Mind, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 29, 2019

Declining Sense of Smell May Foretell Death

Elderly people with a poor sense of smell have a higher likelihood of dying in the 10 years after testing than those whose sniffers stay sharp. In a new study, elderly people with a poor sense of smell had a 46% higher risk of death 10 years after olfactory abilities...

May 28, 2019

Video Game Addiction Becomes Official Mental Disorder in Controversial Decision by WHO

Video games can be highly engrossing, but can some people become addicted to gaming? The World Health Organization (WHO) says yes. Recently, the WHO officially recognized gaming disorder as a mental health condition — adding the disorder to the International Classification of Diseases, or the ICD-11, the organization's official diagnostic...

Jun 6, 2019

Scientists Study 5 Cases of Pathological Cannibalism. Narcissism Partly Explains Heinous Act.

For most modern societies, cannibalism is an unthinkable act of violence and is strictly taboo. Recently, researchers investigated how mental illness might, in very rare and extreme cases, lead a person to break that grave prohibition. Scientists recently reviewed five medical case studies of male patients ages 18 to 36...

Jun 27, 2019

What Is Stockholm Syndrome?

Psychiatrists use the term Stockholm syndrome to describe a set of psychological characteristics first observed in people taken hostage during a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm. In that incident, two men held four bank employees hostage at gunpoint for six days inside a bank vault. When the standoff ended, the...

Jul 2, 2019

What Is Trypophobia?

Does the sight of natural sponges, honeycomb cells or bubbly pancake batter make your skin crawl? You may be among thousands of people with trypophobia — an extreme aversion to clustered patterns of irregular holes or bumps. Viral images of lotus seed pods, pregnant Surinam toads and woodpeckers storing fruit...

Jul 22, 2019

Microdosing Psychedelics May Boost Mood and Focus. But What Are the Drawbacks?

Microdosing psychedelics is a growing trend that involves ingesting very small sub-hallucinogenic amounts of substances like LSD or dried psilocybin-containing mushrooms. We ran a large-scale, pre-registered global research study asking participants to report what they like and dislike about microdosing. The three most commonly reported benefits were: improved mood, increased...

Aug 6, 2019

No Tie Between Mental Illness and Gun Violence

President Donald Trump called for reform of mental health laws on the heels of two deadly shootings that claimed the lives of at least 31 people and left a grief-stricken country in disbelief. The president, saying that hatred and mental illness pulls the trigger, not the gun, also called for...

Oct 4, 2019

How Common Are Psychotic Experiences?

Have you ever seen or heard something that turned out not to exist? Or have you ever thought something was happening that no one else noticed — perhaps thinking you were being followed, or that something was trying to communicate with you? If so, you may have had a psychotic...

Oct 9, 2019

Can Eating a Healthy Diet Really Help Treat Depression?

Young adults with depression may help reduce their symptoms by eating a healthier diet high in fruits and vegetables, rather than one heavy in sugar-laden, processed foods, according to a preliminary study. But not everyone is convinced that a healthy diet can act as a full-fledged depression treatment. Indeed, one...

Oct 10, 2019

What Is Mental Health?

We often hear the term mental health used in reference to conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and schizophrenia. But really, mental health refers to our overall emotional, psychological and social well-being, both in and outside the context of named conditions, according to MentalHealth.gov, a resource curated...

Oct 30, 2019

Why Are Some Adults Really Afraid of Ghosts?

Have you ever been home alone and felt certain — certain — that someone was watching you? Afraid to turn around, lest you catch a ghostly visage out of the corner of your eye? You aren't alone. In fact, for some people, this feeling translates into a full-blown phobia that...

Nov 6, 2019

Teens with Anorexia May Be 'Dangerously Ill' Even if They Are Not Underweight

Teens and young adults with anorexia are at risk of life-threatening illness even if their weight falls within a normal range. That's the conclusion of a new study that looked at atypical anorexia, or cases in which patients show all the symptoms of anorexia with the exception of low body...

Nov 19, 2019

Is There Actually Science Behind 'Dopamine Fasting'?

Dopamine fasting may be Silicon Valley's latest wellness trend — but does this sciency-sounding fad actually have evidence to back it up? During a so-called dopamine fast, extreme practitioners abstain from any experience that brings them pleasure, including but not limited to sex, food, exercise, social media, video games and...

Nov 25, 2019

FDA Calls Psychedelic Psilocybin a 'Breakthrough Therapy' for Severe Depression

The FDA is helping to speed up the process of researching and approving psilocybin, a hallucinogenic substance in magic mushrooms, to treat major depressive disorder (MDD). For the second time in a year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated psilocybin therapy — currently being tested in clinical...

Jan 19, 2020

Why Teen Depression Rates Are Rising So Fast for Girls

We're in the middle of a teen mental health crisis — and girls are at its epicenter. Since 2010, depression, self-harm and suicide rates have increased among teen boys. But rates of major depression among teen girls in the U.S. increased even more — from 12% in 2011 to 20%...