March 26, 2013

Martin Harrow and Thomas Jobe have a new article coming out in Schizophrenia Bulletin that I wish would be read by everyone in our society with an interest in “mental health.” Harrow and Jobe, who conducted the best study of long-term schizophrenia outcomes that has ever been done, do not present new data in this article, but rather discuss the central question raised by their research: Does long-term treatment of schizophrenia with antipsychotic medications facilitate recovery? Or does it hinder it?
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Featured Blogs, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

December 17, 2012

As many of the readers of this website know, David Oaks, the long-time leader of MindFreedom, was badly injured when he fell from a ladder on December 1. He broke a bone in his neck, his injury so severe he had to be on a ventilator. The latest news is encouraging: he had a tracheotomy and is off the ventilator, able now to speak in a whisper. Personally, I owe David a great deal, as it was an interview I did with him in 1998 that propelled me to write more in-depth about psychiatry.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

October 26, 2012

After reading E. Fuller Torrey’s latest article in the Treatment Advocacy Center newsletter, in which he sharply criticizes Dr. Sandy Steingard for writing about anosognosia on madinamerica.com, and then goes on to attack me for my various writings, I have to confess that this time—after getting over the feeling that my head was going to explode—I thought, my patience with such dishonesty is running out.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

July 11, 2012

If we want to understand how our society may end up deluded about the merits of psychiatric medications, we can look at the research published by Robert Gibbons, Director of the Center for Health Statistics at the University of Chicago, …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

June 11, 2012

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a lengthy article titled “Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill,” and it illustrated, in vivid detail, how our society—and the medical community—may view a “drug of abuse” through one prism (as harmful) and a “prescribed drug” through another (as helpful), even though the drug in both cases is the same.
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Categorized in: Blogs

June 7, 2012

It is clear now that the marketing of ayptical antipsychotics over the past 20 years was, in essence, a criminal enterprise, as the makers of these medications regularly violated the law governing the selling of new drugs. The manufacturers hid …
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Categorized in: Blogs

May 16, 2012

E. Fuller Torrey, through his Treatment Advocacy Center, is the country’s most prominent advocate for outpatient commitment laws, which typically force people with a diagnosis of a severe mental illness to take antipsychotic medications. He has posted a review of …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Popular

April 21, 2012

Back in December,  when I decided to turn madinamerica.com into a webzine, I envisioned it as serving several purposes. I wanted to create a regular news report of research findings. I wanted to provide a forum for people to tell …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Community Updates

February 23, 2012

Martin Harrow has just published his 20-year outcomes data for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Those who took antipsychotics regularly experienced more psychosis, more anxiety, cognitive impairment, and markedly fewer periods of “sustained recovery.” Harrow asks: “Is very long-term treatment with antipsychotic medications undesirable?”
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Categorized in: Blogs

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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Categorized in: Blogs

January 25, 2012

Recently, Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, identified the “NIMH’s Top 10 Research Advances of 2011.” He wrote: “This has been a year of exciting discoveries and scientific progress . . . Here are 10 breakthroughs and events of 2011 that are changing the landscape of mental health research.”

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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Pregnancy & Birth Defects

January 12, 2012

The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA is one of the premier centers for brain research in the country, and so when the Institute announced in late December that its scientists had discovered a “brain cell malfunction in schizophrenia,” …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Pregnancy & Birth Defects

December 13, 2011

In its 2011 summer issues, Behavioral Healthcare ran a two-part interview with me about my book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. This stirred William Glazer, a well-known psychiatrist who has served as a consultant to Eli Lilly since 1992 (and to other pharmaceutical …
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Categorized in: Answering the Critics, Blogs, rwinfo

December 10, 2011

For a long time, psychotherapy has been seen as providing little benefit to patients with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. However, two recent studies, including one in unmedicated patients, have found cognitive therapy to be quite helpful. In the first study, …
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Categorized in: Blogs

November 30, 2011

This past summer, Behavioral Healthcare ran a two-part interview with me about my book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. This stirred William Glazer, a well-known psychiatrist who has served as a consultant to Eli Lilly since 1992 (and to other pharmaceutical …
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Categorized in: Answering the Critics, Blogs

November 2, 2011

On October 23, the New York Times ran a very nice feature story about a Los Angeles woman, Keris Myrick, who, even though she has a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, thrives today as CEO of Project Return …
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Categorized in: Adult, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Anxiety, Benzodiazepines, Blogs, Depression, Disorders, Mood Stabilizers, Psychiatric Drugs, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

September 16, 2011

During the past six months, I have traveled to a number of English speaking countries to speak about my book Anatomy of an Epidemic, and everywhere—Canada, the U.K., Ireland, New Zealand (and Iceland)—I find the same questions being asked. Why, …
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Categorized in: Blogs

August 2, 2011

Marcia Angell’s two-part essay in the New York Review of Books, which appeared in the June and July issues, has helped trigger a much-needed societal discussion about the merits of psychiatric medications. Numerous web sites and bloggers have commented on …
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Categorized in: Blogs

July 10, 2011

The New York Times’ Defense of Antidepressants Today, the New York Times published an op-ed essay by Peter Kramer titled “In Defense of Antidepressants” on the front page of its Sunday Review section. In Anatomy of an Epidemic, I wrote …
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Categorized in: Blogs

June 30, 2011

Three recently published papers, along with a report by a Minnesota group on health outcomes in that state, provide new reason to mull over this question: Do antidepressants worsen the long-term course of depression? As I wrote in Anatomy of …
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Categorized in: Adult, Antidepressants, Blogs, Depression, Disorders, Psychiatric Drugs