In an effort to help break down stigmas surrounding mental health, "CBS This Morning" broadcast a special live audience event, "Stop the Stigma: A Conversation About Mental Health." Guests include "Queer Eye" star Karamo, a former social worker, mental health advocate and relationship expert who will discuss his experience with depression, and Cynthia Germanotta, who founded Born This Way Foundation with daughter Lady Gaga, about how mental illnesses affect a family.

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Based on successful program in Trieste, Italy. Read the entire paper below

Tiffany Martinez was a 17-year-old college freshman when she began hearing voices, seeing shadowy figures and experiencing troubling, intrusive thoughts. Her friends at the University of Southern Maine, where she was majoring in psychology, noticed that she was acting strangely and urged her to get help.
They most likely saved her from a crippling mental health crisis, prevented the derailment of her education and ultimately enabled her to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner who can help other young people avert a psychiatric crisis

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(MadInAmerica.com) – Past research has shown that parent behavior influences the development and trajectory of childhood anxiety. Recently, research has been done to examine the impact of providing training for parents in combination with therapy for the child to reduce childhood anxiety. Now, a new study conducted at Yale University suggests that parents training alone may be just as effective at reducing childhood anxiety as interventions that provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to children.

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Cannabis use is extremely common among adolescents and young adults, with an estimated 14% of students in the 10th grade, 23% of students in the 12th grade, and 22% of college students and young adults engaging in at least monthly use in 2016.1 In 2015, 1.8 million adolescents (aged 12-17 years) and 6.9 million young adults (aged 18-25 years) were current users of cannabis.2 Moreover, the problem is increasing: 30-day prevalence of use among students in the 12th grade rose from 19% in 2007 to 23% in 2017.3 There is even higher use in Canada: In 2013, an estimated 28% of youths aged 11 to 15 years admitted to using cannabis at least once a year, and a high number reported weekly or daily use.4

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By Sophia Vinogradov, MD

Over the last decade or so, our field has experienced a radical shift in our understanding of schizophrenia and other serious psychotic disorders, such as schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder with psychosis. We now understand that these are neurocognitive disorders (ie, how neural systems in the brain represent and process information). We also understand that they are neurodevelopmental disorders with genetic components and antecedents during gestation. The developmental course unfolds with increasing signs, symptoms, and cognitive dysfunction, until the onset of the first episode of psychosis during adolescence or early adulthood. Cognitive deficits are more significant determinants of functional outcome than are symptoms, although most current psychiatric treatments focus only (or mostly) on symptom management.

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By Nev Jones, Ph.D.

In an important and provocative study reported in this issue of Psychiatric Services, Cook and colleagues detail findings stemming from a rigorous and well-powered investigation of self-directed care for adults with serious mental illness living in Texas. The investigators found significant improvements in multiple key domains, including recovery, self-esteem, coping, autonomy support, and employment and education, all at no additional cost.

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Corinita Reyes has been knocking down barriers for most of her young life.
“My mother had me at age 17 and my biological father wanted a son, not a daughter, so I never met him,” Corinita said. “At the age of 10, many life changes happened at once from moving out of a community where I felt at home, to losing a father figure, to my mother’s boyfriend moving in with us and taking the role of my stepdad.”
Corinita, now 27, described how she struggled with these changes, but buried those struggles deep inside, sharing them with no one.

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