LinkBlog
[USA] Think Social Networks, Blogs Can’t Hurt You? Health insurers can use your on-line posts to avoid paying for treatment
Debunking the 'Chemical Imbalance' myth (pdf)
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Antidepressants (Note: requires registration of a valid email address)
Not Depressed, Just British!
recommended links
Depression Is Real Coalition
-
ABIL: Agoraphobics Building
Independant Lives -
Agoraphobia and Panic
Disorder Foundation -
Anxiety Disorders Association
of America - Anxiety Network Australia
- Anxiety-Panic.Com
- AnxietyZone
- Army Behavioral Health
- BrainPhysics - OCD
-
Canadian Network for Mood
and Anxiety Treatments - Children of Hoarders
- Choices in Mental Health (UK)
-
Dart Foundation: Gateway to PTSD
information -
David Baldwin's
Trauma Information Pages - e-couch free personal self-help guide
- EMDR Institute, Inc.
- EMDR Network Japan
- Fear of Flying course (free)
- Healthy Minds
- Information for People with Anxiety Disorders
- Internet Guide to REBT, CBT
- Living with a Brain Disorder
- Morita Therapy
- Mayo Clinic : Depression
- Mayo Clinic : GAD
- Mayo Clinic : OCD
- Mayo Clinic : Panic Attacks
- Mayo Clinic : PTSD
- Mayo Clinic : Social Anxiety
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Medicines.org.uk - Anxiety &
Depression guides - Mind-Your-Mind Canada
- National Center for PTSD
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National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) - No Such Thing As Crazy
- OCD Action, UK
- OCD Ireland
- Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
- Open Minds, Open Doors
- Out of the silence - site for young people with mental illness
- Paniccure.com
- Partners With PTSD
- Prescription Drug Information
- Psychiatric Service Dog Society
- PsychNews
-
Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT) - Sane Australia
-
Shyness & Social Anxiety
Service of Australia -
Social Phobia/Social Anxiety
Association - Social Anxiety Support board
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South African Depression &
Anxiety Group - Suicide Prevention Help
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tAPir - the Anxiety Panic
internet resource -
The Panic Center (Free
CBT based programs) - The School of OCD
- UN-WHO Drug Trials Database
- U.S. Army Behavioral Health - PTSD
we support
"just don't smoke"
Yul Brynner
- Menthol cigarettes harder to quit
- Secondhand smoke in cars serious threat to kid's health
- Starting smoking young increases addiction risk
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Smoking doesn't slim girls;
stunts boys' growth - 40 reasons why you should quit smoking
- Pregnant smokers 'prime' their kids to smoke
- Smoking related coronary artery disease quickly reversed if young smokers quit
- Not ready to quit? Try cutting back
- Half smoking again within year of lung cancer surgery
- Cutting back 'compensation' increases toxin load per cigarette
- Tobacco companies upped nicotine level 11% since 1998
- Workplace passive smoke increases lung cancer risk
- Hooked by genes: The DNA sequences cigarette companies love
- Smoking causes long lasting changes to brain's bio chemistry
- Nicotine receptor stimulant trebles the odds of stopping smoking
- Bupropion, nortriptyline double chances of quitting
- Nicotine's powerful role in reinforcing smoking
- Pregnant smokers raise child's risk of stroke, heart attack
- Smoking linked to pancreatic cancer
- Neurobiology of Smokers' Cravings
- 'Low cancer risk' cigarettes as deadly as regular kind
- Quitting reduces lung cancer death risk by 70%
- Fetal nicotine exposure linked to teen attention problems
- Outdoor second-hand smoke exposure can harm
- Response to day's first cigarette predicts ease of quitting
- 'Healthy' children of smoking parents aren't really so healthy
- Children of smokers have up to five times higher levels of a nicotine toxin
- Smoking increases risk of dementia
- Smoking kills even after quitting
- Antenatal second hand smoke exposure increases child's psychological problems
- Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO
- Just 1 cigarette can lead to nicotine addiction
- Smokers less likely to survive early stage lung cancer
- Smokeless tobacco delivers carcinogens more efficiently than cigarettes!
- Smoking permanently turns on genes that increase lung cancer susceptibility
- Secondhand smoke a health hazard for pets too
- Hypnosis for smoking cessation sees strong results
- Smoking doesn't burn fat
- Smoking linked to sagging breasts
- No evidence waterpipes decrease smoking harm
- Tobacco smoke + alcohol damage hearts more than either alone
anti torture campaign
- Torture experts write APA policy
- [APA] still rocked by torture debate
- Petition for psychologists
- AMA president says APA "did not accurately represent our ethical guidelines"
- Psychologists Aiding Torturers
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Annual conference endorses
APA's torture policy :( - Physicians for Human Rights call on Congress to vote No on Military Commissions Bill
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Torture is a Form of Trauma;
Trauma Causes PTSD - Psychoanalysts' association condemns torture use
- Humiliating, inhumane or degrading treatment IS torture
- Two American psychologists accused of war crimes. U.S. DoD investigating.
- DoD report proves psychologists central to POW/detainee abuse (pdf)
- 40 psychologists demand APA change policy on torture (pdf)
- Did the American Psychological Association turn a blind eye to torture for medicine precribing rights?
- Will psychologists still abet torture?
- Psychologist, Author Mary Pipher Returns APA Award Over Interrogation Policy
- Guantanamo Medical Role Likened to South Africa Under Apartheid
- The ethics of interrogation and the American Psychological Association
- A bait and switch trick on torture and psychologists?
Deputy Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. General John (Jeff) Kimmons, has stated that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through abusive interrogation methods in the last 5 years.
monument, Monmouth County
New Jersey.
Calls for research to determine which PTSD treatments work
Many people, including significant proportions of active duty military personnel and veterans, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often in conjunction with other injuries or illnesses. While several drugs and psychotherapies are used to treat PTSD, many of the studies concerning their effectiveness have problems; as a result, they do not provide a clear picture of what works and what doesn't, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.
Given the growing number of veterans with PTSD, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Congress, and the research community urgently need to take steps to overcome the problems that often plague studies of psychiatric therapies for PTSD, and to ensure the right studies are undertaken to yield data that would help clinicians treat PTSD sufferers, said the committee that wrote the report.
The committee reviewed 53 studies of pharmaceuticals and 37 studies of psychotherapies used in PTSD treatment and concluded that because of shortcomings in many of the studies, there is not enough reliable evidence to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of most treatments. There are sufficient data to conclude that exposure therapies — such as exposing individuals to a real or surrogate threat in a safe environment to help them overcome their fears — are effective in treating people with PTSD. But the committee emphasized that its findings should not be misread to suggest that any PTSD treatment ought to be discontinued or that only exposure therapies should be used to treat PTSD.
"At this time, we can make no judgment about the effectiveness of most psychotherapies or about any medications in helping patients with PTSD," said committee chair Alfred O. Berg, professor of family medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle. "These therapies may or may not be effective — we just don't know in the absence of good data. Our findings underscore the urgent need for high-quality studies that can assist clinicians in providing the best possible care to veterans and others who suffer from this serious disorder."
PTSD is the most commonly diagnosed service-related mental disorder among military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Surveys of these individuals indicate that around 12.6 percent of personnel who fought in Iraq and 6.2 percent who were in Afghanistan have experienced PTSD. Moreover, significant proportions of Vietnam veterans and veterans of earlier conflicts also report suffering from PTSD. The vast majority of people who experience the disorder also have other concurrent conditions, such as alcoholism, depression, drug use, or anxiety disorders. Sexual assault during military service is another factor that can lead to PTSD among service members.
Clinicians turn to both drugs and psychotherapeutic interventions to treat PTSD. Anticonvulsants, antidepressants - including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), tricyclics and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) - and novel antipsychotics such as olanzapine and risperidone are among the drugs used to treat these patients. Psychotherapies used in PTSD treatment include exposure to trauma-related memories or stimuli, cognitive therapy, coping skills training, and hypnosis.
The committee identified 90 studies that met its criteria for trials from which it could anticipate reliable and informative data on of PTSD therapies. However, several problems and limitations characterize much of the research on PTSD treatments, making the data less informative than expected. Many of the studies have problems in their design or how they were conducted, and high dropout rates — ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent of participants — reduced the certainty of several studies' results. Moreover, the majority of drug studies were funded by pharmaceutical firms and many of the psychotherapy studies were conducted by individuals who developed the techniques or their close collaborators. Further investigation is needed to know whether these treatments would produce the same results if tested by other researchers and in other settings.
In addition, the research has not taken into account potential differences in the effectiveness of treatments for subgroups such as those with traumatic brain injury, depression, or substance abuse; nor have studies examined the effects in ethnic minorities, women, and older individuals. Many studies excluded individuals with concurrent health problems such as depression and substance abuse, raising questions about whether the results apply to the many PTSD sufferers who have multiple conditions.
VA and other government agencies that fund clinical research should make sure that studies of PTSD therapies take necessary steps and employ methods that would handle effectively problems that affect the quality of the results. Although the nature of PTSD presents special challenges to researchers, the committee did find some high-quality studies that show it is possible to overcome the problems.
Congress should ensure that resources are available for VA and other federal agencies to fund quality research on treatment of PTSD and that all stakeholders — including veterans — are represented in the research planning, the report states.
The committee emphasized that its role was solely to review what is known about the effectiveness of various PTSD treatments, and not to offer or suggest guidelines on what health care professionals or patients should do. Efficacy is one of many factors that contribute to making decisions about treatment. Other factors include safety, clinician and patient preferences, access and availability of different treatment options, and ethical issues.
Berg AO, et al. Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An Assessment Of The Evidence. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, ISBN-10: 0-309-10926-4
Brief report: PDF (, 4 pages)
Full report: HTML | PDF (