Published: January 7, 2010
Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature, A decade for psychiatric disorders, Nature 463, 9 (7 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/463009a; Published online 6 January 2010
What will the next 10 year bring? Nature’s editorial takes a look at the stigma that still surrounds mental illness and ponders the challenges ahead in the next decade.
There are many ways in which the understanding and treatment of conditions such as schizophrenia are ripe for a revolution.
A media circus surrounded President Bill Clinton’s visit to a New York medical centre in 2004 for a quadruple heart bypass. Yet barely a whisper was heard about other high-profile individuals’ visits there for the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
In Britain, the public donates £500 million (US$800 million) each year to charities for cancer research. For mental-health research, the figure is a few million, and most of that is for work on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, rather than for earlier-onset conditions that can undermine people’s entire lives, such as depressive disorders.
It is time for such disparities to be addressed in a more coherent and aggressive way than in the past. The stigma of psychiatric disorders is misplaced, their burdens on society are significantly greater than more publicized diseases in developed and developing nations alike, and biomedical science is poised to make significant strides. The timescales are daunting and the challenges great — human neurons are less accessible than tumour cells, separating genetic and environmental influences is tough, and the diagnosis of the conditions is highly problematic. There is much to be done, and a decade is the timescale over which enhanced commitment is required.
The problem of stigma persists. In some countries, progress in this regard has been made with depression: a few high-profile and brave sufferers in some Western countries have stood up and identified themselves. By contrast, schizophrenia, when covered by the media at all, is mostly associated with murders carried out by a tiny minority of sufferers who have an acute form of the condition.
Link to read the complete article
Nature 463, 9 (7 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/463009a; Published online 6 January 2010
Published: December 5, 2009
Under “cost pressures” to make up a $160 million budget shortfall The Vancouver Sun ‘Trimming the budgets’, has detailed the funding cuts to some of the most needed services in Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal Health Regions.
I am shocked at the scrapping of funding that targets programs that are still failing and falling far short in supporting the many individuals with mental health issues in our communities. link to the Vancouver Sun to review a full list of services that are going to be affected.
All week B.C. psychologists have been engaged in heated debate about raising public awareness on how some of the most vulnerable Canadians are suffering, and how they (psychologists) should respond.
Tell us what your reactions to these cuts are – we really would love to hear your thoughts.
Source: Vancouver Sun
Published: November 20, 2009
Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health. Chris Boyce of the University of Warwick and Alex Wood of the University of Manchester compared large data sets where 1000s of people had reported on their well-being. They then looked at how well-being changed due to therapy compared to getting sudden increases in income, such as through lottery wins or pay rises. They found that a 4 month course of psychological therapy had a large effect on well-being. They then showed that the increase in well-being from an £800 course of therapy was so large that it would take a pay rise of over £25,000 to achieve an equivalent increase in well-being. The research therefore demonstrates that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. [continue reading…]
Published: November 19, 2009
Let us start with a little quiz. How many of these conditions have you heard of?
Taijin kyofusho, hikikomori, hwa-byung, or qi-gong psychotic reaction.
If your score was 0 out of 4, do not feel bad: your culture may be to blame. The first two conditions are mental illnesses largely endemic to Japan; the second two are endemic to China. Psychological disorders, or at least our labels for them, differ across cultures. But are these and other non-Western conditions truly distinct from those in the U.S. and Europe? Or does every mental malady, no matter how foreign-sounding in name, vary only in minor ways from a problem that is more familiar to us, such as depression or schizophrenia? link to read this article in Scientific American
Source: Scientific American
