March 17, 2025
(NPR) – America is a deeply spiritual nation. Over 70% of us say that we feel spiritual in some way. But – at the same time – we’re getting less religious. So for people who are spiritual-but-not-religious – what’s replacing … Read More
March 17, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – The swift rise in diagnoses for everything from autism to ADHD may be doing more harm than good. What all of these diagnoses have in common is that they all have a severe form with a … Read More
March 14, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Psychiatrists and primary-care doctors regularly prescribe the drugs for everything from mild anxiety to insomnia, making benzodiazepines some of the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications in America. The pills’ omnipresence has left a mark on pop … Read More
March 13, 2025
(New York Times) – People who endured the longest Covid restrictions in the world are still grappling with what they lost: their loved ones, their livelihoods, their dignity. Perhaps no country was as deeply reshaped by the pandemic as China, … Read More
March 12, 2025
(New York Times) – Prescription drugs like lorazepam — used to treat anxiety, panic attacks and sleep disorders — play a role in popular TV shows like “The White Lotus” and “The Pitt.” This isn’t a case of Hollywood taking … Read More
March 11, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Pueblo, Colo., had high hopes for a legal-marijuana boom; financial troubles now plague the industry In Pueblo and elsewhere, though, market dynamics have crippled the legal-cannabis industry. Even after legalization, illicit growers and sellers thrived in … Read More
March 11, 2025
(The Hill) – The Supreme Court granted a Colorado therapist’s request to review her challenge to a state law banning mental health care providers from engaging minors in conversion therapy, a discredited practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual … Read More
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
