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The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law congratulates the House of Representatives for its historic, final passage of the health care reform legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), along with the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HR 4872) which makes improvements to the Senate bill...

High school seniors, take note: A wise person once said, "It is better to shoot for the stars and miss than aim at the gutter and hit it." That's right on, says Florida State University Sociology Professor John R. Reynolds, who just completed a study to determine whether unrealized educational expectations are associated with depression among adults...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) submitted comments this week to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the proposed rule on the electronic health record incentive program...

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is being fined for botching 97 of 116 procedures to treat prostate cancer among men seeking care at the agency's medical center in Philadelphia. Although the punishment, which adds up to a mere $227,500, might not sound like more than a slap on the wrist, it is coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and is one of the largest the commission has ever given out for medical mistakes. [More]

Dinosaurs are frequently cited as the ultimate exemplars of failure. “Dead as a dinosaur” is now deeply embedded in our vernacular. Yet death for a species, and even for groups of species, is as inevitable as your death. Somewhere around 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. The 10 million to 50 million species that comprise the modern day biosphere (the uncertainty due mostly to our lack of understanding of microbial diversity) are but the latest players in a four-billion-year drama--“The Greatest Show on Earth,” to borrow the title of Richard Dawkins most recent book.   [More]

The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves by Siri Hustvedt. [More]

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has launched a new health education program to promote sound "mind and body" health practices among individuals who live with serious mental illness. The "Hearts and Minds" initiative focuses on combating risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and obesity for major illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes...

More than one in four Americans suffer from a diagnosable psychiatric disorder at any given time, according to estimates from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Over our lifetime nearly one half of us suffer from such disorders. Unfortunately, nearly two thirds of our behavioral and emotional problems are never diagnosed or treated, even though in many cases effective treatment is available. More than 80 percent of people with major depression, for example, benefit substantially from a combination of medication and counseling.

When I served as editor in chief of Psychology Today , readers often asked me to direct them to screening tests for mental health problems. I looked for such tests on the Internet, which seemed the ideal tool for helping people find answers to questions about their mental health: Is this down feeling I’m experiencing normal? Why do I shout at my wife and kids all the time? Is my drinking out of control? Should I be seeing a therapist? I found the Internet riddled with thousands of homemade tests, but none had been scientifically validated. Worse, many of them served as marketing vehicles for videos, books or services--sending the test taker straight to a sales pitch. No broad, reliable, consumer-friendly test seemed to exist.

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The UK Autism Foundation is 'Standing Up For Autism' on the United Nations World Autism Awareness Day on 2nd April 2010. UKAF is urging world leaders not only to stand up for autism but also to provide better public services in education, health, specialist speech therapy and respite care for parents, carers, children and adults with autism and Asperger's Syndrome in every nation...