April 7, 2013

Since I left the psychiatric prescribing trenches and came south for the winter, I’ve been staying in a beach town within driving distance of a technology metropolis. I take breaks from my writing and walk to the beach. There, I meet and talk with the winners of the American dream. They are intelligent, highly educated and financially successful. They take their beach vacations here.
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Categorized in: ADHD, Anxiety, Blogs, Children and Adolescents, Depression, Featured Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: ADHD, Alice Keys MD, mental health, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric medication

March 21, 2013

A physician I know forwarded a pharmaceutical-funded article that states “psychiatric values” are “derived largely from the liberal-democratic tradition, borne of the 18th century European Enlightenment.” I cannot use the term “enlightenment” when it comes to prescribing drugs with serious medical side-effects and efficacy in the range of an enhanced placebo effect.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

March 10, 2013

A reader asked why more psychiatrists don’t speak up louder against psychiatric drugs. I’d like to think there’s someone in charge who could sound the alarm. It’s nice to imagine that working doctors have the power and freedom to speak up in a forceful and visible manner. If such a doctor exists, it’s not a psychiatrist who works in the trenches. A working doctor today is not in a position to be Paul Revere.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, coming off psychiatric drugs, Empowerment, Human Rights, mental health recovery, speaking up

March 1, 2013

Not long ago I had a conversation with a psychiatrist. He told me about a diagnostic dilemma he’d run up against at work; When a judge makes an unfunded treatment mandate as part of her judgment, she pressures the doctor to make a “payable” psychiatric diagnosis. If the doctor stretches the truth out of sympathy and provides an inaccurate but payable diagnosis so that his patient can have access to medical care and money to live on, he is committing fraud that can mean heavy fines and incarceration for himself.
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Categorized in: Blogs, DSM, Featured Blogs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, diagnostic labels, DSM, gate keepers, insurance, psychiatric labels, resources

February 13, 2013

My public writing has brought my mother and I closer together than we’ve been in decades. There have been disagreements. But now, my almost ninety-year-old mother tells me she reads everything I write. She recently told me that she’s glad I see things so clearly.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Community, Disorders, Featured Blogs, Genetics, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, blame, community, education, Empowerment, hope, industrialization, Poverty, social models

February 8, 2013

You may think I’m slow on the uptake when I say this. And maybe I am. But I recently came to the realization that products or lifestyles that are vigorously marketed and promoted are bad for you.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Non-Drug Approaches, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, cultural matrix, hope, Human Rights, the bigger picture

January 17, 2013

This is the second in my new series, “Haiku for social change”, the first having appeared on my own blog page. Since this piece is about pharmacology and psychopharmacology, I think MIA is a good home for it.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Disorders, Featured Blogs, Industry, Psychiatric Drugs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, anitdepessants, Antipsychotics, children, coming off psychiatric drugs, haiku for social change, methamphetamines, psychiatric medication, psychiatric medication withdrawal

January 3, 2013

Yesterday, Dr. Daniel Fisher emailed and asked my thoughts with regard to “recovery”. Even before I walked away from prescription-pad-only psychiatric work, others asked me about this. Other treatment providers, designated patients and family members asked what I thought they could expect to happen next and what they should do to make things better. I told them that chemical interventions are not the only, or even the essential, tool for recovery.

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Categorized in: Blogs, Community, Featured Blogs, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychiatric Drugs, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, clinical research, complete mental health recovery, Empowerment, hope, lived experience, Recovery

December 29, 2012

How is it that we allow the agendas of others to occupy our childrens’ minds? Is it possible that a stranger can know our child better than we do? Is there anything a baby needs to learn that can’t be taught by being held in a parent’s arms? Because my children’s eyes and ears and thoughts are on me every day, they are key players in my ongoing efforts to live a right life. I count on their eyes and ears and thoughts to shore me up during times of temptation. They always lead me home.
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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Children and Adolescents, Community, Featured Blogs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Violence | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, Alternatives, children, choice, cultural roots, family, parenting

December 18, 2012

We poison ever growing numbers of children with chemicals known to cause aggression and suicidality. We routinely drug children with these so they’ll sit still and be quiet in classrooms. Now, we drug babies for crying and 3 year olds for acting frightened while locked away from their families in day care centers. Those unsuccessful in school environments are incarcerated. It ‘s a well-worn path.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Non-Drug Approaches | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, Alternatives, comunity, Empowerment, hope, Human Rights, occupy, safety, shootings

December 10, 2012

It seems that all the wants I have now for going and doing are a drug withdrawal, of sorts. I have been hooked, addicted to motion, fed on credits, isolated from the earth, from my humanity and from myself.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, creativity, cultural causes, education, personal story, philosophy, rethinking psychiatric model

December 4, 2012

Yes, a psychiatric diagnosis can be a dangerous thing to have. But, these days, so is having any medical diagnosis. The names and words of the diagnoses themselves are not so much to blame for the harm. Rather, the harm comes through the ways the diagnoses are created and how they are used.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Featured Blogs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, diagnosis, DSM, Human Rights, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric labels

November 29, 2012

My sabattical of last winter has spun off a second one. I remain uncertain of my role as a physician in a society which values pills over personal growth and change. Last summer, unplugging my life from the “American dream” seemed in order. It’s not easy to make changes with chains and weights in place. It’s not easy to think, decide and move with the financial shackles that are the bones of everyday life.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, Amerian culture, biopsychiatry, psychiatric medication, research funding

November 19, 2012

The practice of medicine in our country is being swallowed whole by a snake. The snake started with the poor, the black, the brown; the already disenfranchised of the deep south and inner cities many years ago. It was an easy sell to the better-off taxpayers. Who wants to give up money to take care of poor people?
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Categorized in: Blogs, DSM, Featured Blogs, Industry, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, devolution of medical care, DSM-5, funding, managed care, medical model, medical training, Poverty, research funding, rethinking medical systems, unemployment

May 28, 2012

What if it were the sun that could cure you; would you have the courage to go and find it? Would you wear sunscreen? If it were the schools themselves that made your child unhappy and restless; would you take …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Uncategorized | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, Alternatives, bigger picture, children, Empowerment, questions, uncertainty

May 21, 2012

Each time I see the initials for Mad In America, MIA, I think of the Vietnam war and lost young men. I remember engraved steel MIA bracelets, each with the name and birthday of one man lost to our world. …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, early deaths, history, marketing of psychiatric drugs, Media, memories, mental health advocacy

May 15, 2012

A reader in the commentary here asked me if I think “psychiatry is salvageable.” This is a timely question that requires careful consideration. First, I’ll examine this question with regard to my personal life. Then, I’ll explore this question from …
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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Uncategorized | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, managed care, medical systems, prescribing, psychiatric providers, Psychiatry

May 9, 2012

“How could I not have known?” This question has been asked of me, as a psychiatrist, with regard to prescribing psychiatric drugs. All those problems. How could I not have known? This question, when asked only of psychiatrists, comes with …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, cognition, information filters, information processing, listening, marketing, not hearing

May 5, 2012

What an amazing ride I’ve had in the past few days on the tsunami of commentary from my previous post. While it’s been fun (dare I use the “F” word again in a post?) it has also left me unsettled. I’m …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Uncategorized | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, all one, Empowerment, hope, humility, new learning, on-line conversations

May 2, 2012

I seem to have generated unexpected ire with my biographical information. This deserves more than just a few lines in the reply section. When I hear strong reactions, I suspect an iceberg. In this case, there may be two icebergs. First, there …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs | Tagged as: Alice Keys MD, Empowerment, mental health recovery, rethinking medical systems, the power of words