Co-authored with Paul Nestadt, M.D.

When he was 63, Edward* was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was lucky enough to have access to the newest forms of radiation treatment and chemotherapy, and he had three pretty good years. He continued working, and he and his wife took several trips they...

Go to see Comedy Warriors: Healing Through Humor, a remarkable documentary about five severely-wounded Iraq/Afghanistan veterans who become stand-up comics.

Oh wait, you can't see it, because it's not on TV and it's not playing any place. (I saw it at the Palm Beach International Film Festival). So ask...

Policy makers who have become interested in how to reshape America's mental health policy generally need to know more about its history and complexity than they realize. A great starting point would be the new (the sixth) edition of Mental Health and Social Policy by David...

There's little doubt that the American mental health system could be better. But it is not necessary to trash the developments of the last half century to make that point. In fact, given all the effort that has gone into making the mental health system better, it would be profoundly...

(This is the second part of a two-part post on my experience in rehabilitation.)

In my previous post, I described the emotional challenges that I and probably most others experience when they go into acute inpatient rehabilitation. These include distress about dependency and about loss of personal privacy, dignity, and...

This is the first part of a two-part post on my experience in rehabilitation.

I spent the last 2.5 weeks as a patient in an inpatient acute rehabilitation facility. It was a remarkably successful experience but emotionally challenging. I'd had surgery to remove a fairly large benign tumor from inside...

From time to time, a person with a severe mental illness (or assumed to have a mental illness) commits a murder that makes headlines. As the tragic slaughter of children and teachers in Newtown, Conn. illustrates, the reactive call to address "the mental health issue" is entirely predictable....

It's pretty obvious that if you can't walk or can't keep up with people who do, you should use a wheelchair or similar assistive device, right? Apparently not to lots of people who hobble along with or without the help of a cane or who decide it's not that important...

Lately, rational political thought has been under attack not only by pre-Enlightenment, religious zealots but also by some political psychologists (1), who have denounced the Enlightenment concept of reason in the course of trying to explain why intelligent people often have vastly different and apparently irreconcilable political beliefs. These psychologists...

My friend Jay Neugeboren has just published his 19th book, a novel entitled The Other Side of the World. His 20th book, also a novel, will be published in February. That's four books in five years. Not bad for a man over 70! Not bad at any age,...

"The war. It's what happened to me in the war. I could never get over it. But I learned to live with it. Then all of a sudden on my 60th birthday it became a terrible weight. I couldn't put it out of mind. I feel so very depressed about...

Co-authored by Michael B. Friedman, L.M.S.W. and Kenneth G. Terkelsen, M.D.

Depression can be dangerous. Most people who take their own lives have a depressive disorder at the time (1). And people with both chronic physical illnesses such as heart disease or diabetes and a depressive disorder are at higher...

It is good news for people with mental illness and their families that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The benefits would have been greater if the court had not made expansion of Medicaid eligibility optional for the states. But even if some states...

Here's an obvious observation: Doing art -- whether music, painting, writing, dance, whatever -- can contribute immeasurably to psychological well-being. I said that recently to a wonderful jazz musician I know, and he immediately responded, "Then why am I so screwed up?" It was a good retort and I said...

Artists are working intently when I arrive at the studio -- a large, open loft in an old factory building in the SoHo section of New York City. Some are sitting at tables, some are standing at easels, some are looking at computer screens and a couple are sitting on...

When I walked into the chapel at Saint Peter's Church in New York City, there were about a dozen pairs of people sitting in an open area in front of the pews on folding metal chairs; each couple shared a music stand. They were mostly older adults, though a few...

Are creativity and madness inherently linked? In a word, No! Plenty of creative people are not mad. Is there a statistical association between creativity and some sorts of mental illness or between creativity and some negative emotional states? These are very different questions, to which there seem to be no...

Co-Authored by Michael B. Friedman, MSW and Constantine G. Lyketsos, M.D.

Over the next quarter-century the population of people 65 and older will double. As this happens, the number of people with Alzheimer's or other dementias will more than double because people 85 and older are...

Frank B.* drives a truck to support himself and his family. When he was 47, he injured his back and could not work for several weeks. With the help of physical therapy, an epidural and an opioid prescription painkiller, he was able to return to work;...

"Overdoses involving prescription painkillers are at epidemic levels and now kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined," according to Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).[1] Although some overdoses are suicides (at most 1 in 4), usually the deaths are unintentional -- accidents that...