A recent report from Canada’s Center for Addiction and Mental Health has given hard numbers to what experts have long realized – that mental illness is a risk factor for marijuana use. According to the Canadian report, having a mental illness makes a person seven times likelier to use marijuana regularly compared to people who [...]
Somewhere between 15 and 17 million Americans are using cannabis (marijuana). Cannabis is the most popularly used illicit drug in this country. Not only are plenty of Americans already using the drug, but with cannabis becoming legal in several states, use is likely to continue to rise. Teens are not legally allowed to use cannabis [...]
Substance intoxication delirium is a mental health condition that occurs when the accumulation of drugs, medications, or alcohol in the bloodstream leads to a delirious, disoriented state of mind. It belongs to a larger group of mental health problems known as “delirium, dementia, and amnestic and other cognitive disorders.” Some substances can trigger intoxication delirium [...]
A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 critically acclaimed film starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany and Judd Hirsch. It is is a touching adaptation of the 1998 book by Sylvia Nasar. The book and the film alike are based on the experiences of John Nash, Jr., an accomplished mathematician and [...]
Everyone who’s ever seen one of the Star Wars Trilogy knows who Carrie Fisher is. That is, those who don’t already know her as a gifted and best-selling author, screenwriter, raconteur, and so on.
Older American adults may remember a famous Hollywood movie in which male characters rated female characters for beauty on a scale from one to ten. Rating others for beauty, of course, is highly subjective. It turns out the people are not much better at rating themselves for things like anxiety and depression. A new study [...]
Eleven drugs approved in the 1990s for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are increasingly being used off label for less serious conditions such as anxiety, attention deficit disorder, sleep difficulties and dementia in adults, and behavioral problems in small children.
Facebook is useful for many things. Some like to catch up with old high school or college classmates, while others use it to raise awareness for a particular cause like autism or breast cancer. Still more postings are aimed at trying to change opinions about politics. A status update can do many things.
A new book by a professor at Johns Hopkins University explains why addiction is a brain disease, and not a moral issue of self-control. In The Compass of Pleasure, neuroscientist Dr. David Linden explains how neurons in the brain control the experience of pleasure, and how drugs and alcohol can actually rewire and change the [...]
An interesting study was recently concluded by a research team out of the Boston area hospital system Cambridge Health Alliance. The researchers investigated health insurance provisions relating to mental health and substance abuse coverage available to medical students. The team looked at websites and surveys pertaining to 115 of the nation’s 129 medical schools.