Psychosis as a Basic “Disturbance of Self”

February 22, 2012

Researchers in Australia and the U.K. found that a basic disruption of the sense of ownership of one’s experience and a lack of self-agency differentiated 49 patients at “ultra high risk” for psychosis from 52 matched healthy controls. This finding, the researchers say, is of both diagnostic and theoretical value, “shedding light on core phenotypic features of schizophrenia spectrum pathology.:”
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Criticism of the DSM Goes Mainstream

February 21, 2012

Criticism of the upcoming revision of the DSM has gone mainstream, with Forbes Magazine weighing in on the economics of medicalizing grief, and Fox News questioning the wisdom of calling shyness a disorder. Allen Frances, committee chair of the previous DSM revision, writes today about the radical expansion of pathology that the new revision represents, and its current revisers’ “freezing out” of criticism.

Psychosis in the General Population

February 21, 2012

Schizophrenia Bulletin explores “the extended psychosis phenotype,” finding that affective dysregulation, psychotic experiences, motivational impairments, and cognitive alterations are distributed throughout the population, and suggestive of a continuum of vulnerability for psychosis more than a categorical phenotype. In assessing rates of psychosis in the population, however, methods of data collection account for more variance than any other factor. The high rate of self-reported psychosis, they say, may represent a continuum of the “psychosis phenotype” in the general population that is not in need of clinical care.
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Psychosis Overlaps With Anxiety and Depression

February 21, 2012

In a representative community sample of 3021 adolescents and young adults, researchers in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.K. found that 27% of those with anxiety and depression exhibited one or more psychotic symptoms. Further analysis suggests that psychosis, depression, and anxiety are overlapping and reciprocal. The results are to be published in the March, 2012 issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin.
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Schizophrenia Bulletin Questions the “Psychosis Phenotype”

February 21, 2012

In an editorial introducing its March issue, Schizophrenia Bulletin explores the categorical distinctions that have defined and directed research into psychotic disorders since the late 19th century. Findings from cognitive, neurobiological and epidemiological research, they say, may support a more unitary concept of psychosis across the population. In a commentary in the same issue Patrick McGorry (see prior article) questions the limits of evidence-based health care in the treatment of psychosis, when “the status quo has manifestly failed.”
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Promoter of Early Intervention Programs for Psychosis Reverses Course

February 19, 2012

Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, who had championed early intervention in those ”at risk” of developing psychosis, has reversed course and, concerned about over-medication and over-diagnosis in young people, argues against the inclusion of “pre-psychosis” in the DSM-V.
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Surviving Schizophrenia: A Memoir

February 21, 2012

Louise Gillett

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was just nineteen. I am forty-three now, and I have recovered – and I use the term ‘recovery’ in its fullest sense. I have been free of medication and free of symptoms for twelve years. I have a husband, a home, and four young children – all things that I never thought would be possible at the age of twenty-five when I was informed of the diagnosis. Full Article →

The Manifesto of a Noncompliant Mental Patient

February 14, 2012

Aubrey Ellen Shomo

I see it everywhere: People with mental illness need medication.  It sounds reasonable.

Today, there are even political organizations that seek to make it easy to force a person to take it.

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A Psychiatrist Remembers His Recovery from Schizophrenia

January 23, 2012

Nathaniel Lehrman, M.D.

A psychiatrist since 1949, I was psychiatrically hospitalized on December 21, 1963 at New York City’s Mt. Sinai Hospital.   I stayed for three months, was diagnosed correctly as “schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type,” and recovered fully.   Full Article →

The Cause and Solution for Emotional Distress

Corinna West

February 22, 2012

Hi, I’m Corinna West, a psychiatric survivor.  I was very ill one time and now I’m not. That’s the short story. The slightly longer story is that I have recovered from 12 psychiatric diagnoses, 6 suicide attempts, 5 hospitalizations, 7 …
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Set Up for the Con

Bob Fancher, Ph.D.

February 22, 2012

If biological psychiatrists have lied to us, we need to ask why, as a culture, we have been so willing to embrace those lies. Generally, we’re most apt to be conned when the con men appeal to our hopes and fears. We don’t like to admit that many people rightly fear the influence of therapy. If we want to defeat biological psychiatry, we can’t just show its lack of integrity. We have to offer alternatives that deserve trust.
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Response to 60 Minutes

Jill Littrell, Ph.D.

February 22, 2012

On February 19, 2012, Lesley Stahl’s “Treating depression: is there a placebo effect?” aired on CBS 60 Minutes. Stahl is to be commended for doing an excellent job. During the broadcast, Stahl interviewed Irving Kirsch, Michael Brown, and Michael Thase …
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Letters from the Front Lines

Mark Foster, D.O.

February 21, 2012

Bob– An encounter from this week: I saw a 24 year-old theater actress who was started on Lexapro nine months ago for a one-time “panic attack” and has gained sixty pounds since.  This is extremely distressing to her as her …
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Personal Steps toward a Revolution in Mental Health Care

Ron Unger, LCSW

February 21, 2012

My friend David Oaks, director of MindFreedom , likes to say that what is currently needed is a non-violent revolution in mental health care.  Mental health “reform” too often amounts to no more than “re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic”.  Yet …
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A Road Map to Hope

Lisbeth Riis Cooper

February 21, 2012

In my last blog, invited readers to consider sharing their families’ recovery stories and to open to the possibility of the healing that is available when we connect with each other through this sharing. I would like to share one of these stories with all of you.
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The Real Suicide Data from the TADS Study Comes to Light

Robert Whitaker

February 20, 2012

Last week, Robert Gibbons reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry that fluoxetine was not found to increase the suicide risk in children compared to placebo. But if we closely examine the suicide data from the TADS trial, which at first glance seems to support Gibbons’ conclusion, we find a trail of hidden data and scientific scandal.
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My Voice, the Voice of Me

Olga Runciman

February 20, 2012

This is the second and last part of ‘The Voices of Me.’ Recovery. ‘I was a schizophrenic they said “please remember that, oh, and while you are at it, remember to stop thinking there is a cure, you are a chronic, a chronic schizophrenic, a biological defect with an incurable disease.”’
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Maintenance Versus Recovery?

Chrys Muirhead

February 18, 2012

The recovery movement isn’t new for some of us who have been recovering since the early days of our engagement with the psychiatric system, and speaking out for ourselves and others.  See Scotland the Brave and stories of the pioneering …
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Families and Communities Preventing Suicide in New Zealand

Maria Bradshaw

February 16, 2012

When told of my son’s sudden suicide, people often ask me how on earth it is possible to carry on living after your child takes his or her life. The honest answer is that I don’t know. Somehow you keep …
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Inquiries About The Family Care Foundation

Carina Håkansson

February 15, 2012

Dear All,

It happens more and more often that people, clients and their families contact me and my colleagues to ask if there are places like Family Care Foundation in other countries. I am not so sure about that, but if some of you know a place a bit like ours, please let me know!!!
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