...

Credit:  Education Images/Getty The law prohibits you from spanking your boss, your employee, your spouse, your best friend, or a stranger you walk past on the street. But in the United States, it's still perfectly legal to spank your own...

Image credit:  University of California, San Diego Computer scientists at Microsoft Research and the University of California, San Diego have developed a system that combines a mobile application and sensor to detect stress in parents and...

Vincent Schiraldi, senior adviser in the New York Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Credit:  Gwen McClure / JJIE At a workshop this week, advocates and experts discussed, among other things, how trauma affects the brain and why this...

The image shows two levels of the brain, with areas that were more active in healthy controls than in schizophrenia patients shown in orange, during an fMRI study of working memory. Credit: Kim J, Matthews NL, Park S./PLoS One. St. Jude Children's...

This study highlights how factors like depression, low levels of education, physical inactivity and high blood pressure may decrease cognitive functioning, even amongst the young. It's not hard to see how an ACE history would lead to the...

Mark, a California minister, says the day he was first shut out of all treatment discussions regarding his mentally ill teenage son "was the first time we really started to feel hopeless." Credit:  Jenny Gold/Kaiser Health News This story raises...

Yoga instructor Maggie Cohen. Credit: Huffington Post This is an interview with Maggie Cohen, a 500-hour advanced vinyasa yoga instructor and proud member of The Breathe Network, an international network of sliding scale, holistic practitioners who...

Gustavo Sagredo is the school counselor at Manual Arts Senior High School.  Manual Arts Senior High School is located on South Vermont Avenue in South Central Los Angeles. This neighborhood is located in an area that has a high rate of homicides...

Photo credit: U.S. Army,  Flickr A psychiatrist talks about the different elements of adjusting back to civilian life, and briefly raises the importance of unresolved adverse childhood experiences.  Maybe it is a cliche to say that someone...

Photo credit: John Picken Photography,  Flickr As May is celebrated as Mental Health Month this year, Minnesota is marking the 25th anniversary of the Comprehensive Children's Mental Health Act, one of the earliest and most comprehensive pieces...

Photo credit:  Jessica Murri For Boise State Public Radio Caitlin Lanier understands the healing process required for sexual assault survivors. She was sexually assaulted during her first year of college. Lanier didn’t have many options to...

Credit:  Chloe Cushman/The Guardian When he was 22, Chris Gethard thought every day about killing himself. He thought about it so often that eventually it didn’t even feel weird any more. Then, one day, he pulled his car over to the side of...