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Humans, when alone, see threats as closer than they actually are. But mix in people from a close group, and that misperception disappears. In other words, there's safety in numbers, according to a new study by two Michigan State University scholars. Their research provides the first evidence that people's visual biases change when surrounded by members of their own group...

A specific region of the brain is in play when children consider their identity and social status as they transition into adolescence - that often-turbulent time of reaching puberty and entering middle school, says a University of Oregon psychologist...

In their article "Over 30 million psychedelic users in the United States", Teri S Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen from the Department of Neuroscience at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, use data from a randomly-selected sample of over 57,000 individuals surveyed for the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), to estimate lifetime prevalence of psychedelic use...

Use and abuse of "bath salts," a new group of designer drugs, have been increasing in recent years, particularly among teenagers. Poison control centers received over 2,000 calls last year for patients with delusions, hallucinations and paranoia following "bath salt" use...

Viewing sexually explicit material through media such as the Internet, videos, and magazines may be directly linked with the sexual behavior of adolescents and young adults, but only to a very small extent. That is the conclusion of a new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine...

New, nationally projectable survey results released by The Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation confirmed that one in four teens has misused or abused a prescription (Rx) drug at least once in their lifetime - a 33 percent increase over the past five years. The Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) also found troubling data on teen misuse or abuse of prescription stimulants...

Use and abuse of "bath salts," a new group of designer drugs, have been increasing in recent years, particularly among teenagers. Poison control centers received over 2,000 calls last year for patients with delusions, hallucinations and paranoia following "bath salt" use...

10 eye-catching studies that I didn't get the chance to report on in full:

How do our brain hemispheres cooperate to avoid false memories?

The psychological benefits of refusing to apologise.

What's the fastest speed at which a face can be recognised?

Exploring the transitional process from receiving a diagnosis to living with motor neurone disease

"Power gets the job" Boost your interview chances by first remembering a time you were in a position of power.

Forget the Mozart effect, listening to Vivaldi boosts mental alertness.

Using fMRI to decode people's dreams (see here for a calm assessment).

How stress affects nurses' referral decisions.

Use of laptops in lectures doesn't only distract the user, but also nearby students.

Evidence that "emotional blindness" in autism is not caused by autism per se, but by the co-occurring condition alexithymia

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Post compiled by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

New research from the US finds that otherwise healthy young adult college students who regularly binge drink, that is consume a lot of alcoholic drinks in a short space of time, show damage to blood vessels similar to that caused by high blood pressure and cholesterol, both factors known to increase risk for heart disease later in life. Senior author Shane A...

Biological Psychiatry is proud to announce this week's publication of a special issue focusing on the question of food as an addiction. Addiction is the continued or compulsive use of a substance, despite negative and/or harmful consequences...

Stress triggered neuropsychiatric disorders take an enormous personal, social and economic toll on society. In the US more than half of adults are exposed to at least one traumatic event throughout their lives. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating anxiety disorder associated with exposure to a traumatic event outside the range of normal human experience...

1. Benefits of Suicide Screening in Primary Care Settings Unknown The U.S...

There is not enough evidence to support suicide screening for all teens and adults, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). The Task Force posted a final evidence report and draft recommendation statement after analyzing existing research and discovering that there is insufficient data to recommend screening to everyone...

The alcohol industry, including the major supermarkets ignored, misrepresented and undermined international evidence on effective alcohol control policies in an attempt to influence public health policy in Scotland to its advantage, according to UK experts writing in this week's PLOS Medicine...

A study published today in Annals of Emergency Medicine reports lengthy waits for severely ill psychiatric patients in need of immediate hospitalization in the Boston area, due in part to time-consuming prior authorizations required by insurance companies. Psychiatrists spent, on average, 38 minutes on the telephone getting authorization...

Young people seeking help who are at high risk of developing psychosis could significantly reduce their chances of going on to develop a full-blown psychotic illness by getting early access to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), new research shows...

Most research into CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) for teenagers has focused on whether it works or not, with largely positive results. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to finding out what it is actually like for a teenager to undertake CBT.

Deanna Donnellan and her colleagues have made an initial effort to plug this gap, conducting in-depth interviews with three teenage girls who'd completed a course of individual CBT, asking them about their perception of the therapy and what it meant to them.

The pseudonymous interviewees were Mary, who had problems with sickness and anxiety; Katherine, who had anxieties around her appearance and restricted her eating; and Samantha, who experienced low mood and practised self-harm. The teenagers were aged 15 years on average.

One the main themes to emerge related to progress and change. Mary saw the therapy in terms of helping to remove her problems; Samantha saw it as more than that, as a chance to move forward in her life; and Katherine felt she had developed new perspectives on life and the future. All three experienced increases to their self-efficacy (their confidence in their own abilities). Donnellan and her colleagues pointed out a related practical insight here - they found the teenagers clearly had "ultimate goals" for therapy (such as a growth in character or a return to "normality"), which could be hidden beneath the immediate aims of the CBT.

Another key theme to emerge related to engagement with therapy. The teens were mostly disengaged and passive at the start, but they gradually began to participate more. Mary achieved this engagement by taking some control - she agreed to take on some of her homework tasks around eating, but refused others. Samantha didn't say much at the start, but came to realise that she could benefit from exploring her emotional issues. Katherine felt desperate and unable to make decisions at the start, but the graded nature of the therapy helped her feel more stable.

The researchers said issues of control were very important in teen therapy given that most teenagers' therapy will have been instigated by their parents. "Power and its ability to impact negatively upon therapeutic potential might ... be mitigated by a process of collaboration and encouraging the client to negotiate their position in the therapeutic relationship," they said.

What about rapport with the therapist? Although she benefited from therapy, Mary was not on the same page as her therapist:
"for an example she might use someone being scared of dogs and how the thoughts of the dog biting them would make them cross the road (...) it was like relates nowhere near to like feeling sick and how feeling sick affects ya it was nothing near that". Mary blamed part of this on her therapist seeming "really old". "I think for most teenagers," Mary said, "... you'd feel easier to talk to someone who, not obviously dead young, but d'ya know not someone in their 50s or something or like old." In contrast, Samantha was pleasantly surprised at her therapist's ability to relate to her situation:
"It was a bit disconcerting cos she like, not knew about it, but knew how to like deal with all this stuff, which I wasn't entirely expecting but it was helpful." The final theme related to the structure of the way therapy was delivered. Mary felt like some of the progress was too slow and there was frequent repetition. For Samantha, the structure and predictability of CBT was an advantage, and the boundaries laid down by her therapist helped her feel safe. Katherine also liked the graded pace of therapy, with the gentle start helping her to feel more comfortable.

Donnellan's team said their interviews were a "tentative" first step towards finding out what CBT is like for young people. The findings demonstrate "the importance of the process of therapy, just as much as the content," they said. Based on this, some practical recommendations include: recognising the importance of the first stages of therapy for engaging with a teenage client; addressing the teen client's preconceptions about therapy; and finding out the pace and style they'd like the therapy to progress at.

"The service delivering CBT needs to promote the young person as being in control from the outset," the researchers said, "regardless of who is making the decision to access therapy. This may set the scene for them to develop control over their problems and establish stability in their life."

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Donnellan, D., Murray, C., and Harrison, J. (2012). An investigation into adolescents' experience of cognitive behavioural therapy within a child and adolescent mental health service. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 18 (2), 199-213 DOI: 10.1177/1359104512447032

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

A contact lens on the bathroom floor, an escaped hamster in the backyard, a car key in a bed of gravel: How are we able to focus so sharply to find that proverbial needle in a haystack? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that when we embark on a targeted search, various visual and non-visual regions of the brain mobilize to track down a person, animal or thing...

New research published in the journal Psychological Science has found that people living in urban areas with more green space tend to report greater wellbeing than city dwellers that don't have parks, gardens, or other green space nearby...

A pill form of marijuana provides greater pain relief than when a person smokes it, according to a new study. The study was conducted by researchers at Columbia University in New York and was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology...