June 18, 2013

Would embracing a slower lifestyle eliminate the need for psychiatric drugs? When I was on 7 or so psychiatric drugs, I had a near death-like experience where I went through a dark tunnel, saw a white light, and received a …
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Categorized in: Bio, Blogs, Coercion, Community, Medication Tapering/Withdrawal, Mind/Body, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychiatric Drugs, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Trauma/Distress

May 23, 2013

If you haven’t been labeled mentally ill by the American Psychiatric Association, you have to ask yourself what’s wrong. Perhaps you were ahead of the game: you knew not to reveal yourself to them, you knew how to avoid them, you found other social support, and if so, a big congratulations. If not, what’s wrong? Why have you conformed?
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Categorized in: Anxiety, Bipolar, Blogs, Coercion, Community, Depression, Featured Blogs, Medication Tapering/Withdrawal, Mind/Body, Psychiatric Drugs, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

May 20, 2013

People in roles of power in the mental health system often don’t realize how much complicity they have in actually creating the symptoms they claim are biologically-based in individuals with psychiatric labels.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, DSM, Featured Blogs, Industry, Recovery/Empowerment

March 16, 2013

Psychiatrists at the University of Minnesota forced a young man into a profitable study of antipsychotic drugs over the objections of his mother, who desperately warned that his condition was deteriorating and that he was in danger of killing himself. On May 8, 2004, Mary Weiss’ only son, Dan Markingson, committed suicide. A petition to the governor of Minnesota now asks for an investigation.
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Coercion, Featured Blogs, Research, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders, Suicide, Uncategorized | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, AstraZeneca, CAFE study University of Minnesota, Dan Markingson, Human Rights, psychiatric medication, Seroquel, Stephen Olson

February 25, 2013

The United States desperately needs good programs to help people withdraw from neuroleptics, that is, antipsychotic drugs. From all I have seen and heard, there aren’t any — none at least that can reputably claim to get good results on a fairly consistent basis. Again and again I find myself challenged to envision such a program, and in reply to the challenge I have broken down this hypothetical program into various components.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Featured Blogs, Medication Tapering/Withdrawal, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychiatric Drugs | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, coming off psychiatric drugs, coming off psychiatric medications, drug withdrawal programs, medication, neuroleptic withdrawal, neuroleptics, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric medications, Psychosis

January 11, 2013

I am flattered and pleased to have been asked by MadInAmerica to post here the letter PsychRights wrote Monday to Vice President Biden regarding the misguided, counterproductive and very dangerous focus on identifying and forcing “treatment” on people diagnosed with mental illness as any part of the solution to gun violence in the United States.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Featured Blogs, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychiatric Drugs

December 19, 2012

I do not understand how we can continue to avoid the conversation about psychiatric medications and their role in the violence that is affecting far too many of our children, whether Seung-Hui Cho, Eric Harris, Kip Kinkel, or Jeff Weise (all of whom were either taking or withdrawing from psychotropic medications) or the scores of children and adults they have killed and harmed. It is not clear what role medications played in the Newtown tragedy, though news reports are now suggesting there is one.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Childhood Adversity/Trauma, Children and Adolescents, Coercion, Community, Featured Blogs, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychiatric Drugs, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model, Suicide, Trauma/Distress, Violence | Tagged as: Antipsychotics, biopsychiatry, children, emotional distress, family support, hope, mental health, mental illness, Mother Bear, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric medication, Recovery, Robert Whitaker, SSRI, Violence

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

December 1, 2012

In my recent Alternatives keynote I talked about mental health issues and our unjust prisons, including the shameful racism of the criminal justice system and the urgent need to end the so called War On Drugs. Many people have approached …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Featured Blogs, Industry, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model

July 22, 2012

On Wednesday, July 18, the Heritage Foundation sponsored a forum entitled “How to Bring Sanity to our Mental Health System.” It featured Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who was promoting his new book The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat …
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Categorized in: Antipsychotics, Blogs, Coercion, Featured Blogs, Psychiatric Drugs

June 10, 2012

(Speech delivered by Daniel Fisher at the rally in front of the Boston State House, June 2,2012) How can residents of Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) continue to be tortured in the name of treatment in this United States, the only …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: rights

May 21, 2012

First Aired 5-1-2012 What is it like for a prisoner diagnosed with mental illness? Should we have more mental health treatment in prison — or should we work to abolish our prison system? Daniel Hazen spent three years in prison …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Psychiatric Drugs

May 17, 2012

I am a psychiatrist who believes that involuntary treatment is rarely effective in the long run but I am also a psychiatrist who sometimes forces people into hospitals against their will.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion

May 8, 2012

May 9th marks 6 years since I organized the Center for Humane Psychiatry. I had been involved in previous reform organizations, but became disillusioned to find that one of the key principles that I believe is necessary to combat the …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: acupuncture, Alternatives, critical, drugs, holistic, Psychiatry, psychology, Recovery, therapeutic communities

May 8, 2012

This year’s American Psychiatric Association (APA) convention was a charged affair owing to a number of factors, including the intense DSM V controversy, the recent high profile critiques of the profession (such as those by Robert Whitaker and Marcia Angell), …
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Categorized in: Coercion, Community, Non-Drug Approaches, Op-Eds, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model

May 5, 2012

The May issue of Psychiatric Services includes a special section on social integration, including discussions of coercion in recovery-oriented approaches, housing, and the role of consumer-providers.

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Categorized in: Coercion, Community, In the News, Non-Drug Approaches, Recovery/Empowerment

April 27, 2012

For mental distress to be alleviated, it is often very important to understand how individuals construct meaning. For some this sense of meaning comes from spirituality. Modern psychiatric practice has become medicalized to the point where it has significantly ignored …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: breggin, humane, karon, Psychiatry, psycholog, Recovery, reform, rosenhan

April 23, 2012

Children have moments of looking at themselves apart from the established structure. This becomes more pronounced in the teen years. This can become a major source of contention inwardly where the child sees himself in a way that may not …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: children, parenting, psychology, social problems

April 16, 2012

I was contacted on one occasion to conduct an assessment and consult with a family in regards to their son who was in his early twenties who had been involuntarily committed by his father to a state mental hospital. As …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion, Community, Non-Drug Approaches, Psychotherapy, Recovery/Empowerment | Tagged as: bipolar, extreme states, Recovery, Schizophrenia

April 2, 2012

What is termed ‘madness’ or ‘mental illness’ is for some the only means for expression of their being lost and confused in a world which has caused them deep hurt and pain. Such is not disease but behavior with metaphorical …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: bipolar, extreme states, mental illness, schizophenia, spiritual

March 8, 2012

Through my undergraduate and graduate studies, I cannot recall once encountering a critical voice. The academic world was steeped in bio-psychiatric conceptions and the fraud of ‘chemical imbalances’. But even if something can be scientifically validated does not mean it …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: autism, children, Psychosis, Recovery, reform

March 1, 2012

I met with a 5 year old autistic boy who was non-verbal. He came into the office and began banging his hands on the computer keyboard. The secretary’s immediate response as it typical was to suppress that behavior and make …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Coercion | Tagged as: autism, developmental, relationship

January 27, 2012

Mary O’Hagan, an international mental health leader with lived experience, writes on the paradox of increasing legal coercion of psychiatric patients, even as the recovery model–and respect for human rights–have become “accepted norms.” 
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Categorized in: Coercion, Community, In the News, Industry, Recovery/Empowerment

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 14, 2012

I was sixteen and going on seventeen and I had never gone crazy before.  I think the most startling aspect of it is how utterly unable to acknowledge it I was. Even after.

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Categorized in: Coercion, Personal Stories