One possible grief reaction rarely described, researched or discussed is seeing illusions or hallucinations of the loved one. Scientific American brings us the story:

Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the deceased is the norm rather than the exception. One study, by the researcher Agneta Grimby at the University of Goteborg, found that over 80 percent of elderly people experience hallucinations [and illusions] associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement, as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved’s passing.

As the study’s abstract notes, these hallucinations decline with time:

82% of the subjects at 1 month, 71% of the subjects at 3 months, and 52% of the subjects at 12 months experienced illusions and/or hallucinations of the deceased spouse, which were generally experienced as pleasant and helpful.

There’s not a lot of information about these images people see, probably because they usually aren’t considered disturbing by the people who view them, and grief has long been viewed as an intensely personal experience (one where a researcher asking intrusive questions might be unwelcomed).

So if you lose someone dear to you, and then think you see them sitting on a park bench or walking up the stairs in your house, don’t be alarmed. That’s just your mind’s way of not quite being ready to let go of the person who’s meant a lot to you.

Read the full article: Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased

• Smoking - People with severe mental illness (typically schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disorder) often spend more time in psychiatric hospitals and are 3 times more likely to smoke than the general population
• Obesity - People with any one of these disorders are two to three times more likely to be obese — weight gain mostly caused by the very treatments they’re on to help with the mental illness!

  Obesity also leads to significantly increased rates of diabetes (twice that of the general population) amongst the most seriously mentally ill.

While many mental health professionals and doctors are still missing the boat when it comes to these serious health concerns (rarely spending much time focusing on the need to treat them as well), some organizations are trying to help:

Based on the participants’ responses, NAMI [NYC] created a program called Six Weeks to Wellness, a once-a-week class that teaches everything from proper nutrition to controlling anxiety through yoga and meditation. “It’s been wildly popular,” says Linn. “It helps to say, ‘Your health is important to us.’ They’ve never heard that before.”

It’s a good start. But we need to do even more. People need to know that these are very real and very serious health concerns that shouldn’t just be brushed aside when treating a mental disorder. More focus should be given to them — especially obesity, since it can directly lead to diabetes — and helping people learn more effective strategies to keep the weight down, and the cigarettes out of their pocket.

Read the full article: Why Do the Mentally Ill Die Younger?

Michigan State Government information packet: Six Weeks to Wellness (PDF) — While this isn’t the program NAMI is using (we couldn’t find a link to that program), it is nonetheless a helpful coordinator/participant package that one can use to get started on one’s own healthy wellness program.

How can deceiving your brain be so simple? Benedict Carey, author of the Times article, explains:

In previous work, neuroscientists have induced various kinds of out-of-body experiences using similar techniques. The brain is so easily tricked, they say, precisely because it has spent a lifetime in its own body. It builds models of the world instantaneously, based on lived experience and using split-second assumptions — namely, that the eyes are attached to the skull.

Thanks to the brain’s easy acceptance of out-of-body avatars, the Swedish researchers’ work has many exciting potential applications for psychotherapy. As Carey points out,

…therapists often work to pull people out of themselves: to see their behavior from the perspective of a loved one, for example, or to observe their own thinking habits from a neutral distance.

Marriage counselors have couples role-play, each one taking the other spouse’s part. Psychologists have rapists and other criminals describe their crime from the point of view of the victim. Like novelists or moviemakers, their purpose is to transport people, mentally, into the mind of another.

Picture those troubled spouses in marriage counseling, not just imagining, but fully inhabiting the role of their partner. I will be eager to see the results of any studies looking at the clinical effectiveness of this new treatment modality; my hunch is that the added “realness” of the body-swapping experience will allow a patient to develop deeper, more genuine compassion for others than the old role-playing method.

Body swapping won’t work for everyone seeking therapy, of course. As Benedict Carey writes, “People suffering from the delusions of schizophrenia or the grandiose mania of bipolar disorder are not likely to benefit from more disorientation, no matter the intent.” Overall, however, these results are a fascinating new research development, one that many therapists are undoubtedly excited to add to their bag of tricks. Check out the full study, “If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping”, here.

Analyzing 173 studies conducted since 1980, researchers discovered that three quarters of them found that increased media viewing (mostly TV) was associated with more negative health outcomes:

The studies offered strong evidence that children who get more media exposure are more likely to become obese, start smoking and begin earlier sexual activity than those who spend less time in front of a screen, the researchers said.

Studies also indicated more media exposure also was linked to drug and alcohol use and poorer school performance, while the evidence was less clear about an association with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they added.

One key finding was that quantity, and not necessarily the type of content, seemed to be more closely related to negative health outcomes. So for everyone worrying that a violent video game is worse than a non-violent one, it may be a moot point if both kids are spending 5 hours a day playing it.

But we’ve long known these findings, since many of the studies the researchers looked at have been around since the 1980s. What the current researchers did was to aggregate all of the data from these individual studies to look are more global, general effects.

Watching more than 8 hours of TV a day is a likely predictor of later obesity in children. Children should watch as close to zero TV as possible during the first 2 years of life, and then only limited TV viewing (less than an hour a day) until age 5 or 6.

The same goes for Internet use. Start your kids out slowly on the Internet, and greatly limit initial usage to just an hour or less a day. This helps emphasize the importance of everyday non-technology based social relationships, which are the building blocks for other kinds of social relationships like they may eventually build online.

As the article also points out, in addition to the health concerns, all of this media saturation also may encourage children to grow up even faster:

Thirteen of 14 studies that evaluated sexual behavior found an association between media exposure and earlier initiation of sexual behavior, the researchers said.

We can’t put any of these genies back in their bottles (nor, I am certain, would it be wise to try). The key is for children and teens to learn how to set limits and boundaries on these technologies, and to put them into context of their larger, real life. Because while a second life may be fun, teens won’t learn how to deal with social relationships face-to-face if they don’t have the opportunity to practice them face-to-face (since no amount of virtual worlds can replicate the experience of being with someone in person).

Read the full article: Lots of TV and Web harms kids’ health

One in five was also found to meet the criteria for a personality disorder, a more chronic condition that often interferes with the person’s ability to interact in a healthy manner with others at school, work, or in relationships.

The study also compared those attending college with those who weren’t, to see if mental concerns were more prevalent in one group, or if specific concerns occurred with more frequency. It found overall rates similar between the two groups, but alcohol-related concerns significantly more prevalent in those attending college (surprise, surprise!). College students, however, were less likely to have a substance abuse or nicotine problem, and were less often diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Not surprising (but still eye-opening) was the fact that the vast majority of young adults never seek treatments for these concerns. Only about a quarter of those who qualified for a diagnosis had received treatment for a mental disorder (compared with about 33% of the general population who have a diagnosable mental disorer seek treatment for it).

I say “not surprising” because treatment as a young adult is difficult to come by. At university, the only readily accessible treatment option is the student counseling center, which often is only equipped to focus on non-serious mental disorders and concerns (such as procrastination, test anxiety, and relationship issues). Outside of college, options are even more limited, as many young adults choose not to have health insurance (or can’t afford it), and therefore would have to pay significant costs for treatment (or spend up to a year on a wait-list waiting for treatment from a community health or mental health center).

A study such as this also raises the very real concern and age-old debate about over-diagnosis and whether we’re becoming a society that has a label for every discomfort. The last edition (4th) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM, the diagnostic bible that defines mental disorders) greatly expanded the breadth of disorders from the previous edition. The edition currently under development (5th) threatens to expand the number even more, potentially defining virtually any dysfunctional behavior which causes some distress as a disorder on the same playing field as depression or bipolar disorder.

I don’t know the answer, but according to the current criteria, a lot of young people are grappling with some pretty serious concerns. Many of whom would benefit from treatment, if only we had a way to reach out to more of them and provide an economical way to pay for it.

Read the full article: Half of Young Adults Have Mental Disorder

David Strayer, professor of psychology at the University of Utah and the study’s lead author [said,] “When you’re in the same physical environment, you tend to adjust your discussions to the difficulty of driving. If driving becomes difficult, they stop talking or they point out hazards.’’

The current research, like virtually all research into driving behaviors, was done in a simulator. But this study also used hands-free cell phones, suggesting that even hands-free isn’t as safe as we might have been led to believe. So states that have banned handset cell phone conversations while allowing hands-free conversations (I’m looking at you New York, New Jersey, D.C. and Connecticut!) are completely missing the point. It wasn’t the physical distraction so much as the psychological — or mental — distraction that’s the problem. (And one of the primary reasons legislatures should wait on the research before passing stupid laws.)

To put the risk into some context, the researchers note that you’re about as likely to get into an accident while talking on a cell phone as if you were legally drunk. Since most of us wouldn’t drive drunk, why do we so willingly put aside similar risk and talk on the phone? Because while the relative risk is significant, the absolute risk of death or serious injury from such an accident remains small.

Although there are approximately 6,000,000 accidents a year, that accounts for only 3 percent of the 2 million drivers in the U.S. Forty-two percent of the time they result in injuries, but only 0.07 percent of the time does someone die. In other words, accidents happen every day and either you or someone you know likely has been in one. But most are fender-benders and very few, statistically, result in serious injury or death. So perhaps on some level we know that an accident is rare, and take that into account when we choose to pick up a cell phone in our car and make a call.

But you can feel a little bit better next time you get into your car with a friend and start chatting. You’re likely being safer than if you had picked up the cell phone instead.

Read the full entry: Chatty Driving: Phones vs. Passengers

What if that measure already existed and was widely administered, just not at the right age to do much good?

Researchers Park et al., writing in the October issue of Psychological Science, suggest that the measure is the SAT-M, the math portion of the SAT (the test most high school students take for college admissions). And, if given at age 13 (usually long before it is traditionally taken), it can be a predictive measure of success in science. Success, in this case, is measured by either publications in a scholarly journal, or patent applications.

Teens who scored in the highest quartile on the SAT-M at age 13, and then who go on to earn doctorates or master’s degrees will have more scholarly publications (only in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics field, but not the humanities), and will also have filed signifcantly more patents.
In other words, the SAT-M — administered at age 13 (and not the traditional age of 16 or 17) — can be a helpful predictor of potential future success in one of the fields of science, technology, engineering or mathematics. Why the earlier age? Because by the time a student with the highest mathematical skills takes the SAT-M in high school, they are bumping up against the test’s ceiling score of 800. It therefore becomes less useful as a predictive instrument.

The researchers concluded that while educational credentials and opportunities are important, they cannot substitute for plain old brain power — cognitive ability—and that many researchers fail to measure or take into account this cognitive ability at earlier ages, when it is more readily measured by existing instruments (like the SAT).

The study also concluded that all that money you might pay to go to MIT may not be money well-spent. Whether you go into a top-ranked university isn’t as important as this existing innate cognitive ability, as both groups do just as well with patents and scholarly publications.

So if you want to find out if your child is a budding scientist, let them take the SAT when they’re 13. A score of 702 or better indicates a potential doctorate in one of these fields.

Reference:

Park, G., Lubinksi, D. & Benbow, C.P. (2008). Ability differences among people who have commensurate degrees matter for scientific creativity. Psychological Science, 19(10), 957-961.

• Talent takes practice (and lots of it)
• Success takes luck
• Success also takes access to social advantages
• Emotional intelligence (or, as Gladwell calls it, “practical intelligence”) is more important than IQ

So if you wanted the summary of the McDonald’s version of these McLite insights, there you have it. I just saved you $17, because Gladwell adds little to these observations other than stories that nicely highlight his points. There’s little critical thinking here, or even answers to obvious followup questions, such as why some people are able to put aside their cultural legacies, while others are not. How does one improve one’s emotional intelligence, when so much of schooling seems to be solely focused on grades? If one doesn’t have social advantages, can one still be successful? (Of course, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from this book.)

The fact that success takes lots and lots of practice has been known for centuries. Look no further than the apprentice/master model of tradesmen to understand that to become a master of one’s craft, one has to toil as an apprentice for many years. Toiling long hours itself, however, is no predictor since most of us have done so. You need those social advantages and decent emotional intelligence too. And even then, without a bit of luck, well, you still might end up being Allen Einstein instead of Albert Einstein.

Outliers are data that don’t fall nicely within the predicted model, but they can be very successful or very unsuccessful. Naturally, Gladwell focuses on success, mostly defined by earnings (in keeping with many people’s concept of “success” in the U.S.). Gladwell provides an overview of what dozens of other researchers and authors have done before him — bottling the formula for “success” and selling it to the masses as simplistic explanations for extraordinary success.

But others do it better and more thoroughly, and if you want something more than the McSimple version of this topic, I highly recommend Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin or Daniel Goleman’s classic work, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Yes, both of these books are more in-depth reads, but are backed up by a lot more research and insights into what are key factors that lead to greater success in life.

One take away from Gladwell’s book that rules over anything you’ll learn in any of these books, however, is that life is ultimately unpredictable and one’s success is often as much a product of luck as it is any specific talent, skill, experience or learning. For instance, Ransome Eli Olds began automobile’s first assembly line, building the Oldsmobile. But it wasn’t until Henry Ford’s innovations which eventually led to the mass production of the Model T did the assembly line forever became etched in history with Ford’s name. For every one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, there are dozens of Antonio Salieris who are largely forgotten by history’s pen.

One last note — Gladwell’s insights are male-based, so you won’t find any real discussions of what makes a successful woman in the book. He seems to think there’s no gender inequity in society (or in research), or simply doesn’t want to address this thorny issue.

10 Years Ago on Psych Central

• Relationship Reprise: Don’t Forget Them
  As the holidays descend upon us, it may be a good time to remember what’s really important in life — our relationships with our friends, family and others, not things. Focus on those relationships, renew old ones, and do some relationship housekeeping to start the next year off right with the people that matter most in your life.
  

5 Years Ago on Psych Central

• November 2003 Blog Entry
  Five years ago, I blogged on the finding that UCLA researchers find gingko biloba may help improve memory. More recent research published this week, however, suggests that gingko biloba has no impact in helping prevent Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. So it’s probably not helpful to take gingko just because you believe it’s warding off later-life dementia or such.

  It was also five years ago this month that Massachusetts’ highest court ruled that a ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, paving the way for Massachusetts to allow for gay marriage.
  

1 Year Ago on Psych Central

• The Power of Deception Online: The Megan Meier Story
  It was a year ago when 13 year old Megan Meier took her own life, after being teased by a fake persona on MySpace created by Lori Drew. Drew’s trial was underway last week, and The New York Times has an update. Drew was not charged in connection with Meier’s suicide, but rather with conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress. On Wednesday, Lori Drew was convicted on three misdemeanor charges. The jury rejected felony charges against Drew, and was deadlocked on a conspiracy count. With Drew’s successful conviction, perhaps it will send a warning to any online bully that such behavior can be prosecuted.
• Social Anxiety Disorder or Just Plain Shy?
  I wrote about social anxiety disorder, a legitimate mental disorder that appears in the DSM-IV, which has unfortunately been increasingly diagnosed more and more, as more and more drug treatments coincidentally become available for it. While the argument could be made that since companies increase information about the disorder after a drug has been approved to treat it, it is simply an awareness effect. However, my more cynical brain suggests that it’s not only consumer awareness, but also physician awareness that results in far more prescriptions to treat the sometimes-questionable diagnosis of social anxiety disorder.
  

So it seems like a good time, as I’ve done in years past, to thank you, our readers, for helping make Psych Central the great independent mental health resource it is today. Because without you, there wouldn’t be much point in writing and publishing every day to bring you new insights and perspectives on mental health and psychology. Our members make our site a special and safe place to get support for a mental health issue (or neurological concern).

On behalf of the volunteers, the staff, writers, editors, moderators, and administrators here at Psych Central, I want to wish you a very warm and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday this season. I hope yours is filled with family and friends, and, if nothing else, peace. Thank you and take care.

PS - If you’re tearing your hair out today in trying to deal with family, relatives or something else related to the holiday, might I suggest our Thanksgiving Coping Guide!

In today’s weight-obsessed world, along with the recipes for mouth-watering mashed potatoes and sweet apple pies, you also find recipes for cutting calories from your Thanksgiving feast; ways to fit a workout into the day; and tips for getting back on track after the holidays. With all of the increased attention on diet at this time of year, it’s tough not to focus on food, particularly the dangers of overeating and the feelings of guilt associated with overindulging.

Dr. Stacey of the blog Every Woman Has An Eating Disorder (see her post, On Thanksgiving) believes Thanksgiving is the day many of us fling caution to the wind and feast because we need a break from our year-long restricting.

“But, because we don’t trust ourselves to do this, because we see such occasions (similar to cruises) as respite from the shackles of dieting, we go overboard.”

Has Thanksgiving Day become a battle of self-control? For some of us, indulging in a rich meal automatically signals a lack of self-control and willpower — two things our society views as virtuous and attractive. Many dieting and weight-loss books and gurus will glorify words like “willpower” and “restraint.” So, should we indulge or overeat, many of us will feel guilty and adopt an all-or-nothing mentality: restrict entirely or exceed our limits.

Whether you overindulge or restrict yourself during the holidays, this all-or-nothing thinking might be the unhealthiest choice of all. We either decide to gorge on the buffet of countless calories or rein in our appetite, refusing to partake in the meal. Either way, we’re left feeling unsatisfied, uncomfortably full and guilty.

This holiday season, start your New Year’s resolutions early and be kind to yourself. Don’t condemn yourself for wanting to eat a delicious meal. Instead, make a healthy choice to enjoy Turkey Day’s tasty treats bite by bite — and most importantly, enjoy and appreciate yourself and your family and friends.

MedPage Today covered some reaction to it from some psychiatrists, who lamented the lack of a comprehensive treatment approach guideline to depression (the ACP guideline focused only on the use of medications).

While I agree, in theory, that any guideline that focuses solely on one treatment method for a common mental disorder such as depression, while completely ignoring other treatment options, is a bad thing, I’m not sure we could’ve expected anything different from this physicians group. After all, physicians treat medical diseases, not mental disorders, and have no training or background in anything other than diseases and medications. Logically, why should a physicians group write a treatment guideline that suggests the use of a treatment that a physician can’t administer (such as psychotherapy)?

The guideline, however, is a short-sighted, simplistic attempt to try and “grade” research on antidepressants and their efficacy, when there is already some much better treatment studies that have already done most of the heavy lifting. For instance, refer any physician to the STAR*D findings, and that’s a nice capsule of what you need to know about modern antidepressant prescriptions. There are also a half-dozen meta-analyses done over the past two decades that already have been published on this or similar topics.

The ACP guideline concluded, in a nutshell, that a physician can feel comfortable prescribing any second-generation antidepressant and not worry about which one, which class of medication, or even what specific type of depression that person may be experiencing.

What a helpful finding that is (sarcasm alert - “Prescribe pretty much any antidepressant, just as you’ve been doing for years!”), but not one without its objectors. The MedPage Today article noted some of the objections from a psychiatrist regarding the ACP guideline:

Dr. Karasu said the ACP guideline committee made “a serious mistake” in suggesting that norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors were interchangeable with SSRIs.

Dr. Karasu also said the ACP guideline failed to distinguish between different types of depressive disorders or stages of depressive episodes.

In making treatment decisions, he suggested, “those are different diseases. … How dysthymia, major depression, subsyndromal depressions are put together with the phases of acute-continuation-maintenance, it’s a bizarre combination. People don’t use SSRIs of any sort for some of these conditions.”

But here’s the kicker for me. The guideline makes the a priori assumption that a general practitioner or family physician is the best health professional equipped to handle and deal with major depressive illness. In fact, that’s probably not true in most cases. Physicians aren’t in the mental health business, and they only prescribe the large amount of antidepressants that they do because so many people turn to them first for such assistance.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But one of the physician’s recommendations should nearly always be, “And I’m going to give you a referral to a [psychiatrist/psychologist/clinical social worker/therapist] to help you further with treatment of this issue. These things are best treated with a combination of medication and psychotherapy and if you only take the medication, research shows it might not work, this may not be the right medication for you, and/or it may be weeks before you start feeling any effect.” How hard is that for a doc to say? And why aren’t more docs making such valuable referrals??

I don’t have the answer, but I do know that guidelines like this one from the ACP may be doing a disservice to the public health by making the assumption (and then publicizing it widely) that physicians are readily equipped and can handle the treatment of severe, major depression in a 15-minute office visit.

Mental health professionals the world over and decades worth of research would beg to differ.

Read the MedPage Today article: Medical News: Psychiatrists Give Mixed Reviews on ACP Antidepressant Guideline

Read the ACP guideline: Using Second-Generation Antidepressants to Treat Depressive Disorders: A Clinical Practice Guideline from the American College of Physicians

PS - How seriously should I take research that is published without simple fact-checking too? The researchers, for instance, still refer to the PsycINFO database by its old name, and then go on to actually misspell it (the article referred to a database called PsychLit [sic], when it’s old name was actually PsycLIT). I mean, if you can’t even get the name of what you’re searching right, it does make one wonder a little about the accuracy and details found in the rest of the article.

The criteria seemed a bit random as well — “adults 19 years of age or older, human, and English-language articles.” I get the human criteria, but why 19 years of age or older, rather than the traditional adult cutoff of 18? And why not include studies published in a non-English language?

The Boston Globe has the full story: Naps boost sophisticated memory

Also, while I’m here, for some reason the Associated Press again published the same story about a supposed Truman Show disorder, already published by multiple news outlets back in July (and which we covered with our usual skepticism back then). No new updates, apparently just another reason to get its proponents in the news again. (Read the new non-update here.)

Does anybody even bother with fact checking any longer in journalism?

The New York Times reports, based upon the release of court documents containing internal documents and emails, that Dr. Biederman was allegedly paid by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for his promotion of pediatric bipolar disorder and research into showing the efficacy of a drug used to treat it, Risperdal.

Lots of good reporting on this today, so let’s start with The Philadelphia Inquirer’s take:

Johnson & Johnson gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a research center run by an influential child psychiatrist explicitly to generate data to help expand sales of the company’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal in children, according to court documents. […]

The court papers show Johnson & Johnson’s Titusville, N.J.-based subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica:

• Budgeted $6.4 million to hold “educational summits” and sponsor advisory panels in part to counter negative media reports on the research, diagnosis and treatment of children with mental illness;
• Was actively involved in drafting research that Biederman was to present at a medical conference and asked him how to deal with unfavorable research results suggesting that a placebo worked as well as Risperdal;
• Discussed clinical trials for drugs as “growth opportunities” and tied trial proposals to sales potential.

Wow. Talk about going after a “market opportunity” (namely, children). Here’s the most damning quote from the New York Times article:

A 2002 annual report for the center stated that its research must satisfy three criteria: improve psychiatric care for children, have high standards and “move forward the commercial goals of J&J,” according to court documents.

“We strongly believe that the center’s systematic scientific inquiry will enhance the clinical and research foundation of child psychiatry and lead to the safer, more appropriate and more widespread use of medications in children,” the report stated. “Without such data, many clinicians question the wisdom of aggressively treating children with medications, especially those like neuroleptics, which expose children to potentially serious adverse events.”

A February 2002 e-mail from Georges Gharabawi, a Johnson & Johnson executive, stated that Dr. Biederman approached the company “multiple times to propose the creation” of the center. “The rationale of this center is to generate and disseminate data supporting the use of risperidone in” children and adolescents, the e-mail stated.

Johnson & Johnson gave the center $700,000 in 2002 alone, documents show.

Basically what the emails show is that Biederman apparently single-handedly started the center with primary funding from J&J to promote two goals: the advocacy of the pediatric bipolar diagnosis and the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs — drugs mostly not approved by the FDA for use in children — to treat this disorder.

Biederman is still chief of the Johnson & Johnson Center for Pediatric Psychopathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Unsurprisingly, nobody was much interested in talking today when reached for comment.

What remains absolutely astounding (and a little bit scary) is the unprecedented and massive scope of this deception, including not only a renowned Harvard psychiatrist and researcher, but a huge, respected company (J&J), a world-famous university (Harvard), and an amazing, well-respected teaching hospital, Massachusetts General.

Were all of these prestigious organizations simply duped by Biederman? Or was Biederman duped into shilling for a pharmaceutical company’s product, thinking none of this would ever become public knowledge?

Hard to say at this point. But if this doesn’t make every university and pharmaceutical company take a long, hard look at their research, educational and miscellaneous funding programs, I’m not sure what will.

Read the NY Times article: Research Center Tied to Drug Company

Read the Philadelphia Inquirer article: J&J gave money in return for positive drug studies

Read Furious Seasons’ take: Harvard Child Psychiatrist Worked Closely With J&J

Well, we’ve got something for you! We call it our Coping with Thanksgiving Guide, which is a compilation of the articles on our site that may help you get through the holiday. It includes topics on general coping with family relationships and stress, how to deal with over-eating and over-drinking, helping the kids have an enjoyable time, and just making it through the weekend intact.

So while we can’t help you much with your family or that weird Uncle Al, we hope the guide gives you a few tips to make the holiday a little bit more enjoyable and less stressful for you.