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Omega-3, a fatty acid found in oily fish, may prevent the onset of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders long after being consumed, according to a study released Tuesday. Up to seven years after taking omega-3 supplements for 12 weeks, young people at "ultra-high" risk were less likely to have suffered the debilitating condition than a control group given a placebo, reported the study. Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions and hallucinations, including hearing voices and seeing things that do not really exist. It typically emerges during adolescence or early adulthood, either abruptly or gradually. There is no cure. Current treatment focuses...

Former Spokane NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal, whose white parents say she has been pretending to be black for years, says in a new interview that she related to Caitlyn Jenner’s struggles as a transgender woman. “I cried. Because I resonated with some of the themes of isolation, of being misunderstood—to not know if you have a conversation with somebody, will that relationship then end because they have seen you as one way,” Dolezal told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired Wednesday, one day after she told Matt Lauer that she identifies as black.

Full Title: Strong cannabis causes one in four cases of psychosis: Users three times more likely to have an episode than those who have never tried it ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª As many as a quarter of new cases of psychotic mental illness can be blamed on super-strength strains of cannabis, scientists will warn this week. The potent form of the drug – known as ‘skunk’ – is so powerful that users are three times more likely to have a psychotic episode than those who have never tried it.

  Smoking cannabis can lead to manic behaviour: Hyperactivity, aggression and delusion are all strongly linked with the drug, researchers warn  

"If President Obama suffered a “shellacking” in the 2010 elections, then what he endured Tuesday night was nothing short of a vicious gangland beatdown the likes of which have rarely been seen before in the history of electoral politics. This, of course, is a wonderful and well-deserved outcome. But beware: America now enters the two most dangerous years of her existence — or certainly the most dangerous since the Great Depression and possibly going all the way back to the Civil War.... .....And this is where things get very, very dangerous for America. President Obama ...... Now come his very...

Psychedelic mushrooms can do more than make you see the world in kaleidoscope. Research suggests they may have permanent, positive effects on the human brain. In fact, a mind-altering compound found in some 200 species of mushroom is already being explored as a potential treatment for depression and anxiety. People who consume these mushrooms, after “trips” that can be a bit scary and unpleasant, report feeling more optimistic, less self-centered, and even happier for months after the fact. But why do these trips change the way people see the world? According to a study published today in Human Brain Mapping,...

Maureen Dowd, author of “Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk”, speaks during a panel discussion during a luncheon at the Book Expo America convention, Saturday, June 5, 2004, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey) I never smoked marijuana before, and Maureen Dowd‘s haphazard experience with a weed-laced candy bar in her Denver hotel room certainly isn’t motivating me to book a plane ticket to what is soon to be dubbed the “Mile High State.” The New York Times columnist was in Colorado reporting on the state’s first months of legalized marijuana use when she decided to take what she later learned...

Maureen Dowd travelled to Colorado in January, ate a bit too much of a marijuana-laced chocolate bar and proceeded to have a Valley-of-the-Dolls-style meltdown in her hotel room. Here's how she describes the experience in her Wednesday New York Times column: "I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn't move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the...

A Denver woman was allegedly shot to death by her own husband while on the phone with police after he consumed marijuana edibles and began hallucinating. Kristine A. Kirk clung to her phone with a 911 dispatcher for nearly 15 minutes before her final scream was accompanied by a piercing gunshot late Monday night, NBC reported. When officers arrived at the 44-year-old's home they reported finding the mother of three dead at the scene after suffering a gunshot wound to the head.

We think of psychopaths as killers, alien, outside society. But, you could have one for a colleague, a friend – or a spouse ...These people lack remorse and empathy and feel emotion only shallowly. In extreme cases, they might not care whether you live or die. These people are called psychopaths. Some of them are violent criminals, murderers. But by no means all. Professor Robert Hare is a criminal psychologist, and the creator of the PCL-R, a psychological assessment used to determine whether someone is a psychopath. “It stuns me, as much as it did when I started 40 years...

Having an unusual personality structure could be the secret to making other people laugh, scientists said on Thursday after research showed that comedians have high levels of psychotic personality traits. In a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers analyzed comedians from Australia, Britain and the United States and found they scored significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs. The traits included a tendency towards impulsive or anti-social behavior, and a tendency to avoid intimacy. "The creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those...

Mental illnesses are triggered six years earlier in patients who have smoked high-strength cannabis every day, a study has claimed. Mental health patients who smoked skunk daily—which has a high amount of the drug’s active ingredient, THC—had their first psychotic episode at an average age of 25, compared to 31 for non-users. Yet the damage was not limited to heavy smokers or those using powerful cannabis, according to the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. Mental health patients with a general history of using cannabis still had their first psychotic episodes at 28—three years earlier than those who never...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a study of adults who experienced psychosis for the first time, having smoked marijuana daily was linked to an earlier age of onset of the disorder, according to UK researchers. "This is not a study about the association between cannabis and psychosis, but about the association between specific patterns of cannabis use . . . and an earlier onset of psychotic disorders," Dr. Marta Di Forti, who led the research at the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, said in an email. Among more than 400 people in South London admitted to hospitals with...

Since removing constitutional rights is all the rage now, I have to ask: when does dislocation from reality become severe enough to justify involuntary commitment? A good study case is NYC's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently uttered a real gem on his weekly radio show. Writes Politicker.com:

No .. I’m not talking about the fiscal cliff, nor am I talking about the almost $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities we face as a nation. Iran and a nuke? Yeah .. that’s serious all right, but I’m told that we are messin’ with Iran right now in ways that you couldn’t even imagine – ways that could derail their nuclear plans for some time to come. Is the real problem our sagging economy? An oncoming second recession? The growth of government dependency? Sure … all of those are problems and all are difficult to deal with … but they...

Scientists are testing the idea that the stress of modern city life is a breeding ground for psychosis. In 1965, health authorities in Camberwell, a bustling quarter of London's southward sprawl, began an unusual tally. They started to keep case records for every person in the area who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder or any other psychiatric condition. Decades later, when psychiatrists looked... --snip-- Yet the results of his study, published last year in Nature (F. Lederbogen et al. Nature 474, 498–501; 2011), clearly showed that people who grow up in cities process negative emotions such as stress...

LONDON—Words can barely describe the jaw-dropping season finale staged by England's Premier League last weekend, but that didn't stop every pundit, Twitter wag and pub crawler in Britain from searching many beers into Sunday night for new ways to say "best season ever." The day started at 3 p.m. with seven of the league's 20 teams still playing for something important: not just the championship, but also to secure berths in a prestigious Europe-wide competition and the right to stay in the Premier League at all, under rules that annually demote the weakest teams. It wasn't settled until minutes before...

As radical progressives continue to strengthen their grip on the #OccupyWallStreet mob, they’ve looked to activists of yesteryear to glean some advice and guidance. The #OccupyChicago crowd has unsurprisingly turned to domestic terrorist-turned-university professor Bill Ayers. Ayers appeared at a recent “teach in” at #OccupyChicago and regaled his audience with stories of meeting with the Vietnamese to tut-tut about his “American revolution.” He theorized whether or not the police – you know, the pigs that protesters are attacking from coast-to-coast – are indeed a part of the 99%. They’re not if they attack us, he mused. But then, in typical...

A leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus is standing by incendiary language he used at a recent town hall when he charged that tea-party aligned members of Congress view African Americans as “second-class citizens” and would like to see them “hanging on a tree.” Rep. Andre Carson’s (D-Ind.) office confirmed that the lawmaker made the remarks at an Aug. 22 CBC Job Tour event in Miami and said that the comments were “prompted in response to frustration voiced by many in Miami and in his home district in Indianapolis regarding Congress’ inability to bolster the economy.” …

A bipartisan team of Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, will introduce federal legislation that would permit states to legalize, regulate, tax and control marijuana without federal interference. The legislation will be unveiled Thursday by Frank, an outspoken liberal Democrat, and the libertarian Paul, who is running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. The bill would limit the U.S. government role in marijuana enforcement to interdiction of cross-border or inter-state smuggling. Citizens would be able to legally grow, use or sell cannabis in states which have legalized the forbidden weed. The legislation is the first bill to be...