DUBAI // Imagine living with a rare disorder that drives a craving for inedible substances such as paper, soap, metal, charcoal and clay.Elena-Maria Andrioti, of the Psychology Centre at the Carbone Clinic in Dubai, has come across patients suffering with the rare, impulsive and untreatable craving disorder called pica, an appetite for non-food substances.And Ms Andrioti believed many more are hiding the disorder through shame. “I have had a patient who reported having consumed glue and paper when she was 10 years old to ‘try it out’ and, sometimes as a defence mechanism to reduce her anxiety >>>

Q. I think my mother, who is in her late 70s, is showing signs of Alzheimer’s. She is increasingly forgetful, and has become negative and nasty. She was never like this. My two brothers think that there is nothing wrong with her because they only visit once or twice a month and then stay for an hour or two. I’m with her on an almost daily basis. How can I convince them that she has a problem that we need to address?A. No one likes to see a parent age, and it is common for people to pretend that nothing is wrong until there are serious problems. I would suggest that you have a family meeting >>>

So it turns out sitcoms can erase bigotry.That’s the bottom line of a study recently presented before a conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. And it doesn’t even have to be a particularly good sitcom.To judge, at least, from a screening of its first two episodes, the Canadian sitcom on which the study is based was earnest, amiable, and about as funny as Schindler’s List. Apparently, however, Canadian television viewers liked it well enough. Little Mosque on the Prairie, a culture clash show about life at a Muslim worship house in small town Canada, premiered in >>>

A potential case of data manipulation has been uncovered in a psychology paper. The suspect article is ‘Why money meanings matter in decisions to donate time and money’ (2013) from University of Arizona psychologists Promothesh Chatterjee, Randall L. Rose, and Jayati Sinha. This study fell into the genre of ‘social priming‘, specifically ‘money priming’. The authors reported that making people think about cash reduces their willingness >>>

A potential case of data manipulation has been uncovered in a psychology paper. The suspect article is ‘Why money meanings matter in decisions to donate time and money’ (2013) from University of Arizona psychologists Promothesh Chatterjee, Randall L. Rose, and Jayati Sinha. This study fell into the genre of ‘social priming‘, specifically ‘money priming’. The authors reported that making people think about cash reduces their willingness >>>