March 11, 2025
(NPR) – The deadliest phase of the street fentanyl crisis appears to have ended, as drug deaths continue to drop at an unprecedented pace. For the first time, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have now seen at … Read More
March 10, 2025
(Washington Post via MSN) – The “placebo effect” is a phenomenon that occurs when a person’s physical or mental health improves after taking what is essentially a sham treatment with no clear therapeutic benefits. “The placebo effect is not magic, … Read More
March 10, 2025
(The Walrus) – We saw, first hand, how mass trauma rattles a tight-knit community—and we wondered what U of T owed Mathew. What did it owe Lodaya, Mixemong, and Qu? What did it owe the students who congregated outside the … Read More
March 7, 2025
(Associated Press) – Most of America “springs forward” Sunday for daylight saving time and losing that hour of sleep can do more than leave you tired and cranky the next day. It also could harm your health. Darker mornings and … Read More
March 6, 2025
(Axios) – LGBTQ+ youth across the U.S. continue to experience high rates of mental health challenges — yet they face significant hurdles to accessing mental health care, according to a new report from the Trevor Project. (Read More)
March 5, 2025
(Wired) – Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan thinks that modern health care is overdiagnosing people but not necessarily making them healthier—and in fact, that it might be doing more harm than good. In her new book, The Age of Diagnosis, she backs … Read More
March 5, 2025
(New York Times) – The research constitutes some of the first evidence that the condition is associated with modifications in the brain before childbirth. Researchers scanned the brains of dozens of women in the weeks before and after childbirth and … Read More
March 5, 2025
(ABC News) – A bucktoothed llama that spends his days comforting chronically ill children at a North Carolina camp founded by NASCAR royalty has been crowned the world’s oldest llama in captivity. At 27 years and more than 250 days, … Read More
March 5, 2025
(Aeon) – For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t Several years ago, I left my medical practice for a long vacation. On the morning of my first day back, my … Read More
March 4, 2025
(Nature) – From China to Brazil to Germany, huge numbers of people are addicted to shopping, driven in part by companies that use gaming strategies. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin described krankhafte Kauflust — the pathological desire to buy — as … Read More
March 4, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – For some people, alcohol has taken a back seat to other substances, including mushrooms, LSD and ketamine Like many others, Brenc uses the term “California sober” to describe her way of life. Alcohol is largely off the table, but … Read More
March 3, 2025
(Science) – Innovative trial designs aim to separate participant expectations from drug effects This “functional unblinding” is not unique to psychedelics, but it’s especially pronounced in this drug class. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expressed concern about … Read More
February 26, 2025
(ABC News) – Audience disinterest has characterized many, though not all, of the films about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the output has pretty much dried up over the years. “My Dead Friend Zoe” feels like it was made … Read More
February 26, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – Research into psilocybin led by the biotech company Compass Pathways has been slowed in part by the complexity of the trials, but the data already shows promise for the psychedelic compound within so-called magic mushrooms. Eventually, … Read More
February 25, 2025
(New York Times) – Chatbots posing as therapists may encourage users to commit harmful acts, the nation’s largest psychological organization warned federal regulators. The nation’s largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots “masquerading” as therapists, … Read More
February 24, 2025
(Washington Post via MSN) – The District’s only for-profit psychiatric hospital prioritizes profits over patient care, systematically committing patients when not medically necessary to maximize insurance payments, a former patient alleges in a lawsuit. The unidentified patient was held for … Read More
February 18, 2025
(KFF Health News) – Shaw was among thousands of patients of Pain MD, a multistate pain management company that was once among the nation’s most prolific users of what it referred to as “tendon origin injections,” which normally inject a … Read More
February 18, 2025
(NBC News) – Researchers say public health warnings are “essential to prevent the escalation of gambling-related harm and its long-term consequences.” Internet searches seeking help for gambling addiction have “increased substantially” as the number of states with legalized sports betting has expanded … Read More
February 18, 2025
(Wired) – Can stuffed animals, rose petals, and injections of an Elon Musk–approved dissociative drug help Silicon Valley leaders out of a rut? These women say yes. “Ketamine is helpful for getting one out of the negative frame of mind,” Elon … Read More
February 17, 2025
(New York Times) – A drug called buprenorphine may be the best tool doctors have to fight the fentanyl crisis. Why hasn’t it been more widely adopted? Many see illicit fentanyl, said to be about 50 times as powerful as … Read More
February 13, 2025
(Comment) – Medical students enter the anatomy lab dreaming about “the art of medicine” but graduate residency bewildered because they can’t make sense of themselves as technicians in a profession that once claimed to be a kind of art. As … Read More
February 12, 2025
(Military.com) – Marine Corps drill instructors are a national symbol of discipline. But for some, their imposing persona belies a dark reality. Logan Sowell’s suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving … Read More
February 11, 2025
(New Yorker) – In Victoria Warmerdam’s short film, a series of failed CAPTCHA tests plunges a woman into a strange new reality. “I’m Not a Robot” opens on a tranquil workplace scene. Women sit at tables in an open-plan office, tapping away … Read More
February 7, 2025
(NPR) – For years, people like Valdez have often been left to fend for themselves when seeking health care services after their release from jail, prison, or other carceral facilities. Despite this population’s high rate of mental health problems and … Read More
February 6, 2025
(New York Times) – Hospital and emergency room patients diagnosed with cannabis use disorder — defined as an inability to stop using cannabis even when the drug is causing harm — died at almost three times the rate of individuals … Read More
