Trigger warning: This post contains details of specific crimes that are related to sexual assault and murder. In 1992, an 84-year-old grandmother was brutally assaulted and killed in California. For 25 years, the mystery of her death went unsolved—and her killer unapprehended—due to the lack of physical evidence to tie him to the crime. Twenty-five… Read more »
Following the school shooting in Florida at the end of February, President Trump advocated for the re-establishment of “mental asylums”, also known as psychiatric hospitals, citing a much-needed improvement of the mental health system and as a solution to gun violence in America. In order to contextualize the President’s claims, in this blog post, I’ll… Read more »
Have you ever wondered why or how researchers categorize people into different groups? Of course, there are specific types of groups you might first think of, such as differentiating people by race, gender, income level, marital status, and education. However, there are a variety of other types of groups that researchers might find interesting that… Read more »
There are currently more individuals diagnosed with severe mental illness (SMI) in jails and prisons in the United States than in hospitals [1]. Deinstitutionalization (explained in the next paragraph), changes in sentencing policy, the war against drugs and mass incarceration have all contributed to the dramatic increase in the number of mentally ill who are… Read more »
Imagine your friend, Alex, has bipolar disorder. Alex feels like the medication he has been taking gives him headaches and that getting high on pills works better, and he chooses to stop taking it as a result. Very soon, Alex’s symptoms begin to come back. To you he seems anxious and maybe even impulsive, but… Read more »