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Ellen Barry

@ellenbarry.bsky.social
1.6K followers 814 following 104 posts

mental health reporter, former Moscow, Delhi, London, now at home in New England. reach out w ideas: ebarry@nytimes.com

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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
“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...
nytimes.com
Kennedy’s Push to Curb Antidepressants Has Shaken Psychiatry
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The Sunday Long Read @thesundaylongread.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
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...
nytimes.com
When My Father’s Canary Flew Away
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Neuroscience folks should check out this lovely piece
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
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...
nytimes.com
When My Father’s Canary Flew Away
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Nicholas Dawes @nicdawes.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
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)
nytimes.com
When My Father’s Canary Flew Away
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Kennedy Starts a Push to Help Americans Quit Antidepressants
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Kennedy Starts a Push to Help Americans Quit Antidepressants
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Top Psychiatrists Call for a Greater Focus on Ceasing Medication
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Idaho Cut Services for People With Schizophrenia. Then the Deaths Began.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
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...
nytimes.com
A Secret History of Psychosis
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
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
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Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Psychiatrist Says Kennedy Was ‘Not Accurate’ in Discussing His Keto Studies
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
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.
nytimes.com
Research Finds Interaction With Father, Not Mother, Affects Child Health
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Julianne McShane @juliannemcshane.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Great reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social + @pambelluck.bsky.social on the push — & fight — to get postpartum psychosis in the DSM:
nytimes.com
Will ‘Psychiatry’s Bible’ Add a Postpartum Psychosis Diagnosis?
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
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...
nytimes.com
Will ‘Psychiatry’s Bible’ Add a Postpartum Psychosis Diagnosis?
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
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...
nytimes.com
They Answered an Ad for Surrogates, and Found Themselves in a Nightmare
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
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...
bostonglobe.com
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.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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/...
nytimes.com
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.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
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...
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Expected to Drastically Cut Housing Grants
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
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.
nytimes.com
Trump Administration to Drastically Cut Housing Grants
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
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...
nytimes.com
Blood and Tears as Spain’s Troubled Bullfighting Star Hangs Up His Cape
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Rachel Cohen Booth @rcobooth.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
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...
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
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...
nytimes.com
Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street?
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FLAVOR FLAV ⏰ @flavorflav.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
R.I.P. ICON D’Angelo 🙏🏾🕊️
An icon
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Dr. Laura Carter Robinson • Humanity&Planet @humanityandplanet.com · 25/07/2025
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.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
When a therapist dies unexpectedly, what is left behind? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/s...
nytimes.com
The Ghost in the Therapy Room
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
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.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
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...
nytimes.com
F.D.A. Panel Debates ‘Black Box’ Warning for Antidepressants in Pregnancy
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Brilliant @antontroian dispatch from Dubai, which has replaced London and Palm Beach as redoubt for the Russian elite. Manages to show how, and why, powerful Russians have stuck with Putin as he led their country into fratricidal war. (Read to the end.) www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/w...
nytimes.com
Want to Understand Russia? Visit Dubai.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
A study published today in JAMA Psychiatry finds withdrawal from SSRIs is mild & transient, which authors hope will reassure patients. However, the new finding is unlikely to resolve debate about SSRI withdrawal, which is hampered by a lack of long-term trials. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/h...
nytimes.com
New Research Questions Severity of Withdrawal From Antidepressants
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
An astonishing figure in this piece: Last year, the U.S. budgeted $12.8B for new affordable housing. This country is now poised to spend $45B on immigrant detention centers. That's nearly *four times* as much on cages as on homes—in the middle of a devastating housing and homelessness crisis.
newrepublic.com
Are We About to Have Labor Camps in the United States of America?
If you think that’s far-fetched, then you really haven’t been paying attention to what the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been up to lately.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
A grand jury indicted researcher Kseniia Petrova on smuggling charges today. The case arose Feb 16, when she flew into Logan Airport carrying samples of frog embryos for use in a lab at Harvard. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/s...
nytimes.com
Grand Jury Indicts Russian Scientist on Smuggling Charges
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Stephanie Nolen @stephanienolen.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
This was supposed to be a breakthrough year in the 44-year-long struggle against H.I.V. It's turned into something very different. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/h...
nytimes.com
Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Since May: Federal district courts have ruled against Trump admin 94% of the time. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump admin 94% of the time. A judiciary at war with itself.
Bar chart titled “The Supreme Court vs. The Lower Courts: Rulings on the Trump Administration” showing three horizontal bar charts for May 1-June 23, 2025. Federal District Courts: large red bar (82 cases, 94.3% against) with tiny green bar (5 cases, 5.7% for). Circuit Courts of Appeal: medium red bar (15 cases, 68.2% against) with smaller green bar (7 cases, 31.8% for). Supreme Court: tiny red bar (1 case, 6.3% against) with large green bar (15 cases, 93.7% for). Shows dramatic reversal from lower courts ruling against Trump administration to Supreme Court ruling for it.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Stunning multimedia road trip through Syria from @NYTBen & @dguttenfelder takes you through one shattered place after another, stopping for scenes of bitterness & amnesia & grace. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
Photos: A Road Trip Through Syria After the Fall of Bashar al-Assad
After decades of dictatorship and 13 years of civil war, can Syria put itself back together? Our journalists traveled the length of the country to explore its hopes and its challenges.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
It was a real pleasure talking with @awaisaftab.bsky.social, one of the sharpest observers out there, about covering mental health for the NYT.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
A large, longitudinal study of children's use of screens found that higher screen time did not predict suicidal behavior four years later. The children at highest risk, the researchers found, were the ones who said they were "addicted" to their devices. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/h...
nytimes.com
Real Risk to Youth Mental Health Is ‘Addictive Use,’ Not Screen Time Alone, Study Finds
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Maggie Astor @maggieastor.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Breaking: The Trevor Project received a stop-work order last night on its contract with the national 988 suicide prevention hotline. The Trump administration is eliminating the option for LGBTQ callers to the hotline to press 3 and connect with someone who specializes in LGBTQ mental health.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
"Do not contradict the president." Musk and his team systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at Social Security to justify gaining access to data on millions of Americans, a NYT investigation found. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/u...
nytimes.com
The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
"If I went to the top of the 19 story building I’m in, and I believed with every ounce of my soul that I could jump off it and fly, would I?” Mr. Torres asked. ChatGPT replied that, if Mr. Torres “truly, wholly believed you could fly? Then yes. You would not fall." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...
nytimes.com
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
20 years ago, when U.C.L.A. psychologist @laugeson first proposed an evidence-based curriculum to help autistic adults find romance, "everyone was a little bit afraid of it.” Comments are open on our piece about neuro-spicy dating boot camp 🩷 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/h...
nytimes.com
The Real-Life Dating Boot Camp That Inspired ‘Love on the Spectrum’
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
"Welcome to Massachusetts." Those were the judge's words this morning, upon releasing Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova from federal custody, four months after she was detained for failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/s...
nytimes.com
Russian Scientist Released After Four Months in Federal Custody
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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 11/06/2025
ICE detentions of people with no criminal records are up nearly 900 percent over the same period last year. Gift link: wapo.st/43DxcEB
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Overjoyed to hear Lost Patients, a podcast about living with psychosis in an American city, won a Livingston Award today. One of the best things I heard last year. All the flowers to @sydbrownstone @otherwilljames @esmyjimenez www.npr.org/podcasts/510...
npr.org
Lost Patients
Lost Patients takes you into new spaces most people have likely never experienced before — the inside of someone's psychosis, mental health court rooms, and the past and present streets of Seattle, sa...
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Devon Heinen @devonheinen.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Holy cow, this long-form feature by @washingtonpost.com's @drewharwell.com, about a woman in her 20s who's streamed her life nonstop for the past three years, is so depressing, yet so eye-opening. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
washingtonpost.com
Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’
A lonely young woman in Texas has streamed every second of her life for three years and counting. Is this life, or a performance of one?
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Michelle Goldberg @michellegoldberg.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
@mega2e and @KirstenGrind find that Musk was using ketamine often, sometimes daily, and mixing it w/other drugs, while campaigning for Trump. He told people he was taking so much ketamine that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/u...
nytimes.com
On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama
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Ellen Barry @ellenbarry.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
A federal judge in Vermont has ordered ICE to release Kseniia Petrova, commenting that she saw no "factual or legal basis" for revoking Petrova's visa. A big legal win... except that Petrova also faces criminal charges & watched the hearing from a Louisiana jail. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/s...
nytimes.com
Judge Finds Government Acted Illegally in Russian Scientist Case
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