Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Mental health

20 Jul 2020

Josie Bigland | Meet Our Researcher Series

Josie Bigland is working toward becoming a Clinical Psychologist, with a personal goal of giving back to the community; specifically, families enduring hardship when it comes to managing the health of a loved one affected by dementia. Her experience with quality control of data across CHeBA’s longitudinal studies has revealed to her the importance of exercising throughout the lifespan to maintain cognitive health.   How did you first get into researching the ageing brain? As a self-supporting student, I was looking for a research assistant position to get me through university whilst… Read More
28 Aug 2014

Suicide and Middle Aged Men

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Since the devastating death of respected American comedian Robin Williams nearly three weeks ago, the internet has been rife with speculation on the underlying factors behind this tragedy.  Respectfully, this conjecture should be left as a matter for his family and physicians, but what the rest of us can do to honour this remarkable personality who warmed the hearts of many generations is strive to increase awareness and understanding of clinical depression and its significant relationship to brain diseases and ageing.  In a recent interview with SBS… Read More
23 Apr 2013

Mental Disorders: Debunking Some Myths of the DSM-5

PROFESSOR PERMINDER SACHDEV, MD, PhD This article was originally published as an opinion piece in The Conversation. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is due to hit psychiatrists' and psychologists' shelves next month. Produced by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the DSM provides a standardised system of diagnosing mental disorders. From its first edition in 1952, and with each new edition about every 15 to 20 years, the DSM has always had its critics. But as the arrival of DSM-5 approaches, their clamour is becoming louder. As… Read More
19 Mar 2013

Inside the Neuropsychiatric Clinic

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Since the 4th century BC, when Hippocrates first theorised that physiological abnormalities may be the root of mental disorders, psychiatry and the mysteries of the brain have come a long way. However, it has been a slow development. It wasn’t until 250 BC that Greek anatomist, Erasistratus, studied the brain and distinguished the cerebrum from the cerebellum, and then not until the year 1808, over twenty centuries later, that Johann Reil, the German physician, anatomist and psychiatrist coined the term ‘psychiatry’. Fast forward another two thousand… Read More