An award-winning science reporter looks at the history of mental illness in America -- with disturbing results

In the past few months, the perennial controversy over psychiatric drug use has been growing considerably more heated. A January study showed a negligible difference between antidepressants and placebos in treating all but the severest cases of depression. The study became the subject of a Newsweek cover story, and the value of psychiatric drugs has recently been debated in the pages of the New Yorker, the New York Times and Salon. Many doctors and patients fiercely defend psychiatric drugs and their ability to improve lives. But others claim their popularity is a warning sign of a dangerously over-medicated culture.

The timing of Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic, a comprehensive and highly readable history of psychiatry in the United States, couldn't be better. An acclaimed mental health journalist and winner of a George Polk Award for his reporting on the psychiatric field, Whitaker draws on 50 years of literature and in-person interviews with patients to answer a simple question: If "wonder drugs" like Prozac are really helping people, why has the number of Americans on government disability due to mental illness skyrocketed from 1.25 million in 1987 to over 4 million today?

Anatomy of an Epidemic is the first book to investigate the long-term outcomes of patients treated with psychiatric drugs, and Whitaker finds that, overall, the drugs may be doing more harm than good. Adhering to studies published in prominent medical journals, he argues that, over time, patients with schizophrenia do better off medication than on it. Children who take stimulants for ADHD, he writes, are more likely to suffer from mania and bipolar disorder than those who go unmedicated. Intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about psychiatric drugs, Anatomy is sure to provoke a hot-tempered response, especially from those inside the psychiatric community.

Certain parts of the brain - which control skepticism and vigilance - appear to deactivate in some people when they're in the presence of a speaker who they believe has divine healing powers, scientists in Denmark have found.

Researchers recruited 36 male and female participants; about half were devout Christians from the Pentecostal church, while the other half were non-religious.

The participants who considered themselves religious believed that some people could possess divine powers of healing. The non-religious participants did not believe this.

Each person listened to 18 different prayers performed by three different people - a Christian, a non-Christian and a Christian known for their ''healing'' powers - while undergoing a brain scan. (In reality, all three speakers were ''ordinary'' Christians, with no reported healing powers.) After the scan, participants were asked to rate each speaker's charisma.

The devout Christians in the study rated the speaker presented as a divine healer as the most charismatic, while they voted the non-Christian speaker as the least charismatic.

Whether the new thinking will be reflected in this year's revision of the federal dietary guidelines remains unclear

Eat less saturated fat: that has been the take-home message from the U.S. government for the past 30 years. But while Americans have dutifully reduced the percentage of daily calories from saturated fat since 1970, the obesity rate during that time has more than doubled, diabetes has tripled, and heart disease is still the country's biggest killer. Now a spate of new research, including a meta-analysis of nearly two dozen studies, suggests a reason why: investigators may have picked the wrong culprit. Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does - a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year.

In March the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a meta-analysis - which combines data from several studies - that compared the reported daily food intake of nearly 350,000 people against their risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a period of five to 23 years. The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease.

From rabies to bird flu to HIV, diseases passing from animals to humans is a well-known phenomenon. But a virus jumping from plants to humans? Never. At least, that's what doctors thought until Didier Raoult of the University of the Mediterranean in Marseilles, France, discovered that the mild mottle virus found in peppers may be causing fever, aches, and itching in humans. If validated, this would mark the first time a plant virus has been found to cause problems in people.

Plant viruses are routinely found in human feces, along with the digested plant matter they infected. Based on that presence, Raoult interviewed 304 people about how frequently they suffered from fever, abdominal pain, and skin irritation. Of the 304 patients, the 21 people with pepper mild mottle virus in their feces were more likely than the others to present those symptoms

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

According to the study, which was summarized by Rady Ananda at Food Freedom, "Three varieties of Monsanto's GM corn - Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 - were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities."

Monsanto gathered its own crude statistical data after conducting a 90-day study, even though chronic problems can rarely be found after 90 days, and concluded that the corn was safe for consumption. The stamp of approval may have been premature, however.

In the conclusion of the IJBS study, researchers wrote:

Latest version of DSM may trigger 'epidemics' of mental illnesses

As Dr. Allen Frances read through the list of proposed changes to psychiatry's bible of mental sickness, alarms started ringing in his own mind.

"I was surprised," the renowned U.S. psychiatrist says, "that the proposals managed to be much worse than my most pessimistic expectations."

By the time he was finished reading, Frances had calculated that the recommendations contained within the first draft for the fifth and latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- a hugely influential book used daily by doctors worldwide, psychiatry's official classification of all the ways humanity can go "mad"-- could unnecessarily trigger wholesale "epidemics" of mental illness and expose millions more adults and children to potentially harmful psychiatric drugs.

Dr. Frances, more than most, knows the kind of surprises that may be lurking. He chaired the task force that wrote the current edition of the manual -- referred to as DSM-IV -- which he says is a book that unintentionally contributed to vast and sudden increases in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression), after it made changes in those definitions.

Indianapolis - The state department of health says it is pulling the plug on its H1N1 flu hotline because it wasn't being used enough.

The health department made the announcement Monday but added that the deactivation of the hotline does not mean the 2009 H1N1 flu has gone away.

"We are still keeping a close eye on this pandemic, and will reactivate the line if it is needed again in the near future," State Health Commissioner Dr. Gregory Larkin was quoted in a press release.

In a new study, researchers have explained how folic acid may help heal brain and spinal cord injuries.

Infants born to women who do not consume enough folic acid are at an increased risk of developing neural tube defects (i.e., defects in the development of the spinal cord or brain). This is the reason underlying the recommendation that women who are pregnant take a folic acid supplement.

Now, a team of researchers, led by Bermans Iskandar, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has generated data in rodents suggesting that folic acid might also help promote healing in injured brain and spinal cord.

Specifically, the team was able to uncover a molecular pathway by which folate can promote nerve cell regeneration following injury in rodents.

Working out on a treadmill isn't just good for the body, it's good for the brain, according to a new study, the latest to weigh in on the cognitive benefits of exercise.

Regular exercise speeds learning and improves blood flow to the brain in monkeys, the study found. The researchers suspect the same would hold true for humans.

While there is ample evidence of the beneficial effects of exercise on cognition in other animal models, such as the rat, it has been unclear whether the same holds true for people, said study researcher Judy Cameron, a psychiatry professor at Pitt School of Medicine. Testing the hypothesis in monkeys can provide information that is more comparable to human physiology.

For one, monkeys exercise like people, in that they love getting on a treadmill (well sort of like us), and they won't run all night as rats would do if provided with a running wheel, Cameron said.

Laughter is a highly complex process. Joyous or mirthful laughter is considered a positive stress (eustress) that involves complicated brain activities leading to a positive effect on health. Norman Cousins first suggested the idea that humor and the associated laughter can benefit a person's health in the 1970s. His ground-breaking work, as a layperson diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, documented his use of laughter in treating himself with medical approval and oversight into remission. He published his personal research results in the New England Journal of Medicine and is considered one of the original architects of mind-body medicine.

Dr. Lee S. Berk, a preventive care specialist and psychoneuroimmunology researcher at Loma Linda University's Schools of Allied Health (SAHP) and Medicine, and director of the molecular research lab at SAHP, Loma Linda, CA, and Dr. Stanley Tan have picked up where Cousins left off. Since the 1980s, they have been studying the human body's response to mirthful laughter and have found that laughter helps optimize many of the functions of various body systems. Berk and his colleagues were the first to establish that laughter helps optimize the hormones in the endocrine system, including decreasing the levels of cortisol and epinephrine, which lead to stress reduction. They have also shown that laughter has a positive effect on modulating components of the immune system, including increased production of antibodies and activation of the body's protective cells, including T-cells and especially Natural Killer cells' killing activity of tumor cells.

Their studies have shown that repetitious "mirthful laughter," which they call Laughercise©, causes the body to respond in a way similar to moderate physical exercise. Laughercise© enhances your mood, decreases stress hormones, enhances immune activity, lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, and raises good cholesterol (HDL).

As Berk explains, "We are finally starting to realize that our everyday behaviors and emotions are modulating our bodies in many ways." His latest research expands the role of laughter even further.