127 Fun Facts About Mental Health

Which conditions does the WHO count as the most common mental disorders worldwide, among 1.1 billion people affected in 2021?

Anxiety and depression lead the list; the WHO counted about 1.1 billion people living with a mental disorder in 2021, with anxiety disorders the single most common group.

Which mental health professional is a medical doctor who can typically prescribe medication?

Psychiatrists are medical doctors who have specialized training in mental health, enabling them to diagnose mental illnesses, conduct psychotherapy, and prescribe medication.

Mindfulness, adapted from the Buddhist concept of sati, is most often cultivated through which technique?

Mindfulness is widely associated with meditation, involving practices that train attention to achieve a mental state of calm concentration and present-moment awareness.

Which reformer lobbied states to build mental asylums, then superintended the Union Army's nurses?

Dorothea Dix, a schoolteacher, inspected a local jail in 1841, found mentally ill inmates housed unheated beside criminals, and lobbied legislatures for asylums before superintending Union Army nurses.

Which condition, once called manic depression, features extreme mood swings between mania or hypomania and depression?

Bipolar Disorder's episodes last days to weeks, sometimes months, swinging between depression and abnormally elevated mood.

What does a run of short nights commonly do to your mental state?

Greater irritability and anxiety follow a run of short nights; prolonged sleep deprivation goes further, producing erratic behaviour and even psychotic symptoms.

Which brain chemical do antipsychotics chiefly act on?

Dopamine is the target: typical and atypical antipsychotics block D2 dopamine receptors, while third-generation drugs such as aripiprazole partially stimulate those receptors instead.

World Mental Health Day, held every 10 October, was observed for the first time in which year?

1992's first observance was launched by the World Federation for Mental Health; it only gained an annual theme in 1994.

Eli Lilly's antidepressant fluoxetine, launched in the US in 1988, is better known by which brand name?

Prozac is fluoxetine's brand name; Lilly scientists first described the molecule in 1974 and the FDA approved it in December 1987, so it spent over a decade in development.

Which class of antidepressants is a common first-line treatment because of fewer side effects?

SSRIs are the most widely prescribed antidepressants in many countries and a common first-line choice; NICE's 2022 guidance nonetheless prefers non-drug options first for less severe depression.

Hallucinations such as hearing voices count as which kind of schizophrenia symptom?

Positive symptoms are additions to normal experience, such as hallucinations and delusions; negative symptoms are the reverse: flat affect, reduced speech and loss of motivation.

Which chemical element, taken as a carbonate salt, has been an FDA-approved psychiatric medicine since 1970?

Lithium carbonate is on the WHO's essential medicines list and is the one drug in its class shown to cut suicide risk in people with mood disorders.

Where did Jon Kabat-Zinn open the Stress Reduction Clinic behind MBSR in 1979?

The University of Massachusetts Medical Center hosted the eight-week course for chronically ill patients from 1979; in 1995 Kabat-Zinn founded its Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.

What term covers deliberate steps to protect one's own physical and mental well-being?

Self-care means deliberate habits that protect your own physical and mental well-being; the community around a person shapes how accessible and successful those habits turn out to be.

What is a common characteristic used to define a mental disorder?

Impaired daily functioning, alongside clinically significant distress, is a defining feature of a mental disorder in DSM-5; diagnosis rests on symptoms and that impairment rather than any lab test or scan.

Which form of psychotherapy, grown from Aaron Beck's work, focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviours?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) grew from Beck noticing in the 1950s and 60s that his patients' distress tracked automatic thoughts rather than buried unconscious conflicts.

What term describes a perception, such as hearing voices, with no external stimulus?

A hallucination is a sensory experience that appears real but is created by your mind, occurring without an external trigger.

What class of medications smooths the intense emotional swings of disorders that alternate manic and depressive spells?

Mood stabilizers such as lithium, valproate and lamotrigine level out bipolar disorder's swings; lithium's antimanic effect was first reported by John Cade in 1949.

Which mental health condition can follow experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event, with flashbacks and hyperarousal?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder's triggers range from warfare and assault to traffic collisions; symptoms include intrusive memories, avoidance and hyperarousal.

Which eating disorder pairs recurrent binge eating with purging such as self-induced vomiting?

Bulimia nervosa involves a cycle of consuming large amounts of food in a short period (binging) and then attempting to rid the body of the consumed food (purging) through various unhealthy methods.

Which automatic stress response raises heart rate to ready the body against a threat?

The fight-or-flight response is an automatic stress response that triggers a cascade of physiological changes, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, to prepare an individual for immediate action when faced with a threat.

Which chronic disorder involves hearing voices and disorganised thinking, and strikes men earlier than women?

Schizophrenia typically begins in the early-to-mid twenties in men and later in women; around 70% of people with it also show cognitive deficits in memory and attention.

The term 'shell shock', an early label for combat trauma, originated during which conflict?

World War I produced 'shell shock', a term Charles Myers used in a 1915 Lancet article; by the Second World War the label had given way to 'combat stress reaction'.

Major Depressive Disorder requires persistently low mood or loss of interest for at least how long?

For a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, symptoms such as a persistently low mood and anhedonia (loss of interest or pleasure) must be present for at least two weeks.

Which mood-regulating neurotransmitter is often targeted by antidepressants?

Serotonin is a key neurotransmitter that plays a crucial role in regulating mood, sleep, appetite, and digestion, and imbalances are often linked to depression and anxiety.

'Bedlam', meaning uproar, comes from the nickname of the Bethlem psychiatric hospital in which city?

London's Bethlem is thought to have housed the insane since 1377; its history inspired the 1946 Boris Karloff film Bedlam.

Which hormone, made in the adrenal glands, is commonly called the stress hormone?

Cortisol, a glucocorticoid made in the adrenal cortex, rises under stress via the HPA axis; chronically high levels are linked to anxiety, depression and poor sleep.

Who developed psychoanalysis and emphasized the role of the unconscious mind?

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, is the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

What is the anxiety disorder marked by fear of places where escape might be difficult, like crowds?

Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder where a person fears and avoids situations or places that might cause panic and feelings of being trapped, helpless, or embarrassed.

A persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation is known as a what?

A phobia is an intense, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger, leading to avoidance of the feared object or situation.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by which organization?

The two APAs are easy to confuse; the psychiatrists' body has published the manual since the first edition in 1952, and DSM-5 is its registered trademark.

Bouncing back from adversity, trauma or heavy stress goes by what name?

Sports psychologists split it in two: trait resilience, a steady disposition to persevere, and process resilience, a skill built up over time.

Which psychologist's 1967 learned-helplessness experiments on dogs informed later theories of depression?

Martin Seligman and Steven Maier's 1967 experiments found dogs given inescapable shocks later failed to escape avoidable ones; Seligman linked this learned helplessness to depression.

What do psychiatrists call a fixed false belief that no evidence can shake?

A delusion is a fixed false belief held despite clear contrary evidence; clinicians distinguish it from a strongly held idea by how much conviction survives that evidence.

Which fear-processing brain region tends to run hot in anxiety disorders?

The amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the temporal lobe, processes fear and is hyperactive in many anxiety disorders; it also has a hand in memory, decision-making and aggression.

What term covers negative attitudes and behaviours directed at people with mental illness?

Stigma refers to the discrimination and negative perceptions associated with mental illness, which can prevent individuals from seeking help and support.

What is the term for feeling like a fraud despite evidence of success and competence?

Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described the 'impostor phenomenon' in a 1978 paper and initially thought it was rare in men.

Which therapy treats phobias by having patients gradually face what they fear?

Exposure therapy has patients face feared objects or situations in graded steps; its OCD form, exposure and response prevention, adds holding off the usual compulsion.

Which type of depression comes and goes with the seasons, most often in fall or winter?

Seasonal affective disorder, named by Norman Rosenthal in 1984, recurs mostly in autumn and winter; a minority get a summer version, with insomnia and lost appetite instead of oversleeping and carb cravings.

What is the term for repetitive acts, like washing or checking, a person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession?

Compulsion is the 'C' in OCD: repetitive actions done to reduce anxiety, such as washing, checking, counting or seeking reassurance.

Which group-taught therapy builds distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and mindfulness?

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) pairs group skills training in the four modules with individual therapy and phone coaching.

Which neurodevelopmental condition is commonly treated with stimulants such as methylphenidate (Ritalin)?

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.

What term describes a state in which a person loses contact with reality?

Psychosis is a state of lost contact with reality, typically with hallucinations or delusions, rather than a single illness; despite the similar name it is unrelated to the personality construct of psychopathy.

What term covers conditions marked by challenges with social communication, repetitive behaviours and a strong preference for routine?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) also often involves sensory processing differences and focused interests.

Which psychiatric treatment did Ugo Cerletti first try on a patient in Rome in 1938?

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) passes a current through the brain to trigger a brief seizure under anaesthesia; Cerletti devised it after inducing convulsions in dogs with electric shocks to the head.

What is the primary focus of 'person-centered therapy,' developed by Carl Rogers?

Offering unconditional positive regard, accepting the client without judgment, is the core; Rogers paired it with congruence and empathy, trusting the client's own 'actualizing tendency' rather than therapist interpretations.

Which Freudian defense mechanism attributes one's own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to others?

Projection lets an unwanted impulse out without conscious awareness by pinning it on someone else.

Per the WHO, roughly how many people worldwide were living with depression in 2019?

280 million people, about 3.8% of the world's population including 5% of adults, were living with depression in 2019 by WHO's estimate; its broader count of all mental disorders passed a billion by 2021.

Which of these is a common symptom of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)?

Excessive worry about everyday matters, disproportionate and hard to control, defines GAD; physical signs such as restlessness, sweating and trembling often accompany the worry.

Which neurologist shared the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing the leucotomy?

António Egas Moniz shared the 1949 prize with Walter Hess; he directed the first prefrontal leucotomy in Lisbon in 1935, and there have since been calls for the Nobel Foundation to rescind the award.

Which sister of a US president was left incapacitated by a lobotomy in 1941?

Rosemary Kennedy was lobotomised in 1941 at age 23 and institutionalised for the rest of her life; her sister Eunice went on to found the Special Olympics.

Walter Freeman's 'ice-pick' lobotomy reached the brain via what entry point?

Under the eyelid, into the eye socket: Freeman drove an ice-pick-like orbitoclast through the thin orbital bone, using electroshock instead of anaesthesia so psychiatrists could operate without an operating room.

In what year was Walter Freeman finally banned from performing surgery?

1967 ended Freeman's career: his final patient, Helen Mortensen, died of a cerebral haemorrhage during her third lobotomy and the hospital barred him from operating.

Which drug, developed in 1950 and sold as Thorazine, was the first antipsychotic on the market?

Chlorpromazine, synthesised at Rhône-Poulenc in December 1950, was sold as Largactil in Europe and Thorazine in the US; its arrival has been called one of the great advances in psychiatry's history.

Who first described chlorpromazine's calming effect as 'artificial hibernation'?

Henri Laborit, a naval surgeon, trialled chlorpromazine as an anaesthetic booster at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris in 1951 and urged psychiatrists to try it.

In the 1973 Rosenhan experiment, which words did pseudopatients claim to hear voices saying?

'Empty, hollow, thud' were the words the pseudopatients reported hearing; all eight were admitted, diagnosed (mostly with schizophrenia), then acted normally, with stays averaging 19 days.

Under what title was the Rosenhan experiment published in the journal Science?

'On Being Sane in Insane Places' appeared in Science in January 1973; Rosenhan, a Stanford professor, said the idea came while listening to a lecture by R. D. Laing.

Which German psychiatrist split psychosis into dementia praecox and manic depression?

Emil Kraepelin drew the line in the 1899 edition of his textbook; the 'Kraepelinian dichotomy' went on to shape how schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are classified.

Pinel was appointed 'physician of the infirmeries' at which Paris hospital in 1793?

Bicêtre, south of Paris, was where Pinel focused on the seventh ward, housing 200 mentally ill men, and worked with its 'governor' Jean-Baptiste Pussin; he moved to the Salpêtrière in 1795.

Philippe Pinel, called the 'father of modern psychiatry', worked to abolish what practice?

Chaining patients was what Pinel, with Jean-Baptiste Pussin, ended at Bicêtre in the 1790s; his humane 'moral treatment' replaced restraint with observation and conversation.

Which Quaker founded The Retreat at York after a widow died unexpectedly in the local asylum?

William Tuke, a York tea merchant, opened The Retreat in 1796 after the Quaker widow Hannah Mills died in York Asylum in 1790; his grandson Samuel later publicised its moral treatment.

Who coined the term 'psychiatry' in 1808?

Johann Christian Reil, a German physician in Halle, coined 'Psychiaterie' in 1808 from the Greek psyche (soul or mind) and iatros (healer).

Whose Canon of Medicine, completed around 1025, discussed melancholia and other mental disorders?

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) finished the Canon of Medicine around 1025; it covered melancholia, mania and insomnia and remained a standard medical text in European universities into the 17th century.

Bethlem Royal Hospital, the original 'Bedlam', was founded in which year?

1247 is when Simon FitzMary founded the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem in Bishopsgate during Henry III's reign; it was caring for the mentally ill by the late 14th century.

Which institution moved into the old Bethlem hospital building in 1936?

The Imperial War Museum moved into the former Bethlem building at St George's Fields, Southwark, in 1936; Lord Rothermere had bought the site and given the grounds to London as a park named for his mother.

Which is among the oldest surgical procedures, with evidence from Neolithic remains?

It involved boring a hole in the skull, and was later found in the Andes among pre-Incan cultures.

Which country's Law 180 of 1978 ordered the phasing out of its psychiatric hospitals?

Italy's Law 180, the 'Basaglia Law' named for psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, blocked new admissions to psychiatric hospitals from 1978 and shifted care to community services.

The 1963 US Community Mental Health Act was passed as part of which president's agenda?

John F. Kennedy signed the act on 31 October 1963, three weeks before his assassination; only half of the proposed centres were ever built, and none was fully funded.

Who described the 'general adaptation syndrome', the body's three-stage response to prolonged stress?

Hans Selye described the general adaptation syndrome in a 1936 Nature letter: alarm, resistance and exhaustion, the stages by which the body responds to sustained stress.

In what year was the BDI, the widely used self-report depression scale, first published?

1961 is when Aaron Beck and colleagues published the Beck Depression Inventory, a 21-item self-report scale; the revised BDI-II followed in 1996.

Which psychologist founded rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)?

Albert Ellis introduced rational therapy in 1955 after breaking with psychoanalysis; it was later renamed rational emotive therapy and, in 1993, rational emotive behavior therapy.

Which Holocaust survivor founded logotherapy, centred on the search for meaning?

Viktor Frankl founded logotherapy, billed as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy after Freud's and Adler's; he survived Auschwitz and Dachau and published Man's Search for Meaning in 1946.

Over how many days was Man's Search for Meaning written?

Nine days was all Frankl took in 1945 to dictate the German original; drawn from his years in Nazi camps, it became the best-seller among his 39 books.

Which psychiatrist argued in a 1961 book that mental illness is a 'myth'?

Thomas Szasz's The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) argued psychiatric diagnoses label 'problems in living' rather than diseases; in 1969 he co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights with the Church of Scientology.

Under which psychiatrist did Carl Jung work at the Burghölzli hospital in Zurich?

Bleuler is the man who coined the word schizophrenia.

Which illuminated manuscript of Jung's, kept private for decades, was finally published in 2009?

The Red Book (Liber Novus), a calligraphed and painted folio Jung worked on from 1915, grew out of his inner experiences after his break with Freud; his heirs allowed publication in 2009.

Freud and his family lived at what Vienna address from 1891 until 1938?

Berggasse 19 was the Freuds' home and consulting rooms from 1891 until they fled to London after the 1938 Anschluss; the flat opened as the Sigmund Freud Museum in 1971.

Freud published an influential 1884 paper on the palliative effects of which drug?

Cocaine was the subject of 'Über Coca' (1884), in which Freud praised the drug's effects; he later regretted promoting it after his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow became addicted.

Before DSM-IV renamed it in 1994, dissociative identity disorder carried what name?

Multiple personality disorder was the DSM-III name; DSM-IV (1994) renamed it dissociative identity disorder, with famous cases including 'Sybil' (1973) and Chris Costner Sizemore of The Three Faces of Eve.

What apparatus did B. F. Skinner invent, better known as the Skinner box?

The operant conditioning chamber, better known as the Skinner box, had a lever for rats or a pecking disk for pigeons and delivered food on programmed reinforcement schedules.

Which 1948 utopian novel by B. F. Skinner applied his ideas to a human community?

Walden Two (1948) imagined a community run on behavioural engineering; Skinner's analysis of language, Verbal Behavior, followed in 1957 and drew Noam Chomsky's famous 1959 critique.

In the Little Albert experiment, an infant was conditioned to fear which animal?

A white rat was paired with the loud clang of a steel bar by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner at Johns Hopkins in 1920; Albert's fear generalised to rabbits and furry objects.

Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment was ended on which day?

The sixth day ended it: planned for two weeks, the 1971 study was halted after Christina Maslach objected; Zimbardo admitted he had internalised his role as prison superintendent.

Which psychologist coined the phrase 'identity crisis'?

Erik Erikson coined 'identity crisis' while studying adolescents; his theory of personality lays out eight life stages, each with a virtue, from hope in infancy to wisdom in old age.

Which psychologist created the hierarchy of needs that culminates in self-actualization?

Abraham Maslow proposed the hierarchy in his 1943 paper 'A Theory of Human Motivation'; he also introduced ideas such as metaneeds, metamotivation and peak experiences.

Which psychiatrist named 'early infantile autism' in a 1943 paper describing 11 children?

Leo Kanner's 1943 paper 'Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact' described 11 children with 'a powerful desire for aloneness' and 'an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness'.

Which US author of A Mind That Found Itself founded the mental hygiene movement?

Clifford Beers published A Mind That Found Itself in 1908, recounting his asylum stays; in 1909 he founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which became Mental Health America in 2006.

The first US outpatient mental health clinic opened in 1913 in which city?

New Haven's Clifford Beers Clinic opened in 1913 as the first US outpatient mental health clinic; Beers, a Yale graduate, had founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene in 1908.

Who is credited with coining the term 'mental hygiene' in the mid-19th century?

William Sweetser, a US physician, used 'mental hygiene' in an 1843 book; Isaac Ray, a founder of what became the American Psychiatric Association, later defined it as 'the art of preserving the mind'.

Since which year has Mental Health Awareness Month been observed each May in the US?

1949 saw the first Mental Health Month, launched by the National Association for Mental Health, the predecessor of Mental Health America, with awareness campaigns each May since.

Nellie Bly's Ten Days in a Mad-House exposed an asylum at which New York location?

Blackwell's Island, renamed Roosevelt Island in 1973, held the Women's Lunatic Asylum; Bly's 1887 exposé prompted a grand jury inquiry and a bigger budget for the city's asylums.

Which newspaper sent Nellie Bly undercover to feign insanity in 1887?

The New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's paper, assigned Bly the story; after a night practising deranged expressions in a mirror she checked into a boardinghouse and feigned madness until police took her away.

Elizabeth Packard was committed to an Illinois asylum in 1860 on whose word alone?

Illinois law then let a husband commit his wife without a hearing or her consent; she spent three years at Jacksonville.

Which Church of England vicar founded the Samaritans helpline in 1953?

Chad Varah started the Samaritans from St Stephen Walbrook in London in 1953; his first funeral as a curate, in 1935, had been for a 14-year-old girl who killed herself after mistaking her first period for an STI.

Which Radiohead member, himself a volunteer, fronted a 2004 Samaritans recruitment campaign?

Phil Selway, a long-time Samaritans volunteer, fronted the 2004 drive aimed at 18-to-24-year-olds after volunteer numbers hit a 30-year low.

In which month and year did the US launch its three-digit 988 crisis line?

July 2022, the 16th, was when 988 went live nationwide alongside the 1-800 Lifeline number that had existed since 2005; Canada followed with its own 9-8-8 in November 2023.

Which rapper's 2017 song was titled after the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number?

Logic's '1-800-273-8255', featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100; calls to the Lifeline spiked after his 2017 MTV VMAs performance.

World Suicide Prevention Day is observed on which date?

September 10 has been World Suicide Prevention Day since 2003, co-sponsored by the International Association for Suicide Prevention and the WHO.

Which US clinical psychologist first used the term 'burn-out' in a 1974 paper?

Herbert Freudenberger's 1974 paper 'Staff Burn-Out' drew on volunteers, himself included, at a free clinic for drug users in New York's East Village.

How does the WHO's ICD-11 classify burnout?

An occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition, is ICD-11's 2019 classification; its three dimensions are energy depletion, mental distance or cynicism about one's job, and reduced professional efficacy.

Which psychiatric diagnosis has the highest mortality rate of any?

Anorexia nervosa is widely cited as the deadliest psychiatric diagnosis, with a standardised mortality ratio of roughly five to six; patients admitted severely ill to medical units are at particularly high risk.

Marsha Linehan originally developed dialectical behavior therapy to treat which personality disorder?

Borderline personality disorder was Linehan's target: DBT, developed in the late 1980s for chronically suicidal patients, teaches distress tolerance and emotion regulation to curb self-harm and the fear of abandonment.

Which 20th-century American celebrity developed severe OCD centred on a fear of germs?

Howard Hughes's fear of germs drove rituals such as handling objects with tissues and years of seclusion; the 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson is also believed to have had OCD.

Women are how many times as likely as men to develop panic disorder?

Twice is the usual estimate: panic disorder is diagnosed in women about two times as often as in men; a panic attack's symptoms peak within minutes.

Roughly what share of adults have insomnia at any given time?

10% to 30% of adults have insomnia at any one time, and up to half experience it in a given year; severity is measured with tools such as the Athens Insomnia Scale.

Which drug did the FDA approve in 2019 as an intravenous treatment for postpartum depression?

Brexanolone, sold as Zulresso, is a synthetic form of the neurosteroid allopregnanolone given as a 60-hour infusion; the FDA approved it in March 2019 as the first drug specifically for postpartum depression.

Which disorder, a preoccupation with perceived flaws in appearance, did Enrico Morselli describe in 1886?

Body dysmorphic disorder was Morselli's 'dysmorphophobia'; it entered DSM-III-R in 1987, and cosmetic surgeons are advised to screen for it because surgery can worsen it.

Hikikomori involves withdrawing into one's home for at least how long?

Six months is the threshold in Japan's health ministry definition; psychiatrist Tamaki Saitō popularised the term with his 1998 book Shakaiteki Hikikomori.

Diazepam, launched in 1963, is better known by which brand name?

Valium was Roche's brand for diazepam, patented in 1959 and launched in 1963; it was the top-selling drug in the US from 1968 to 1982, with over two billion tablets sold in 1978.

Stockholm syndrome takes its name from a 1973 hostage crisis at which bank?

Kreditbanken's Norrmalmstorg branch in Stockholm was where parolee Jan-Erik Olsson held four employees for six days in August 1973; criminologist Nils Bejerot coined the term.

The murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 prompted research into what psychological phenomenon?

The bystander effect was studied by Darley and Latané after the 1964 killing; a 2007 American Psychologist article found no evidence for the often-cited 38 inactive witnesses.

What does the Latin word 'placebo' mean?

'I shall be pleasing', or 'I shall please', is the Latin future of placere; its opposite, nocebo, means 'I shall harm'.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was shot inside which real psychiatric institution?

Oregon State Hospital in Salem hosted the shoot, with its superintendent Dean Brooks playing Dr Spivey; the film became the second to win all five major Oscars.

Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir about living with bipolar disorder is titled what?

An Unquiet Mind (1995) recounts Jamison's own bipolar disorder while she was a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins; she wrote it partly to show clinicians what patients find helpful in therapy.

Alcoholics Anonymous dates its origin to a 1935 meeting between Bill Wilson and whom?

Dr. Bob Smith, an Akron surgeon, met Bill Wilson on 12 May 1935; Smith's last drink on 10 June 1935 is AA's founding date, and the Twelve Steps came with 1939's 'Big Book'.

PTSD first appeared as a formal diagnosis in which edition of the DSM?

DSM-III (1980) introduced post-traumatic stress disorder, shaped by studies of Vietnam veterans; earlier editions had only 'gross stress reaction' or 'transient situational disturbance'.

Which two researchers' 1974 paper showed DSM-II diagnoses rarely agreed between practitioners?

Spitzer and Fleiss reanalysed six studies and found poor agreement for most DSM-II categories; Robert Spitzer went on to chair the task force that produced DSM-III in 1980.

A 2004 cross-Europe study found roughly what share of people met criteria for a DSM-IV disorder in their life?

One in four, about 25%, had met criteria for at least one assessed DSM-IV disorder in their lifetime; mood disorders (13.9%) and anxiety disorders (13.6%) were the most common.

Ancient Greek medicine blamed madness on an imbalance of what?

The four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, were thought to govern temperament; black bile's Greek name gives us 'melancholy'.

Roughly what fraction of autistic people experience a mental health problem in their lifetime?

8 in 10 is the commonly cited lifetime figure for autistic people, against about 1 in 4 of the general population; anxiety and depression are the most frequent problems.

Which stage is a person usually in when woken by a nightmare they recall in detail?

REM sleep, when most vivid dreaming occurs, is where nightmares arise, typically in the second half of the night; they are common in PTSD, where trauma-related dreams recur.

Which suicide-prevention strategy do bridge barriers and smaller paracetamol pack sizes exemplify?

Means restriction, limiting access to lethal methods, has strong evidence: UK paracetamol pack-size limits from 1998 were followed by a sustained fall in overdose deaths.

Benzodiazepines such as diazepam work by enhancing which neurotransmitter's effect?

GABA, the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter, is the target: benzodiazepines bind the GABA-A receptor and increase chloride flow, which calms neuronal firing and relieves anxiety.

In 2019, roughly what fraction of the world's 10 to 19 year olds had a mental disorder?

One in seven, about 166 million adolescents aged 10 to 19, lived with a diagnosed mental disorder in 2019 by UNICEF's count; global prevalence among children and adolescents was 13% in 2015.

Francine Shapiro developed which trauma therapy in the late 1980s?

EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) grew from Shapiro's 1987 observation that eye movements eased distressing thoughts; NICE and the WHO recommend it for PTSD.

Dorothea Dix submitted her 1843 Memorial on treatment of the insane to which state's legislature?

Massachusetts received the Memorial in January 1843 after Dix toured the state's jails and almshouses; her description of people 'in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods' launched the asylum movement.

What was the 1961 Joint Commission report that pushed US care toward community clinics called?

Action for Mental Health, the 1961 report of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health, fed into the 1963 Community Mental Health Act; by 1977, 650 centres covered 43 percent of the US population.