How Psychiatry Evolved Into A Religion
Biological psychiatry has managed to stealthily become America’s first state-sponsored religion, by disguising itself as a helpful, scientific medical field. Millions have been led astray by its lies, and enslaved by its labels and drugs. It will take ten plagues to free them. Psychiatry’s tenth plague has only just begun.
Are Mental Disorders Brain Diseases ‘In Waiting’?
Proponents of the idea that mental disorders are brain diseases argue that even though we may not have discovered the underlying pathology of mental disorders like schizophrenia or depression yet, surely we eventually will? Mental disorders, on this view, can be thought of as brain diseases ‘in waiting.’
Psychiatry: The Brain is a Malignant Tumor!
We have persistently failed in trying to influence psychiatry with scientific argument because we view the brain as normal and they think it is a cancer. Imagine how weird it must seem to them: We are talking about an organ inside our heads that we treasure, and they are peering at it the way a surgeon studies a neuroblastoma.
Steps Forward: Integrative Mental Health is Gaining Ground
In September 2017, a gift of 200 million dollars was given to the University of California, Irvine, to create new buildings and new programs dedicated to forwarding the model of integrative healthcare. This large donation is bound to lead to changes in both the training of psychiatrists as well as the delivery of mental healthcare.
The Angry Congressman: Tim Murphy’s Lack of Insight
The most spectacular part of Rep. Murphy’s hypocrisy has nothing to do with abortion or reproductive rights. Allegations of his dangerous behavior and his lack of insight into his own actions would be enough to commit him, involuntarily, to psychiatric treatment under the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act that he championed.
The Orwellian New Digital Abilify Will Subjugate Vulnerable People Across the US
The FDA approved the prescribing and sale of a new hi-tech compliance-monitoring “antipsychotic” drug this week. A new chapter in human darkness has descended — one that is applauded by the alliance of control addicts that made it happen.
Creeping Fascism: University “Unfit to Study” Policies
“Unfit to study” policies are “respectable fascism.” Where marginalization, exclusion, and control on the basis of putative “mental illness” is starting to happen in any arena, or to any designated group, we need to oppose the institutionalized oppression and stand in solidarity with those under siege.
Learning About Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal
We held the first course ever on psychiatric drug withdrawal on 12 June 2017 in Copenhagen. The course was open to patients, relatives, psychologists, doctors and other social and healthcare workers, and 77 people participated.
Duration of Untreated Psychosis Revisited: Response to the Goff Paper
Based on the studies cited, it seems hard to support the assertion that “early initiation of antipsychotics may improve long-term course of the illness.” This raises an urgent question about initial treatment. Doesn’t it make sense to try to capture all of those individuals who might get through a psychosis without drugs?
More Bad News About Smartphones – When Will We Heed the Warnings?
We might expect that there would be a reasonable response to an overwhelming body of evidence that our tech usage patterns must be altered or consequences will only become more dismal. Yet as we are learning, trends seem to be running contrary to what the advice begs us to consider.
Why Disease and Illness Are Concepts of the Body
If you loosen the association between the concepts of illness and disease and the body, the words cease to have any discriminative power. They are no longer able to pick out a particular category of unwanted situations and become synonymous with generic terms like ‘problem’ or ‘difficulty’. They become meaningless.
Crazy or Wise? Learning From Those Who Have Transcended Psychological Crisis
The documentary CRAZYWISE, released earlier this year, challenges Western ideas of human suffering by considering the concept that extreme states can be processes of transformation and that other cultures might have something to teach us.
Mental Illness Vs. “Bad” Behavior
Allen Frances has claimed that "It's a great mistake to confuse bad behavior with mental illness." Yet two of the so-called mental illnesses (conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder) consist essentially of "bad" behavior, while in at least six others, "bad" behavior is an integral part of the problem.
Psychiatry’s Greatest Harm: Its Lies Have Poisoned Our Entire Culture
Psychiatry’s harms extend far beyond those people it ‘treats’ — they are undermining our society’s entire foundation. In just thirty years in America, the medical model's widespread acceptance has largely undone the huge adaptive potential that millions of years of brain evolution had provided.
Bias and Deception in Behavioral Research
Contrary to popular belief, science is not immune to the corrupting influences of the society it operates in. When false results produced by p-hacked research have social, scientific, and political importance, and affect or harm the lives of millions of people while entire fields look on, it constitutes a scientific scandal.
Tranquilizing Humanity into Oblivion: A Warning from Nathan S. Kline
Widely heralded as the father of American psychopharmacology, Kline insisted that his discoveries were adjunctive to psychotherapy, not replacements. The psychopharmacology of Kline's era recognized that medications are a blunt instrument.
A Brave New World – Somatic Psychiatry in the Spotlight
Historically, psychiatric diagnoses were never intended to signify literal brain diseases. They used to be a shorthand and a guide to point to the psychological issues that presented. This is how it still should be today. The way diagnosis is now used is a travesty.
Dualism and the Mind-Body ‘Problem’
The proposal that there are differences in the way we understand the human body and human activity seems to make people particularly uneasy. It is often misunderstood as illustrating the ‘mind-body problem,’ and held up as an example of the great crime of ‘dualism.’
Mortality of People Using Mental Health Services and Medications
153,451 deaths were registered in Australia in the period 10 August 2011 to 27 September 2012. 75,858 of these deaths were registered for persons who had accessed mental health-related treatments. These deaths accounted for 49.4% of all deaths in this period.
The State of Animal Psychiatric Research
Since animal research is the foundation for moving on to clinical trials despite its poor quality, it is likely that this leads to many superfluous trials in humans based on false hopes. This leaves a risk of adverse events for the participants in the trials, and subsequently the patients.
Ending ECT: From a Lawsuit to a Novel – The Moment is Now!
In the midst of flagrant professional misrepresentation of ECT, this is a call to arms. Quite simply, the time has come for a frontal assault on the ECT industry and on the professionals associated with it. The time has come to rid society of this barbaric “treatment” altogether.
UN to USA: Forced Treatment is Prohibited
The experience with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention's visit to the US is a watershed for our work against forced psychiatry. Step by step, global and national advocacy support each other as part of a worldwide movement to abolish forced psychiatry using the UN human rights framework.
Warning to Parents: Psychiatry is How Kids Get High and Die in the USA
Street drug dealers and stimulant-peddling doctors both get clients high and addicted for profit. So there is really no difference between what they do except that doctors are more ‘successful’ at it, since they enjoy many advantages over illicit dealers and can get away with doing it legally.
“Prisons Without Bars” – Forced Institutionalization of People with Disabilities
In the wake of deinstitutionalization, we no longer have the vast asylum system we once did. Instead, something more insidious has taken root — for-profit institutions that call themselves neurorehabilitation centers, group homes, and other official-sounding names.
Schizophrenia Genetic Research – Running on Empty
The time has come to halt the massive failure that has characterized schizophrenia molecular genetic research, and to thoroughly reassess what critics have always said are the severely flawed family, twin, and adoption studies that inspired and helped justify this research.
