February 21, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
If you didn’t see "60 Minutes" this past Sunday, you missed an interesting piece. The program interviewed Harvard scientist Irving Kirsch, a psychologist whose research is raising questions about how effective antidepressants really are.
February 21, 2012 Steve Bell
Please welcome new blogger Steve Bell. Steve is the founder and executive director of the Colorado state chapter of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, DBSA Colorado, Inc., and BrainStorm Career Services, a consumer-run nonprofit. In recovery from a mood disorder for over 10 years, Steve has been involved in grass roots community organizing for over 25 years, and he serves as the mental health community representative on the Colorado State Rehabilitation Council.
February 16, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
Are we born with specific behavioral characteristics, or is the brain influenced by environmental factors during its early development? According to research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health, it might just be a little of both.
February 15, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
Across the country, treatment facilities have started integrating primary care into the range of services they provide. But there are several key questions that behavioral healthcare providers should ask themselves to make sure their facilities are protected.
February 10, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
It’s often the case that when I come across a story about a large-scale effort to address the stigma of mental illness, it takes me a second before I realize that the effort is actually taking place in Canada.
February 9, 2012 Ron Manderscheid, PhD, Exec Dir, NACBHDD
February is National Heart Month. Not only is the prevalence of heart problems staggering in the US population, but the mortality from heart attack and stroke among behavioral health consumers and peers is a national disgrace. We must savea million hearts!
February 7, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
Could there be a way to diagnose depression from a simple blood test? Based on a new study conducted by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the possibility may be closer to reality than you think.
February 3, 2012 H. Steven Moffic, MD
As some Americans recognize February as "National African American History Month," too few of them, even in the field of behavioral health, pause to recognize the continued patterns of prejudice in diagnosis and treatment that make African American males far more likely to be diagnosed with serious mental illness or incarcerated for drug-possession offenses. It's time we took a look at that problem.
February 3, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
Don Cornelius, the creator Soul Train, passed away this week at the age of 75. Can his apparent suicide help shed some light on the prevalent mental health challenges facing the African American community?
February 2, 2012 Dennis Grantham, Editor-in-Chief
For years, mental health providers have worried about the incidence of "metabolic syndrome" among consumers taking atypical antipsychotic meds for serious mental illness. Now, a study has identified the link.
February 2, 2012 Ron Manderscheid, PhD
Assigned the task of leading a Subcommittee to make recommendations about which topics should become Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicators causes one to pause and reflect.
February 1, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
It’s hard to believe that psychiatric meds are anything but a “growth industry,” but that’s not really the case anymore, at least according to new research from Thomson Reuters and SAMHSA.
January 26, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
An episode of "The Dr. Oz Show" aired this week that talked about the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a process in which grand mal seizures are electrically induced to treat severe depression.
January 25, 2012 Ron Manderscheid, PhD
The DHHS has proposed that a "typical" small business benefit plan be used as the standard to define the Essential Health Benefit required by the Affordable Care Act. However, this minimum standard may fail to provide sufficient care for the nation's 10.5 million citizens with mental health or substance-use disorders.
January 22, 2012 Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D.
The American Psychological Association is “leading the charge” against attempts to further medicalize the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DMS-IV) due to be published in May of 2013.
January 18, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
What is PTSD? Is it a true mental illness, the result of trauma or battlefield-related injuries, or is it something else entirely? That’s the question being posed to many experts recently as officials from the U.S Army are requesting the APA to reevaluate what the condition is called.
January 12, 2012 H. Steven Moffic, MD
If you are a behavioral healthcare administrator and were asked, “What do you consider your most challenging issues in your role?," how would you answer?
January 11, 2012 Nick Zubko, Associate Editor
Last week, it became a little easier for the citizens of New Orleans to know where to look for treatment services, as Mayor Mitch Landrieu and health commissioner Dr. Karen DeSalvo released the city’s first “Behavioral Health Resource Guide."
January 7, 2012 Douglas Braun-Harvey
It turns out there is a significant discrepancy between local and national criminal definitions of what constitutes "Forcible Rape" and the FBI crime statistic definition of rape.
January 4, 2012 Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D.
After a year-long collaborative effort, on Dec. 22, 2011 the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released its new definition of “recovery."
