Recent Foreign Correspondents

A Symbolta of Sorts

May 15, 2012

In the early 1990s, Prozac was riding high but Lilly were planning its successor. The leading candidate was duloxetine – a dual inhibitor of both serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake as the older tricylic antidepressants (TCAs) had been. The company approached …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Shocking the Homeland

May 11, 2012

The thriller Homeland reached its denouement in the UK at the weekend – in an Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) scene. Claire Danes, a Homeland security agent supposedly taking Clozapine to contain her paranoia has to distinguish reality from psychosis to save …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

On the Importance of Moral Imagination

May 10, 2012

Some years ago I was appointed as a non-executive director to the board of a leading Mental Health Trust. It served a culturally diverse population in a large Northern city with a population of around half a million. I had …
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Categorized in: Community, Foreign Correspondents, Non-Drug Approaches, Trauma/Distress | Tagged as: , , , ,

The Factories of Post Modernism

May 8, 2012

In the 1960s revolution was afoot. Antipsychiatry was born. The new revolutionaries targeted medicalization and claimed mental illnesses didn’t exist. Out of this cauldron, postmodernism was discovered. Postmodernism provided the basis for an ongoing guerilla war against capitalism and industrial …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Crazy Mother Proposes New Diagnostic Category

May 7, 2012

My son is dead. He hanged himself at 17 but meh… whatever… that’s yesterday’s news and I’m totally over it now. I don’t long for my child or feel any sorrow or pain. Actually I hardly think about him or …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

May Fools’ Day

May 4, 2012

Following the long-standing tradition, dating back at least to Chaucer, of playing practical jokes on May 1, The Scientist clearly thought it would be a good idea to show the outside world that science doesn’t always have to be stuffy …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Hiding the Bodies of Suicide Victims

May 3, 2012

New Zealand has the highest rate of youth suicide in the OECD. The numbers of people who die from suicide in this country are twice that of deaths from road traffic crashes. More young people under the age of 25 …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Severe And Enduring Mental Illness – A Self Fulfilling Prophecy

May 2, 2012

I’ve always thought that the label of ‘severe and enduring’ coupled with ‘mental illness’ should be laid to rest.  Put in the grave alongside schizophrenia.  Another double whammy in the life of a mental patient, adding insult to injury.  And …
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We’re All North Korean Now

May 1, 2012

There has been a fascination recently with watching the orchestrated demonstrations of flag-waving enthusiasm for the regime that emanate from North Korea – the waves of people moving in synchrony like a shoal of fish. It’s difficult to know whether …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

American Woman 2

April 24, 2012

There are a number of features of the American Woman story that are emblematic. My original post said she contacted GSK and GSK replied but a closer reading of the emails makes all this less clear. I will continue the …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

American Woman

April 20, 2012

On Thursday, May 31, 2001, a woman whose name is known only to GlaxoSmithKline emailed the company:   “My name is… I was diagnosed with panic disorder about four-and-a-half years ago. Since that time I’ve been taking Paxil, which is …
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Categorized in: Adult, Antidepressants, Anxiety, Disorders, Foreign Correspondents, Pregnancy & Birth Defects, Psychiatric Drugs

Scaremongerers of the World Unite

April 17, 2012

At a meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Brighton in June 2011, Dave Nutt, a professor of psychiatry at Imperial College London issued a call to arms to his audience at a plenary lecture to defend psychiatry which in …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Pathologising Infancy

April 16, 2012

I had an epiphany the day I first saw my son in a coffin after his suicide. The moments following his hanging himself were a blur of sirens, screaming, people running, violent medical interventions, the nightmare of panic and noise …
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Categorized in: Antidepressants, Foreign Correspondents, Psychiatric Drugs, Uncategorized

Black and Mad

April 16, 2012

When David Bennett died, pinned face down beneath the bodies of four nurses in a secure psychiatric unit, he was just thirty eight years old and had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It took him twenty eight minutes to die, an …
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Categorized in: DSM, Foreign Correspondents, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders | Tagged as:

Pla(u)to: The Car the Pharma Built

April 11, 2012

There is a line from Lilly and FDA in 1991 through to Louis Appleby in 2012 (see Platonic Lies) that runs through Pfizer in 2001. In November 1998, Victor Motus, a prominent member of the Filipino community in Southern California, …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

From Tokenism To Totalitarianism – On Being A Psychiatric Survivor Activist

April 11, 2012

Is the softly softly approach of service user involvement making a difference to the psychiatric system?  Like the drip drip of water wearing away stone.  Or does the tokenism continue to stifle and even suffocate the voices of lived experience …
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Fe Fi Fo Fum, I Smell the Wiff of a Eugenics Drum!

April 8, 2012

Lundbeck Foundation has donated its biggest grant ever to Danish psychiatric research, a grant which breaks all Danish records for financed psychiatric research. The project, to be known as ‘The Lundbeck Foundation’s Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research’ (iPSYCH)’ will receive 121 million kroner over a three year period with more to come should the research prove promising. The purpose of this research? ”We will investigate why some people develop mental disorders. We will identify biological disease mechanisms, and we also intend to provide the basis for better treatment and prevention”
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Platonic Lies

April 6, 2012

When she sent Margaret’s Story to us, M had already written to Britain’s Suicide Czar, Louis Appleby. She got the following response: Dear Mrs Thank you for taking the trouble to contact me. I am so sorry to hear about the death …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Margaret’s Story

April 4, 2012

The story outlined below is authored by ‘Margaret’. Her name has been changed as she wishes to remain anonymous. It is worth noting that since this was first written there have been a number of developments and an update to ‘Margaret’s Story’ will follow.


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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

If Pharma Made Cars

March 31, 2012

If Pharma made cars, the seat-belt warning signs would be removed, and the beeping noise if you moved without a seat-belt on would be silenced, as the start of a gradual process that would result in seat-belts being removed or …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Odysseus Come Home

March 27, 2012

Odysseus was in his 70s. Coming up to the 50th anniversary of a very happy marriage. He had formerly been a respected professional, a longtime member of the bowling and social clubs – a pillar of the community. He had …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents, Pregnancy & Birth Defects

Has Psychiatry Chosen to Ignore the Hippocratic Oath?

March 26, 2012

A new business model in New Zealand mental health treatment has seen psychiatry lose its role in assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning and delivery. In its push to establish a role within this new model, psychiatry has focused on creating demand for the one role in which it faces no competition from other mental health specialists – prescribing. This focus appears to be in direct conflict with the Hipporatic Oath under which doctors swear to avoid over treatment and therapeutic nihilism.
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

2012: A Space Odyssey – From A Psychiatric System In My Neighbourhood

March 26, 2012

An epic on the scale of Homer’s poem, with stories of captivity, voices from above and beyond, forgetfulness, wandering, rudderless ships, escaping wind, men turned into swine, the giving and receiving of trouble on the journey through the system.  Using …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: , , ,

Dram of Eale

March 24, 2012

They told me the 80 year old man who’d had a stroke must be depressed – he wasn’t rehabilitating properly. Could I see him and look at whether the Celexa he’d been started on a week before needed tweaking? Jeff was …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Homeland Security

March 21, 2012

In the latest hit series Homeland Claire Danes plays Carrie Mathison a CIA agent with bipolar disorder taking Clozapine. She takes the drug to prevent herself tipping over into frank paranoia in a world where being paranoid is necessary for …
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents