November 2007 Archives

There was a story in the New York Times this week about a survey which found that Freud is widely taught on university literature and sociology courses but almost ignored on psychology courses.

The government announced yesterday that it will invest £13m over three years to help people with mental illness secure work.

The web is a complex...well, web of information. So it is that I am now recommending that you visit the Mind Hacks blog, for their coverage of an article on the New York Review of Books, which is itself a review of 3 books on mental health. It's basically a catch up on where we are in the whole over-diagnosing depression debate.

The last walk-in mental health clinic in the UK is set to close. The Maudsley emergency psychiatric clinic in south London is to close in March as part of a re-organisation of local mental health services.

Is internet addiction a real problem? And is it a mental health problem? They certainly think so in South Korea, where they have set up the first "boot camp for internet addicts", according to a story in the Telegraph.

Naked rambler Stephen Gough has been ordered by a court to undergo psychiatric testing, after being arrested again for well... naked rambling.

by Keith Sellick

I have just finished reading Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity. The book is an analysis of verbal hallucinations and starts by delving into historical examples of people who might have heard voices: Socrates and his Daemon (a benign spirit not the later evil demon) and the gods of Homer and Ancient Greece, before looking at modern treatment of the phenomenum.

It is no replacement for family support and therapy for children with ADHD but a university has developed blue-blocking glasses which might help to reduce ADHD symptoms.

I watched the BBC Panorama programme on ADHD and medication for children and I think it was a really good programme for raising some serious issues.

There's a BBC Panorama programme tonight (Monday) about the prescription of drugs to children with ADHD.

Now here's an idea - meditation is to mental health what seatbelts are to driving.

Here's an interesting post in PsyBlog about how classical music has been found to help with depression.

Manchester mental health worker Karen Reissman has been sacked by her health trust for seeming speaking out against service cuts.

There's an excerpt from Christopher Lane's book "Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became A Sickness" in the Wall Street Journal.

We need at least one hug a day to cope with the stresses of modern life, yet we are embracing each other less than ever before, scientists say.

Some interesting findings from this month's issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.

It seems there is a war breaking out in the blogosphere between psychology and psychiatry.