psychotropic-medications

Study: Combining aerobic and mental training can significantly improve mental and cognitive health

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mental_physical_training(Edi­tor’s Note: Hat tip to co-author Tj Shors for bring­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing new study to our attention)

“It is wide­ly accept­ed that aer­o­bic exer­cise and med­i­ta­tion train­ing are use­ful behav­ioral ther­a­pies for reme­di­at­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms of depres­sion. How­ev­er, no study to date has assessed the com­bined effects of the two behav­ioral inter­ven­tions. Here, we present data indi­cat­ing that [Read more…] about Study: Com­bin­ing aer­o­bic and men­tal train­ing can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve men­tal and cog­ni­tive health

A Course Correction for Positive Psychology: A Review of Martin Seligman’s Latest Book

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(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter).

A Course Cor­rec­tion for Pos­i­tive Psychology

A review of Mar­tin Seligman’s lat­est book, Flour­ish: A Vision­ary New Under­stand­ing of Hap­pi­ness and Well-Being.

- By Jill Suttie

As pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in 1998, Mar­tin Selig­man chal­lenged the psy­cho­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty to rad­i­cal­ly change its approach. For too long, he charged, psy­chol­o­gy had been pre­oc­cu­pied sole­ly with reliev­ing symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness; instead, he believed it should explore how to thrive in life, not just sur­vive it. He called for a psy­chol­o­gy that would uncov­er what makes peo­ple cre­ative, resilient, opti­mistic, and, ulti­mate­ly, hap­py. The “pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy” move­ment was born.

Yet in his lat­est book, Flour­ish, Selig­man tries to pro­vide some­thing of a course cor­rec­tion for pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy. [Read more…] about A Course Cor­rec­tion for Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Review of Mar­tin Seligman’s Lat­est Book

Therapy vs. Medication, Conflicts of Interest, and Intimidation

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What start­ed as an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­pute regard­ing dis­clo­sure of con­flict of inter­est is now snow­balling into the main­stream media, due to the over-reac­tion by JAMA edi­tors as report­ed in this Wall Street Jour­nal blog post, JAMA edi­tor calls Crit­ic a “Nobody and a Noth­ing”

In sum­ma­ry, Dr. Jonathan Leo, the “Crit­ic”, dared to draw atten­tion to 2 impor­tant points regard­ing a study com­par­ing the effi­ca­cy of ther­a­py vs. med­ica­tion pub­lished in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine (JAMA) — one of the most pres­ti­gious sci­en­tif­ic publications:

1) The study results were pre­sent­ed and report­ed in a biased way, since they favored one spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tion, a drug, while ignor­ing anoth­er one, ther­a­py-based, that had equal­ly sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant effects.

2) Both the lead author of the study and one of the main experts asked to com­ment on the study in sev­er­al media out­lets had undis­closed and unre­port­ed con­flicts of inter­est. JAMA could have done a 5‑minute Google search to iden­ti­fy and report the con­flict of inter­est of the lead author (received a vari­ety of rev­enues from the drugmaker).

Dr. Leo has sum­ma­rized the con­tin­u­ing mat­ter in sev­er­al impres­sive let­ters. The 2 main ones, in chrono­log­i­cal order:

Clin­i­cal Tri­als of Ther­a­py vs. Med­ica­tion: Even in a Tie, Med­ica­tion Wins(BMJ)

- “Cen­tral to the idea of evi­dence-based med­i­cine is that the choic­es made by patients and doc­tors to use a cer­tain treat­ment should at least in part be based on sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies pub­lished in peer reviewed aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals. For a patient diag­nosed with [Read more…] about Ther­a­py vs. Med­ica­tion, Con­flicts of Inter­est, and Intimidation