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Why Is Mental Health So Difficult to Define?

A stress on anticipated harmony and positivity is part of the problem.

The Effort to Rid TV of Pharma Ads

The average American TV viewer is exposed to up to 30 hours of prescription drug ads each year. Enough already.

COMPare – The CEBM Outcome Monitoring Project

How Outcome Switching is Corrupting Medical Research

According to two new studies, outcome switching in clinical trials is widespread.

Bryan Gould/bryangould.com

Life Satisfaction and the Well-Being Gap

As income inequality rises, the well-being gap in most countries widens.

CDC, Coping with Stress

The Stress of Discrimination in the U.S.

Almost half the country reports significant, recurring discrimination tied to race and ethnicity.

JB Reed/Bloomberg News via Getty Images

Adderall Misuse Is Rising Among Young Adults

Adderall misuse among college and high school students increasingly is seen as unexceptional.

Pitac/iStock/Thinkstock

Psychiatry's Many Conflicts of Interest

On the "ethical perils" facing a branch of medicine now greatly beholden to its industry sponsors.

Columbia University

The Problem with Heroizing Robert Spitzer

One of the most influential psychiatrists of the twentieth century leaves a complex legacy.

The Biological Citizen: Neuropolitics as Aim and Danger

Neuropolitics is going global. To what end? At what cost?

Listening to Placebo, Especially in the U.S.

Why is the placebo effect intensifying sharply among Americans—and why now?

Duff Wilson, New York Times

The Marketing of an Antipsychotic

Ghostwriters, massaged data, tiny print, and children’s toys—part of Big Pharma's arsenal of "defeat devices," outlined in Steven Brill's series, America's Most Admired Lawbreaker.

Study329.org (with permission)

The Truth About "Study 329"

A major new study about a blockbuster antidepressant.

A Dramatic Rise in ADHD Diagnoses

Diagnoses of ADHD in school-age children jump 42 percent and the figures overall may be worse.

Yann Kebbi, New York Times

Breaking Up with One’s Meds

A chronicle of withdrawal syndrome from psychiatric meds.

Allen G. Breed, Associated Press

The FDA, the DSM, Gender Equality, and “Female Viagra”

Will the FDA succumb to lobbyists accusing it of gender bias?

An Epidemic of Questionable Care

When does “low-value care” become no-value care?

Faulty Reporting on ADHD

Newspaper of record criticized for its tardy response to overmedicalization.

“Side Effects” Turns A Million

The blog "Side Effects" receives its millionth cumulative click.

New DSM-5 Disorder Spurs FDA Drug Approval, Expanded Market

A drug-maker's blunt challenge: “increase the numbers of patients diagnosed.”

AP Photo/David Goldman

Personalized Genomics, Data-Hoarding, and Drug Companies

Genetic-testing kits have been hailed as advancing medical research and disease prevention. Who owns the data and what are the risks of them being sold, hacked, or misused?

Tackling Childhood Obesity: What Works, What Doesn’t

How childhood obesity became a global problem, and what some countries are doing about it.

Samaritan's Purse

Ebola, a Promising Serum, and Kent Brantly’s Recovery

Is Dr. Brantly’s recovery from Ebola due to medicine, religious faith, or both?

Duff Wilson, New York Times

The Business of Medicalizing Infancy

What has happened to the medical principle “First, do no harm"?

Foundations Recovery Network

The Hidden Dangers of Benzodiazepines

What Americans don’t know about some of their most widely prescribed drugs.

Financial Times

Higher Penalties for Big Pharma: Data Destruction Alleged

Will the latest record fine against the pharmaceutical industry end its worst practices?

U.S. Census 2000

Income Inequality Is Making Americans Sick

Health in America is determined as much by zip code as by genetic code.

Chris Gash, The Guardian

The Mathematics of Happiness Turns Out to Be a Fraud

The idea that Positive Psychology can give us a "happiness ratio" has been well and truly debunked.

The OECD Warns on Antidepressant Overprescribing

Antidepressant consumption is not matched by an increase in global diagnoses, raising fresh concerns about overuse.

Crazy Like Us: How the U.S. Exports Its Models of Illness

DSM-5 is Americanizing the world's understanding of the mind. Is that useful or worrisome?

Creative Commons/Ed Brownson

Hoarding, Collecting, Accumulating: DSM-5 and American Life

Hoarding: how a major new disorder developed from “a line carved in sand.”

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