Meditation and Mindfulness

Since mindfulness is something, you can practice at home for free, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues.

Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you're sensing, thinking, and feeling in the present moment.


The first recorded evidence for this, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can occur after meditation.


It also details cognitive anomalies associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation, and depersonalisation (when people feel the world is "unreal").


In the past eight years there has been a surge of scientific research in this area. These studies show that adverse effects are not rare.


A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.


According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalization, and fear or terror.      READ MORE...

Another Great Depression On Its Way

‘The set-up will be more like 1929’: Cathie Wood just warned of another ‘Great Depression’ if the Fed keeps ignoring these signals — here are 3 safe haven sectors for proven protection

The U.S. Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates aggressively in an effort to bring inflation under control. According to Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood, this could have serious consequences.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Wood compares the current situation to events that led up to the Great Depression.

“The Fed raised rates in 1929 to squelch financial speculation and then, in 1930, Congress passed Smoot-Hawley, putting 50%+ tariffs on more than 20,000 goods and pushing the global economy into the Great Depression,” Wood says. “If the Fed does not pivot, the set-up will be more like 1929.”

The super investor points out that the U.S. central bank is “ignoring deflationary signals.” At the same time, she warns that the Chips Act “could harm trade perhaps more than we understand.”

Of course, not all assets are created equal. Some — like the three listed below — might be able to perform well even if the Fed doesn’t soften its hawkish stance.

Real estate
It may seem counterintuitive to have real estate on this list. When the Fed raises its benchmark interest rates, mortgage rates tend to go up as well, so shouldn’t that be bad for the real estate market?  READ MORE...

Changing Brain Structure to Fight Depression

Decades of reinforcing neural connections can make the adult brain stubbornly resistant to rapid changes. Should our brain's structure trap us in cycles of dark moods and thoughts, disorders like chronic depression can be extremely hard to shake.

According to new research, some patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) can have their brains 'rewired' within weeks, given the right treatment.

Anti-depressants, behavioral therapy, and electroconvulsive therapy don't work for everybody with MDD, but scientists in Germany claim these treatments have the power to change brain structures. How long those changes last remains to be determined.

People who experience MDD often have trouble regulating negative emotions and their physiological responses to stress. Under such heavy conditions, enjoying even the most pleasant activities in life can feel burdensome.

In the past, brain imaging studies have found serious depression is associated with changes in the volume of gray matter (made up of neuron bodies) and white matter (made up of nerve fibers). It's also associated with increases in amygdala activity, which influences emotional experiences; shrinkage in the hippocampus, which plays a major role in long-term learning and memory; and shrinkage in the basal ganglia, which helps process emotions.  READ MORE...

Children That Don't Give Up

A raging pandemic, gun violence, climate change — as an educational psychologist, I’ve seen firsthand how the troubling events of today are taking a toll on our children.

“It’s hard to stop thinking about bad stuff,” an 11-year-old told me recently. “Sometimes I worry about waking up.”


Without the right tools to handle adversity, hopelessness can set in and kids’ overall well-being can decline. Hope is what energizes them to stay mentally strong during tough times, and it’s what sets them apart from those who give up easily.

Research shows that hopefulness can dramatically reduce childhood anxiety and depression. Hopeful kids have an inner sense of control. They view challenges and obstacles as temporary and able to be overcome, so they are more likely to thrive and help others.

Yet despite its immense power, hope is largely excluded from our parenting agendas. The good news? Hope is teachable. One of the best ways to increase this strength is by equipping children with skills to handle life’s inevitable bumps.

Here are nine science-backed ways to help kids maintain hope — especially during tough times:  READ MORE...

Magic Mushrooms

Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in "magic mushrooms," could treat depression by creating a hyper-connected brain.

By boosting connectivity between different areas of the brain, the psychedelic may help people with depression break out of rigid, negative patterns of thinking, a new study suggests.

Recent clinical trials have suggested that psilocybin may be an effective treatment for depression, when carefully administered under the supervision of mental health professionals. In the new study, published Monday (April 11) in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers probed exactly how the psychedelic works to improve peoples' depressive symptoms. To do so, the team collected brain scans from about 60 patients who had participated in clinical trials for psilocybin therapy; these brain scans revealed distinct changes in the patients' brain wiring that emerged after they took the drug.

"We see connectivity between various brain systems increasing dramatically," first author Richard Daws, who was a doctoral student at Imperial College London at the time of the study, told Live Science. Healthy individuals with high levels of well-being and cognitive function tend to have highly connected brains, studies suggest, but in people with depression, "we sort of see the opposite of that — a brain characterized by segregation," said Daws, now a postdoctoral research associate at King's College London. This sort of organization undermines the brain's ability to dynamically switch between different mental states and patterns of thinking, he said.

The study supports the idea that psilocybin relieves depressive symptoms, at least in part, by boosting connectivity between different brain networks, said Dr. Hewa Artin, the chief resident of outpatient psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. That said, "additional studies will be needed to replicate results and validate findings," Artin told Live Science in an email.  READ MORE...

Blood and Mental Disorders

Mental health disorders including depression, schizophrenia, and anorexia show links to biological markers detected in routine blood tests, according to our new study of genetic, biochemical and psychiatric data from almost a million people.

The research will increase our understanding of what causes mental illness and may help to identify new treatments.

Healthy body, healthy mind
People often consider mental health as separate from the health of the rest of the body. This is far from true: there is clear evidence many biochemical substances involved in diseases such as diabetes and autoimmune conditions directly impact the function of our brain.

Many studies have tried to address this by focusing on substances called biomarkers that can be readily measured in blood.

A biomarker is simply something in the body that is a sign of a particular disease or process. These often relate to the kind of things reported in a blood test ordered by your doctor, such as cholesterol, blood sugar, liver enzymes, vitamins, or markers of inflammation.

Biomarkers found in routine blood tests are useful as they are often affected by diet and lifestyle, or by treatment with a drug.

The complex role of genetics in mental health
It's often difficult to study the role of these blood biomarkers in mental health conditions. Many studies in this area are often not large enough to make strong conclusions.

One solution is to look at genetic influences on both mental illness and substances measured in blood. Genetics is useful as we now have data from millions of individuals who have volunteered in research studies.  READ MORE...

Everybody Must Get Stoned

As reported by R. Schraer of BBC News:

A powerful hallucinogenic drug known for its part in shamanic rituals is being tried as a potential cure for depression for the first time.

Participants will be given the drug DMT, followed by talking therapy.

It is hoped this could offer an alternative for the significant number of people who don't respond to conventional pills for depression.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy might offer longer-term relief from symptoms, some researchers believe.

A growing body of evidence indicates other psychedelic drugs, particularly alongside talking therapy, are safe and can be effective for treating a range of mental illnesses.

This will be the first time DMT is given to people with moderate to severe depression in a clinical trial.

Carol Routledge, the chief scientific officer of Small Pharma, the company running the trial said: "We believe the impact will be almost immediate, and longer lasting than conventional antidepressants."
'Spirit molecule'

The drug is known as the "spirit molecule" because of the way it alters the human consciousness and produces hallucinations that have been likened to a near-death experience.

It is also the active ingredient in ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian plant medicine used to bring spiritual enlightenment.

Researchers believe the drug might help loosen the brain's fixed pathways, which can then be "reset" with talking therapy afterwards.

Ms Routledge likened the drug to "shaking a snow globe" - throwing entrenched negative thought patterns up in the air which the therapy allows to be resettled into a more functional form.

But this hypothesis still needs to be proven.

The team is consulting Imperial College London, which runs the pioneering Centre for Psychedelic Research.

As part of the study, they hope to investigate whether the drug can be administered as a one-off or as part of a course.

Subjects will be followed up for at least six months to see how long the effects of the treatment last.

Meanwhile, a ketamine-assisted therapy clinic is set to open in Bristol next week.

While the drug is already used for depression in clinics like the ketamine treatment service in Oxford, it is not accompanied by psychotherapy.

Rather, it is used to provide temporary relief from symptoms for people who have very serious, treatment-resistant depression.

So-far unpublished researched presented at a conference by professor of psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter, Celia Morgan, suggests ketamine accompanied by therapy has much longer-lasting effects.

Prof Morgan said there was mounting evidence that drugs, including psilocybin, LSD, ketamine and MDMA (Ecstasy), were safe and could play a role in the treatment of mental health disorders.

And there was some early evidence they could have longer-term effects than the medicines conventionally prescribed as antidepressants, known as SSRIs, but more research was needed.

They also worked using a completely different mechanism, Prof Morgan explained.  READ MORE

I Can Understand...

One of the most popular phrases that AMERICANS use (and why I don't understand) is "I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH..."  And personally, I find this incredibly INSULTING because NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE exactly what the other person is going through or experiencing.

I remember going to a high school reunion and these reunions happened about every 5 years or so and I had missed several due to a divorce, relocation to another State, and dealing with the side effects of cancer.  My of my friends with whom I traveled through Europe after graduation, criticized me horribly for not attending and using cancer as an excuse because he had prostate cancer, surgery, and treatment and managed to attend.

That bothered me for a long time until I went to a Urologist who informed me that for many years Urologists have been able to easily control and contain prostate cancer minimizing the side effects of surgery and treatments.

Now, I think about this SO-CALLED friend of mine and I see him for exactly who he is and who he is not and rather than telling him to stick his head up his ass, I simply prefer to no longer refer to him as my friend....   along with all those others so called friends of mine who agreed with him that night and treated me accordingly.

And while no one knows exactly what the other person is feeling or what his/her body might be experiencing, I do know what it is like to FEEL AND EXPERIENCE DEPRESSION and how that feeling permeates throughout the entirety of one's body no matter how hard mentally one tries to control it.

I also know what it is like to have depression come and go but never leave and just as soon as one starts to feel better, one never knows for sure how long that will last...  sometimes, the cycles are short, sometimes long...  but they are always there...  and, they seem to be managed a little better the older one becomes because the outcomes, especially being retired, no longer matter.