This article examines how "Off Centre," a play by Haresh Sharma about mental health in Singapore, first devised and produced by The Necessary Stage (TNS) in 1993, provides a valuable opportunity for audiences to encounter characters labeled "mad" or "off centre" (a colloquial term in Singapore for being mentally ill),…

The addition of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD) to the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" ("DSM-5") was a controversial decision in 2013 and one that continues to the present. Researchers have found that DMDD exhibits both poor interrater reliability and discriminant…

Employment has been shown to be a strong predictor of recovery in individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) and is often amongst the foremost reported goals of this population. Yet individuals with SMI continue to face high levels of unemployment and employment marginalisation. This article aims to outline three major career barriers unique to…

Although it is recognised that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and personality disorders (PDs) have a variety of factors in common, the exact nature of the relationship between ASD and the PDs remains unclear. The overlapping symptom profiles and complexities in developmental trajectories in ASD and PDs can lead to diagnostic uncertainty and to…

Catatonia is a severe clinical syndrome which has been increasingly reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The prevalence of catatonia in ASD is unknown. Diagnosing catatonia in ASD is complicated by overlapping clinical features such as mutism, stereotypies, and echophenomena. Here, we present the clinical histories of two individuals with…

There is a great deal of attention, in professional communities and the lay public, to a college mental health crisis. This article will review the dominant narrative of this situation, identifying and challenging the common elements of the narrative. The author will locate this college mental health crisis narrative in historical context,…

Participatory research (PR) involves people with lived experiences of the research topic as co-creators of knowledge. I have the dual role of being both a doctoral researcher and the co-ordinator of a research group -- the Converge Evaluation and Research Team (CERT) -- which consists of researchers with lived experience of mental health…

University campuses could become leaders in developing alternatives to policing for managing public health and safety, yet, nearly all campuses rely on campus or local police to respond to mental health emergencies. Herein, we present the available evidence for campus mobile crisis intervention teams (MCITs) as an alternative to policing, consider…

Preventing mass shootings in the United States, particularly those occurring in school settings, is an important priority for families, government leaders and officials, public safety agencies, mental health professionals, educators, and local communities. What does the evidence say about how to detect, prevent, and respond to these tragic events?…

Educators caring for family members with mental illness often hide hat they're going through, although support from fellow educators would make a huge difference. Johnson recounts her experience helping her son through a breakdown while still working within schools. She suggests how teachers might reach out to and support colleagues they sense are…

Art therapy is a recognized primary or adjunctive treatment modality that traces its modern roots to the mid-twentieth century. However, art therapy has its origins, at least, in the 1840s. William A. F. Browne, the first medical superintendent of Crichton Royal Institution in Dumfries, Scotland, in 1839, was a reformer. He was part of a larger…

The success of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in typical schools has led to interest in PBIS for alternative programs, including residential programs. In this brief, we describe PBIS as implemented in a therapeutic treatment home for adolescents with mental health needs. The PBIS framework enabled the program to add Tier 1…

The prediction of dangerous and/or violent behavior is particularly important to the conduct of the U.S. criminal justice system when it makes decisions about restrictions of personal freedom, such as preventive detention, forensic commitment, parole, and in some states such as Texas, when to permit an execution to proceed of an individual found…

If mental health has become a reactionary concept, much like the notion of public health in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, then how can critical theory best elaborate a concern for well-being which includes both a psychic and social dimension? This article proposes the concept of existential health to grasp the salubrious zest for life that has…

The use of quantitative methods within realist methodologies are fairly rare. This is perhaps because a realist understanding of the social word as complex and dynamic (messy but not chaotic) does not sit well with traditional variable-based causal analysis which test specific theoretical assumptions, yet cannot account for interaction, moderation…