Research

The fear of having a son

This imbalanced, man-card mind-set is part of our legacy because children ape the attitudes of the parent whose gender matches their own. In a Time magazine article about this study, Harriet Tenenbaum, a co-author, observes, “Most parents say they ask boys to be more expressive but don’t know [they] are speaking differently to them…. These… Read more »

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Happy 160th Birthday, Sigmund Freud!

Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its… Read more »

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Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help depressed patients where other treatments fail

These findings point to the value of a whole person approach in patients who have complex or persistent problems with depression. Longer-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy involves the shared commitment of patient and therapist to understanding emotionally painful parts of a depressed person’s life. This may activate a beneficial process of psychological growth with a lasting gain… Read more »

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Epigenetics:the-dogma defying discovery that genes learn from experience

This is a dense academic paper which very interestingly highlights the debate between nature and nurture. The paper presents recent research and puts the debate into a different perspective where genes and environment go hand in hand. The paper emphasises the importance of the environment and how it affects the structure and expression of the… Read more »

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The Benefits of Helping Preschoolers Understand and Discuss Their Emotions

Increasingly, research confirms the efficacy of explicit training in emotional intelligence starting at a very young age. According to multiple studies, preschoolers who participate in social-emotional skills programs exhibit less aggression and anxiety and become better social problem solvers.     http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/04/13/the-benefits-of-helping-preschoolers-understand-and-discuss-their-emotions/

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A Sense Of Self: What Happens When Your Brain Says You Don’t Exist

We can think back to our earliest memories. We can imagine ourselves in the future, and whatever perceptions arise when we remember or when we imagine, whatever emotions arise, they again feel like they’re happening to the same person. So all of these things put together, in some sense, can be called our sense of… Read more »

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Mental Health Services 50 Times Less Accessible In Poorer Countries, WHO Report Finds

According to the WHO’s newly released Mental Health Atlas 2014,  almost one in 10 people suffer from a mental health condition, but just  1% of global health workers are working as psychiatrists, occupational  therapists or social workers.     http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/…/mental-health-services-wh…

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Smartphone sensors may detect depression according to study

 Sensors in your smartphone could one day detect if you suffer from depression. According  to a recent study conducted by Northwestern Medicine, information was collected from  smartphone sensors to predict whether the user is depressed. Researchers found the  amount of time adults use their smartphones and the number of places they go may be  linked… Read more »

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Psychiatry’s Identity Crisis

The brain is notoriously hard to study and won’t give up its secrets easily. In contrast, psychotherapy research can yield relatively quick and powerful results. Given the critically important value — and popularity — of therapy, psychotherapy research deserves a much larger share of research dollars than it currently receives.     http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/opinion/psychiatrys-identity-crisis.html

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Why Do We Have Nightmares?

 Nightmares are helpful to our survival or else they probably would have  been done away with by evolution, said Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at  Harvard University. Barrett theorizes that nightmares act as the brain’s  way of focusing a person’s attention on issues they need to address.   http://www.livescience.com/32730-why-do-we-have-nightmares.html

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