Ellen Barry
@ellenbarry.bsky.social
mental health reporter, former Moscow, Delhi, London, now at home in New England. reach out w ideas: ebarry@nytimes.com
“He just doesn’t like S.S.R.I.s." Psychiatry has been shaken up by Robert F. Kennedy's push to curb Americans' use of antidepressants. I reported last week at the APA's annual meeting. Comments are open. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/s...
Kennedy’s Push to Curb Antidepressants Has Shaken Psychiatry
nytimes.com
Powerful personal essay meets fascinating science reporting in this exploration of what dementia takes from us. @jacobfeldman.bsky.social's favorite this week by @ellenbarry.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/s...
When My Father’s Canary Flew Away
nytimes.com
During the last years of his life, my father woke up nearly every day convinced that he had to set off on a journey. Could brain science explain what had happened? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/s...
When My Father’s Canary Flew Away
nytimes.com
An extraordinary thing from @ellenbarry.bsky.social; memoir and inquiry, the neuroscience of this century and the history of the last, a quiet facing of things, hope. Give thanks that there are still spaces for work like this. (Gift link)
When My Father’s Canary Flew Away
nytimes.com
As usual, the reader comments on this report about RFK Jr's push to help Americans wean off SSRIs are worth spending time with, both those that say SSRIs were lifesaving & those saying withdrawing from them was awful. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/s...
Kennedy Starts a Push to Help Americans Quit Antidepressants
nytimes.com
Today RFK Jr. rolled out a multi-pronged effort to help Americans wean off SSRI antidepressants. Do they want to? Comments are open. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/s...
Kennedy Starts a Push to Help Americans Quit Antidepressants
nytimes.com
As RFK Jr. sets out to rein in the use of SSRIs, a group of top psychiatrists are developing ground rules for helping patients get off medications, acknowledging that patients are often "parked" on a drug for years without any endpoint in sight. Comments are open. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/s...
Top Psychiatrists Call for a Greater Focus on Ceasing Medication
nytimes.com
Some good news: New research from Harvard Medical School found youth suicides were 11 percent lower than expected after the launch of the 988 hotline in 2022. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/s...
Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline
nytimes.com
Idaho cut wraparound services for people with schizophrenia. In the weeks after the service was discontinued, there was a preventable death among the program's former clients. And another. And another. And another. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/h...
Idaho Cut Services for People With Schizophrenia. Then the Deaths Began.
nytimes.com
Last summer, I received a manuscript in the mail from a 32-year-old man who wanted to tell me the story of his psychosis -- how close he came to killing his dad, and how, when it passed, they put the pieces of their relationship back together. Here it is. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/s...
A Secret History of Psychosis
nytimes.com
The V.A. has eliminated thousands of medical positions left vacant after a wave of resignations last year, leading to the first drop in front-line medical staff in 20 years. Our latest, w/@NickNehamas @danielle_ivory @anfuller
A Harvard psychiatrist addresses Kennedy's claim that he "cured schizophrenia" with the keto diet. That is "not accurate," Dr. Christopher Palmer said. But Palmer hopes Kennedy's MAHA movement will help expand access to the treatment. w/ @ellenbarry.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/u...
Psychiatrist Says Kennedy Was ‘Not Accurate’ in Discussing His Keto Studies
nytimes.com
For much of the 20th century, dysfunctional mothers were blamed for all kinds of adult maladies. But a new study on early life parenting found something unexpected: Stress from the father's behavior shaped a child's health into the future.
Research Finds Interaction With Father, Not Mother, Affects Child Health
nytimes.com
Great reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social + @pambelluck.bsky.social on the push — & fight — to get postpartum psychosis in the DSM:
Will ‘Psychiatry’s Bible’ Add a Postpartum Psychosis Diagnosis?
nytimes.com
Is it time for 'psychiatry's Bible' to include a listing for postpartum psychosis? @PamBelluck and I report on the internal deliberations. Comments are open. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/h...
Will ‘Psychiatry’s Bible’ Add a Postpartum Psychosis Diagnosis?
nytimes.com
Another blockbuster from Sarah Topol, on a rapacious international egg-harvesting syndicate that preys on poor women. Hopefully we will read about arrests in this case. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/m...
They Answered an Ad for Surrogates, and Found Themselves in a Nightmare
nytimes.com
A jury was asked to convict a woman who killed her two boys. What they were not told: The prosecution's own expert found she was schizophrenic, psychotic at the time of the crime. Prison officials did too. But the jury did not hear it, Yvonne Abraham reports. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/04/m...
We ask too much of jurors in insanity cases. Especially ones as horrifying as this. - The Boston Globe
Murder trials are hard enough. An insanity case demands even more.
bostonglobe.com
This piece about a man who overcame midlife despair by becoming a typewriter repairman is -- I don't know how to describe it except as chicken soup for the soul. The sounds of these machines are strangely comforting. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life
This is the story of how a man traded steady, grinding corporate security for a dying craft and, in the process, found his soul.
nytimes.com
A lot of news yesterday, but this @JasonDeParle scoop deserves your attention: The administration plans to slash support for long-term housing programs by two thirds, shifting funding stream to 2-year sobriety & treatment programs. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...
Trump Administration Expected to Drastically Cut Housing Grants
nytimes.com
This is far worse than anyone expected. Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps. All as mass internment camps are being built.
Trump Administration to Drastically Cut Housing Grants
nytimes.com
At the peak of his career, a bullfighter unclips his pigtail. Heart-stopping, from @jasondhorowitz “I’ve decided to stop before I fall.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/w...
Blood and Tears as Spain’s Troubled Bullfighting Star Hangs Up His Cape
nytimes.com
exceptional reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social + Jason DeParle on the new homeless policy shifts in Salt Lake City — which the Cicero Institute casts as “a harbinger of the future.” gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/u...
Extraordinary reporting from Emily Baumgaertner Nunn on the malignant criminal network that turns girls in foster care into prostitutes on L.A.'s Figueroa Street -- and why the police can't stop it. Everyone should read this. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/m...
Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street?
nytimes.com
A Labor Day reminder: today there isn't a single city, metro area, or state in the U.S. where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment. Millions of people with jobs—even multiple jobs—aren't safe from homelessness in this country.
Opinion | America Is Pushing Its Workers Into Homelessness
nytimes.com
It’s painful to lose a therapist, but it’s made better when the therapist has made plans for such circumstances, as I learned when my own therapist handled it all with candor and grace. Thanks to @ellenbarry.bsky.social at @nytimes.com for writing this important piece and for including me.
Ellen Barry@ellenbarry.bsky.social · last yr.When a therapist dies unexpectedly, what is left behind? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/s...
When a therapist dies unexpectedly, what is left behind? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/s...
The Ghost in the Therapy Room
nytimes.com
Attention all Boston-area Punjabi princesses, book club aunties, Khan Market influence peddlers and B-list maharajas. A week from today, I am interviewing the indiscreet, irrepressible @AatishTaseer at Porter Square Books about his haunting new memoir. Come with questions.
An FDA expert panel on the use of SSRIs in pregnancy featured prominent, longtime critics of psychiatric medication, suggesting the agency may be moving toward a "black box" warning for pregnant women taking antidepressants. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/h...
F.D.A. Panel Debates ‘Black Box’ Warning for Antidepressants in Pregnancy
nytimes.com
