To a high extent, the work of a psychotherapist consists of the treatment of the various forms of depression, so I’ve always tried to improve my understanding of this particular form of mental disorder – and of its most extreme form, the idea to commit suicide. So I’ve continuously gathered data on suicide – here […]

Interesting figures have recently been published by the British Home Office: statistics show that young men suffer just as much as women from ‘abuse’ by their partners – at least if forms of emotional violence like harassment or bullying are considered as forms of abuse as well. Probably because men are usually feeling less self-confident […]

Adolescents who were abused and neglected have less gray matter in some areas of the brain than young people who have not been maltreated, a new Yale School of Medicine study shows. The brain areas impacted by maltreatment may differ between boys and girls, may depend on whether the youths had been exposed to abuse […]

Have you recently experienced someone acting completely out of line or losing control over themselves? In Psychiatry, patterns of repetitive behavior during childhood and adolescence where the social norms or boundaries of others are violated are called ‘conduct disorder‘. I am not a particular fan of this term as it reminds me a bit of […]

“What can I do, it’s in my genes!” In recent years, this has become a standard explanation for many of the health problems we have to face in our lives. Indeed, there are few human diseases without scientific studies trying to pinpoint ‘genetical causes’ as the root. Consequently, there are efforts to find genetic roots […]

Posttraumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) was very much one of the centers of attention during the last years of psychological research. Posttraumatic stress disorders may develop when  people are exposed to life-threatening situations – such as natural disasters, assassinations, sexual abuse or war events. It is estimated that up to 50% of all U.S. soldiers returning […]