According to data collected by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an estimated 43.5 million adults in just the United States of America were suffering from a mental illness in 2014. Fewer, but still about 1 out of every 100, are
In the scene above, police were actively pursuing a driver fleeing at reasonably slow speeds. As the situation continues into more highly packed areas, an unknown citizen positioned himself in front of the car. Although described by the news commentator as a crazy person,
This weekend was an exciting one globally: hundreds of thousands of people took the streets to protest and stand in solidarity. Despite the large turnout, relatively few cameras were covering either the anti-TTIP protest in Berlin (around 150,000 people) or the million man march
Jon Oliver covers mental health in his newest episode of Last Week Tonight and touches on many topics that we have written about on this site. Jon Oliver is correct to mention that our treatment of the mentally ill, now and historically, has been
Depression is probably the most common psychiatric problem, impacting easily 20% of the population at some point in their life (16.9% officially in the United States). Depression has a role in normal human development, especially as a reaction to events that require cognitive restructuring.
From an “imbalance of the humors” requiring leeches to a “possession by the devil” requiring whipping or an exorcism onwards to dysfunction to be cured essentially via torture, society’s perspective of mental health and treatment has come a long way to get where it
People with psychiatric problems were not always considered fully human: even within the last 100 years problems ranging from epilepsy and schizophrenia to things like dementia, post-traumatic stress, and even childhood misbehavior were treated with shocking cruelty. Humans were chained, heated, cooled, irradiated, shocked,
In yet another strange case where a person has died of “natural causes” (or suicide) while in police custody, Jamycheal Mitchell was found dead in his cell in Portsmouth, Virginia. Initially jailed for stealing a snickers, mountain dew, and a Zebra cake totalling $5,
There is a degree of embedded sexism in the expectations we have, and stories we tell, within our culture. I am not talking about words like “humanity” having man in it, but instead about the idea that a stoic woman would be anything but
Possibly most of the readers of this text will have come across the term “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD) with regard to veterans returning home from war zones and having problems with reintegration. Still many people don’t realize that PTSD is also a normal reaction
