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Cats Again Get a Bad Rap in Toxoplasmosis Coverage
A study linking the disease to a psychiatric disorder marked by aggression didn’t include cats — but you’d never know it from the headlines. Cats Again Get a Bad Rap in Toxoplasmosis Coverage s.e. smith | Apr 20th 2016 Toxoplasmosis is back. A new study led by researchers from the University of Chicago links the disease with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, in which patients experience outbursts of extreme anger. Headlines such as “Could germ from cat poop trigger rage disorder in people?” and “Cats Might Be the Reason Some People Are So Terrible” are circulating, but this is not in fact a study about cats. It’s a study about toxoplasmosis and…
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I’m Drowning Not Waving
I reached crisis point one night last October when I sent pictures to my ex-husband of blood pouring from self-inflicted wounds on my arms demanding to know if he was “happy now”. I’m Drowning Not Waving Alexandra Sheach It’s Depression Awareness Week and I figured it was time to blow this mental health stigma shit high out of the water. I hadn’t known there was an official event this week, I’m so used to seeing memes on social media I meet with a sage nod or wry smile as we all ‘like’ a post telling us it’s nothing to be ashamed of – but we don’t stick our heads above…
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Feeling rejected? Mushrooms could help
In the uninitiated, that experience of ostracism typically evokes powerful hurt feelings. Feeling rejected? Mushrooms could help by Melissa Healy Psilocybin, the mind-altering chemical that gives some mushrooms magical properties, can do more than induce trippy states. A new study finds that it reduces the sting of social rejection. By tracking how, exactly, psilocybin affects the brain’s chemistry and activity levels, the research suggests new ways to treat the faulty social processing that comes with many mental illnesses. Psychiatric disorders such as depression, borderline personality disorder and social anxiety disorder are often perpetuated by a nasty mind trick: sufferers are inclined to perceive rejection, criticism and negative judgments from people…
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Borderline or Bipolar: Objective Data Support a Difference
When euthymic bipolar patients played (ostensibly with another person, though the actual partner was a computer), they made choices very like control patients, choosing to cooperate almost 75% of the time. But patients with BPD cooperated only about 50% of the time (ANOVA difference, P = .03). Borderline or Bipolar: Objective Data Support a Difference News | April 12, 2016 | Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality, DSM-5 By James Phelps, MD When a patient presents with episodes of depression, irritability, and emotional lability (especially tears and anger, with rapid changes), might he or she have borderline personality disorder (BPD)? Or could it be rapid cycling bipolar disorder (BD)? Although there are…