Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development, and Academic Achievement

“Our work suggests that specific brain structures tied to processes critical for learning and educational functioning (eg, sustained attention, planning, and cognitive flexibility) are vulnerable to the environmental circumstances of poverty, such as stress, limited stimulation, and nutrition.” Freely available….

▶ Nadine Burke Harris: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime – YouTube

▶ Nadine Burke Harris: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime – YouTube.

Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

The new strain of cannabis that could help treat psychosis | Society | The Guardian

Dr David Potter has overseen the production of nearly 2m cannabis plants, mostly for medical research or the production of the cannabis-based multiple sclerosis drug Sativex…

Potter has seen the extreme effects of both substance abuse and schizophrenia in his role as a magistrate for his local court. He recounts a recent case where a seemingly pleasant teenager, suffering from acute and sudden psychotic illness, had turned to alcohol and become violent.  “He ended up smashing someone’s teeth out for not really any reason at all,” says Potter. The defendant, now diagnosed and medicated, will still be found guilty despite his temporary insanity. “In court it just struck me what a nice chap he was.”

Study finds some schizophrenics do well without long-term antipsychotics – Chicago Tribune

“Patients who go off antipsychotics may drop off the radar of medical professionals, who mostly focus on the sickest patients, researchers say. And, in an era of intense stigma, patients who are off antipsychotics and functioning well are unlikely to discuss their experiences openly.”

” by the fifth year of the study, the schizophrenia patients who were off antipsychotics for extended periods actually were doing better than the patients who were on antipsychotics — perhaps because they had been less ill to begin with.”

The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial – Online First – Springer

In Rialto, police use-of-force was 2.5 times higher before the cameras were introduced.

The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial – Online First – Springer.

The Island Where People Forget to Die – NYTimes.com

The Island Where People Forget to Die – NYTimes.com.

“…their daily routine unfolded much the way Leriadis had described it: Wake naturally, work in the garden, have a late lunch, take a nap. At sunset, they either visited neighbors or neighbors visited them. Their diet was also typical: a breakfast of goat’s milk, wine, sage tea or coffee, honey and bread. Lunch was almost always beans (lentils, garbanzos), potatoes, greens (fennel, dandelion or a spinachlike green called horta) and whatever seasonal vegetables their garden produced; dinner was bread and goat’s milk. At Christmas and Easter, they would slaughter the family pig and enjoy small portions of larded pork for the next several months… “

Deconstructing schizophrenia among Australia’s First People

In places where an increase in the incidence of schizophrenia has been reported, these can be attributed mainly to substance abuse (eg Drug Induced Psychosis). However, there are additional explanations for psychosis differential diagnoses. The most important of these is stress, and especially complex or traumatic stress – presenting as depressive psychosis in both its unipolar and bipolar forms.

Connecting to madness | Jim van Os | TEDxMaastricht – YouTube

Professor of Psychiatry (dissenting member of DSM-5 panel) explians why schizophrenia is not a disease. And certainly no genetic disease. And why the name schizophrenia is gone in ten years.

Connecting to madness | Jim van Os | TEDxMaastricht – YouTube.

How Cannabis Causes Paranoia: Using the Intravenous Administration of ∆9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to Identify Key Cognitive Mechanisms Leading to Paranoia

“… it was definitively demonstrated that the drug triggers paranoid thoughts in vulnerable individuals. The most likely mechanism of action causing paranoia was the generation of negative affect and anomalous experiences”

How Cannabis Causes Paranoia: Using the Intravenous Administration of ∆9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to Identify Key Cognitive Mechanisms Leading to Paranoia.

20 years of cannabis research: what have we learned?

“Daily cannabis users double their risk of experiencing psychotic symptoms and disorders, especially if they have a personal or family history of psychosis, and if they start using cannabis in their mid-teen”

King’s College London – 20 years of cannabis research: what have we learned?.