Yearly Archives: 2015

Public perception of mental health stigma does not entirely reflect a reality that exists. Many of you reading this that have experienced truly negative reactions from others (due to mental health concerns and/or treatment) may be angered or offended by this proposition. However, no one (especially myself) is saying that stigma is not a serious concern that doesn’t need to be addressed. It is. Although in some ways I do feel that people can seek out treatment with less apprehension today than decades ago, there is no doubt that many still experience negative reactions (intentionally or unintentionally) from what others perceive in them.

Stimulant medications like Ritalin and Adderall, often prescribed to treat children diagnosed with ADHD, are known to cause hallucinations and psychotic symptoms. Until recently these adverse effects were considered to be rare. A new study to be published in the January issue of Pediatrics challenges this belief, however, and finds that many more children may be experiencing psychotic symptoms as a result of these drugs than previously acknowledged.

We now have only 89 days to respond to Docket No. FDA-2014-N-1210. Tell the FDA no to the down-classification of shock devices. Tell the FDA exactly how subjective and damaging the terms “treatment-resistant” and “require rapid response” are, and how they fail as legitimate medical concepts. The known risks of electroshock should not be ignored because one has been psychiatrically labeled.

Barbara Ehrenreich weighs in on mass-market mindfulness, Silicon Valley, Buddhism- sliced up and commodified.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Cusimano published a commentary in Nature explaining that the latest Bond villain placed his robotic drill in the wrong location in his attempt to destroy 007’s memory of faces.

“Suicide rates in the United States have been rising, especially among veterans and members of the armed forces. Traditional assumptions about why people kill themselves have not led to effective strategies for suicide prevention,” psychologist Craig Bryan tells Science News. “So in recent years, psychologists and others have been reconsidering basic beliefs about why people carry out the ultimate act of self-destruction.”

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has launched a peer research survey and is looking for participants. “We invite peer workers and certified...

When I wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic, one of my foremost hopes was that it would prompt mainstream researchers to revisit the scientific literature. Was there evidence that any class of psychiatric medications—antipsychotics, antidepressants, stimulants, benzodiazepines, and so forth—provided a long-term benefit? Now epidemiologists at Columbia University and City College of New York have reported that they have done such an investigation about antipsychotics, and their bottom-line finding can be summed up in this way: Psychiatry’s “evidence base” for long-term use of these drugs does not exist.

Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.

Listen: NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook discusses the new book “Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, The Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy,” by the psychiatrist Julie Holland.

Benedict Carey at the New York Times covers the push for new programs that emphasize supportive services, therapy, school and work assistance, and family education, rather than simply drug treatment.

Listen: NPR’s On the Media talks about how bad health information ripples through the news. Gary Schwitzer of HealthNewsReview.org cautions against other problematic health reporting in a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Health News Edition.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is attempting to reclassify the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) device for use in treating severe depression (MDE) or bipolar “disorder” (BPD). The device is currently a class III device and the proposal is to make it a class II device.

Children of parents who suffer from depression have a severely heightened risk of mental health problems, but new research points to several factors that seem to strengthen young peoples’ resilience and predict good mental health.

The president and president-elect of the American Psychological Association penned a letter to the New York Times calling on “Congress and other policy makers to address these factors with interventions supported by evidence rather than avoiding them by scapegoating the mentally ill.”

Miriam Stoppard writes an opinion piece on the lack of good research on Ritalin, a drug often used for ADHD, and discusses the latest Cochrane review which found a high percentage of side-effects in children. Despite the lack of quality evidence, “NHS figures show that nearly one million ADHD prescriptions were handed out last year in England – a number that has more than doubled in 10 years.”

A New York Times piece by John Leland asks “Do you know what you want to do when you get old?” as it follows six New Yorkers over age 85 throughout the year. For them, “old age is a mixture of happiness and sadness, with less time wasted on anger and worry.”

In a Forgotten History article for the Daily Beast, Brandon Ambrosino tells the story of the 1972 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. There,...

Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager who became infamous for buying a life-saving drug and then raising the price significantly, was led away in handcuffs by the FBI last week. Unfortunately, the Boston Globe editorial board reminds us, “viewing his much-publicized takedown as anything like a tipping point in the push for pharmaceutical industry reform would be a mistake.”

PsyBlog presents research on the experience of awe. “That jaw-dropping moment when coming across something surprising, powerful, beautiful or even sublime can have a transformative effect, they find.”

We are profoundly social beings living not as isolated individuals but as integral members of interdependent social systems—our nuclear family system, and the broader social systems of extended family, peers, our community and the broader society. Therefore, psychosis and other forms of human distress often deemed “mental illness” are best seen not so much as something intrinsically “wrong” or “diseased” within the particular individual who is most exhibiting that distress, but rather as systemic problems that are merely being channeled through this individual.

In October of 2013, I wrote a blog on the Foundation for Excellence website (‘The Story of My Perfectly Wonderful Children and the Change WE Need to Make in the World to Save Them’) shortly after finding out that my son’s guidance counselor suggested he (then 10) consider ‘distraction meds’ to aid in his school performance. If I could sit every member of this school system down right now and ask them all my most burning questions, they would be: Do you want to be a tool of the system? The one who knows all the rules and holds all the lines? That says 'no, we can't do that', just because that's the way it is? Or do you want to be a guide through all that mess?

A new NIH-funded study suggests that children from low-income environments are more likely to have neurological impairments. The researchers claim that these neurodevelopmental issues are “distinct from the risk of cognitive and emotional delays known to accompany early-life poverty.”

September 11^th 2015 was my last day working as a counselor/therapist in the U.S. community mental health system. After 22 years working within that system I resigned out of protest having waged a concerted effort (2½ years) to challenge potentially dangerous psychiatric drug prescribing patterns at my workplace. In late April of this year these challenges led to the filing of a major complaint with the Massachusetts Dept. of Mental Health and eventually the Dept. of Public Health. I never expected to discover just HOW unprepared, dysfunctional, and totally oblivious the entire state bureaucracy is when it involves any serious complaints detailing possible abuses and harm being done to its citizens by a branch of medicine called Psychiatry. Just how broken is "Broken"?

For those of you who follow me, there have been some changes in my life and circumstances that are relevant to some things going on in the movement and the world, and also some new documents coming out of the UN that I haven't reported yet to the survivor community and our allies. I will try to wrap up everything in a kind of end-of-year update, and hope to also make myself available for a phone/internet dialogue at some point.