In the current edition of Biological Psychiatry there are several articles that point out how an understanding of brain function derived from new techniques that allow us to see how the brain functions much more clearly and to identify changes in the structure and function of the brain that could not be detected before may change our response to human …
Giving Support to a Mentally Ill Family Member
When a loved one is diagnosed with a mental illness, it can throw the whole family into a tailspin, rife with self-doubt, suspicion, guilt, and helplessness. How we respond to the illness of a family member can make all the difference to their recovery and the rebuilding of the family’s foundations. Through many years of practice, we have evolved some …
Depressive Symptoms COVID
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to be associated with a higher burden of depressive symptoms than might have been predicted in comparison with earlier disasters and society-wide disruptive events, such as the September 11th attacks. Since April 2020, self-reported symptoms of depression have increased over the previous year, and remain high. A survey1 published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas …
Suicide: The Enigma
Suicide remains a sad mystery in many ways. Those left behind can never really know what was in their loved one’s mind at the last. We blame ourselves, and we deal with all the guilt, anger and grief that the act leaves behind, but we can never completely understand what leads someone to take their own life. Willa Goodfellow, in …
Covid-19 Mental Health Effects
Neurological and psychiatric symptoms are common in COVID-19 infections A recent meta-analysis looked at 215 studies from 30 countries and found that neurological and psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety are common in patients, and are found as much or more in mild cases as in acute cases requiring hospitalization. Loss of sense of smell and taste, weakness, fatigue …
Mental Health Awareness 2021
For now over 70 years, Americans have delegated the month of May as “Mental Health Awareness Month” (since 1949). And with medical experts and researchers across the planet sharing their observation that the Covid-19 pandemic is going to continue to have an array of mental health impacts into the foreseeable future, mental health awareness needs to remain in the forefront …
Marijuana Use and Mental Health – 2022 Update
In the summer of 1996 proposition 216, California’s Compassionate Use Act, essentially legalized marijuana use with a prescription by a physician (“medical marijuana”) and in 2012, Colorado passed Amendment 64 (which legalized marijuana use in Colorado without any requirement for a prescription) – all of a sudden we were conducting a population based study of the impact of marijuana use …