As long-time readers of World of Psychology know, there’s no easy fix to the convoluted, second-class mental health care system in the United States. People with mental disorders — like depression, anxiety, ADHD or bipolar disorder — are shunted away from the mainstream healthcare system into a patchwork quilt of “care” that varies greatly depending upon where you live, what kind of insurance you have (if you have any), and whether you want to pay cash for treatment instead of using your insurance.
It shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be so hard to find a good treatment provider. It shouldn’t be so complicated to get integrated care from a single practice.
Why is it so hard to get good mental health treatment in the U.S.?
Are predictive biomarkers the wave of the future of depression treatment?
Yum, sugar pills! We talk about them all the time in science, where they have a much more formal and less appetizing name — placebos. 
We’re joining the 
A story last week caught my eye about a patient, Julie, who was surprised to discover that her psychotherapy notes became a part of her electronic health record at the hospital system that administered her care — Partners in Boston.
If you’re a college student and you’re depressed, chances are you have a student counseling center that’s available to you, at no charge. 
Family members with schizophrenia, one of the more frustrating mental illnesses to treat, often face a bumpy treatment road filled with potholes and setbacks. Many people with schizophrenia believe there’s nothing wrong with them. Or the medications they take often have significant, negative side effects.
In a small clinical study published a few weeks ago, researchers didn’t find much difference between the three treatment groups of depressed subjects they studied — a group that received antidepressant medications, a group that received a specific type of not-commonly-practiced psychodynamic psychotherapy, and a group that received a sugar pill. 
I’ve extolled the virtues and benefits of psychotherapy for years. But therapy isn’t a cure-all, and it won’t help every person, with every problem, in every situation. In fact, it’s important to realize when going to see a therapist isn’t likely to help your situation much, because it can save you time, money and needless frustration. 
I’ve spent a lot of my time over the years writing about the importance of understanding your illness, learning all you can about possible treatments (including hearing about other people’s experiences), and becoming your own best advocate in your recovery. After all, who really knows you and your needs better than yourself?
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a treatment long used for Parkinson’s disease. But in the past decade, some researchers have also examined its use for the treatment of severe clinical depression. 
It’s time for psychotherapy to stop beating around in the bushes and get a new marketing campaign going for itself. It’s time for organizations like our own, the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association and others to join together and have people understand a simple, basic message — 12 weeks is all most people need to start feeling better when faced with a mental health issue.
Dr. Marsha Linehan, long best known for her ground-breaking work with a new form of psychotherapy called dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), has let out her own personal secret — she has suffered from borderline personality disorder. In order to help reduce the prejudice surrounding this particular disorder — people labeled as borderline often are seen as attention-getting and always in crisis — Dr. Linehan told her story in public for the first time last week before an audience of friends, family and doctors at the Institute of Living, the Hartford clinic where she was first treated for extreme social withdrawal at age 17, according to The New York Times.
Psychotherapy is often described as an art as much as it is a science. The professional relationship between a therapist and their client can be a tricky one. Especially when it comes to bad habits of either the therapist or the client.
Here is our roundup of posts from the Psych Central Blog Network that blogged about mental health today as a part of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Mental Health “Blog Party.” Psych Central is the world’s largest independent mental health network run by ordinary mental health professionals. Each month, over 1.5 million people visit our site from around the world to learn more about better mental health and conditions like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD and anxiety.
Many companies sponsor things, and in the world of mental health and psychiatry, those companies tend to be pharmaceutical. Sponsorships help promote a company’s brand (and, indirectly, the products they sell). Since I believe — like most mental health professionals — that most people benefit from a combination of both medications and psychotherapy in the treatment of serious mental disorders, I see the value of many pharmaceutical companies’ products.
This story caught my eye only because of its headline, Psychologists seek authority to prescribe psychotropic medications. Really? I thought… I never heard that before.
Although not all that common, psychotherapists sometimes fall asleep in session. Probably more common in traditional psychoanalysis (where the psychoanalyst is sitting behind and out of view of the patient), it far harder to do in more modern, time-limited psychotherapies where each session is more of an active, working period between therapist and client.
Virtually across the board of medicine and psychiatry, doctors will constantly and consistently oversell the benefits of a given treatment, and undersell the risks and side effects of it. This may not be as surprising when you look at some of the key factors into how medical and psychiatric treatment is learned and then conducted on patients. 
It’s that time of the year again — the time where gift-giving is a part of many people’s holiday rituals. While we don’t think twice about buying little gifts for close friends and family, sometimes it gives us pause to consider giving a gift to our therapist. Here’s a relationship with a professional that we see once a week, and yet it is a professional relationship (even if it doesn’t always feel that way).
Perhaps we’ve seen the rise and fall of psychotherapy treatment. At least when it comes to depression, the most common mental disorder diagnosed today.
“I’ve shared more in my blog than I could ever tell my therapist.”
At the end of August, a small journal by the name of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics published an article that sought to re-analyze the data published in the groundbreaking $35 million STAR*D clinical study. The new analysis suggested that the STAR*D researchers weren’t as forthcoming about some of their results and methodological choices as they should have been. This led to an overstatement of their results, according to the new study’s researchers.
Psychotherapy is a great treatment option for virtually any mental disorder or mental health concern, as well as life and relationship issues. Decades’ worth of research have proven its effectiveness, at least when you’re working with an experienced therapist who knows their stuff and uses empirically-backed techniques.
You would think psychologists would have a unique understanding and appreciation of the power of human language and the meaning of words. Words shape perception, and psychologists not only study human perception, but also work to help change it when people are in need.
“Sorry, I can’t be your therapist. Here’s a referral to another colleague I trust…”
With more and more therapists embracing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the question arises — where do you draw the line in terms of boundaries with your patients? Where does a patient’s and therapist’s privacy end or begin on such sites? How do patients and therapists navigate this brave new world of connectedness and “friending”?
My friend Anne and I were talking the other day when the conversation turned to a recent airplane flight she was on. She recounted how it was on one of those smaller, turboprop planes with just 3 seats per row:
Beware psychiatrists bearing gifts.
You cannot look up drug information on the Internet today without coming across at least one page about the negative side effects of taking the drug. In fact, such side effects are deemed so important, their publication alongside the benefits of a drug are strictly regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But the FDA requires no such warnings connected to other mental health treatments, including the use of psychotherapy.
The more researchers delve into the research behind antidepressants — the class of drugs commonly prescribed to treat depression — the more they find that perhaps the majority of antidepressants’ treatment effect is based upon the simple belief that the drug will help. 
Psychotherapy is full of both extraordinary potential benefits and some possible pitfalls. We’ve discussed 
Consumer Reports, the consumer magazine that reviews common products like refrigerators and vacuum cleaners and rates them, also dabbles in trying to educate consumers in other areas, like health. Earlier this week, they published a review article on the effectiveness of the commonly-prescribed class of medications for depression, antidepressants. 
Psychotherapists are a unique profession in the world because they are paid to listen and help people improve aspects of their lives or combat a mental health issue that’s affecting them. But there’s some stuff that goes on in the therapy office that you should know about before you decide to take the plunge (or if you’ve already taken it, well, better late than never!). Here’s a few…
I have a soft spot in my heart for psychodynamic psychotherapy. While its science generally lags behind its more modern cousin, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), it’s the “old timey” therapy based upon theories that are similar to psychoanalytic thinking and good ole Freud himself. One of my friends in graduate school was a big believer and proponent of it as well, and my respect for her and her ability to affect change with her clients at the time is largely all the proof a practitioner really needs.
Want to learn more?
Dr. Keith Ablow, a practicing psychiatrist known as much for his media persona on the Fox News channel and elsewhere as his two New York Times bestsellers, wrote what I thought was a pretty savage, fear-mongering diatribe recently against parents letting their children watch any episode of “Dancing with the Stars” that features a person who has undergone transgender surgery, Chaz Bono.