Tag: rethinking psychiatry

In the United States and abroad, a growing number of groups have devoted their mission and mindset to rethinking psychiatry, doing their best to...

Soteria House’s history is complex and fascinating. Soteria Houses have never had the support they needed, but they still managed to change so many lives.

From Quartz: A new study by Yale neuroscientists proves that there is no universal, unconditionally optimal profile of brain functioning. This means that differences often categorized...

In this piece for La Otra Psiquiatría, Fernando Colina describes his vision for a compassionate, non-pathologizing mental health system. Below is the full translation of his...

In this piece for The BMJ, Dr. Peter Gøtzsche points out several of the major problems with the drug-based paradigm of psychiatric care as well as...

In this interview for ABC Australia, leading psychology professor Peter Kinderman discusses why we need alternative ways of understanding and supporting people in distress that take...

Rethinking Psychiatry is proud to continue the work that began in 2010 in Portland, and we look forward to many more years of challenging the dominant paradigm in mental health and providing new perspectives and solutions.

In this piece for Medium, Andrés Ruiz explores the reasons that psychiatry is the only medical speciality with an anti-movement and a history of sustained criticism....

In this piece for Aeon, Carlin Flora critiques sociologists' and psychologists' attempts to categorize and classify people's personalities into distinct groups and profiles, advocating that we...

From The New York Times: In his new book The Mind of God, neurologist Jay Lombard uses his experience studying neuroscience to discuss philosophical and spiritual...

On Friday, June 9th, Robert Whitaker participated in a discussion with Lois Holzman about psychiatry, the medicalization of distress, and alternative practices. Click here to...

Dr. Jim van Os presents something unlike any other psychiatrist I have come across: a clear vision, and a pathway, for dismantling the existing mental health system and replacing it with something new that actually works. And he is doing it with all the status and prestige not only of a psychiatry insider, but as one of the world's leading scientists. Along with changes in the definitions of health and psychosis, van Os describes pilot programs now underway in The Netherlands to establish small, human-scale services — inspired by Open Dialogue — that engage the social network of people in distress. And, inspired by the best of the US "peer" movement, by involving people who have themselves recovered from madness in a treatment role.

Rethinking Psychiatry is an independent, grassroots group in Portland, Oregon that advocates for a paradigm shift in mental health care. On January 20, we hosted a film and discussion by activist and artist Barbara Ford. The subject was “Despair and Resilience: How to Face this Mess We’re in Without Giving Up.” Ford also showed film called Joanna Macy and the Great Turning, featuring philosopher, writer, and activist Joanna Macy.

Any attempt to establish an alternative diagnostic system to the predominantly biologic DSM-5 classifications or to initiate a transformation of the individually oriented mental health treatment systems needs to critically explore how, not only what, we think about health and healing, about mental and emotional suffering, about traumatic experiences and injustices, and the multiple forms of pain that are part of our human existence. The broad critique of the DSM-5 by so many national and international organizations and individual colleagues will in the end not be powerful and far reaching enough without this inquiry into the foundations of our thinking and without reflection about our ways of thinking.

Minn Post did a feature story last week on Vail Place, an alternative mental health treatment center run on a community “clubhouse” model where the nearly 900 members and staff work side by side to run the center’s activities. Vail Place was founded in Hopkins, Minnesota in the early eighties by mental health activists and family members as a community for psychosocial rehabilitation. “The work isn’t therapy,” a member explains. “It’s growth. It’s ‘I cans’ rather than ‘I can'ts.’ And that’s important for mental health and survival.”

My opposition to psychiatric drugs is not just that they are harmful, dangerous, and destructive. That would be plenty motivation enough. And it is. But in addition, my profession, which I love and value, has been hijacked by the APA and Big Pharma. It is my goal to return psychiatry to its proper place - where good psychotherapy is understood to be the treatment for human suffering.

The joint ISEPP/UCLA conference was held in Los Angeles on November 14-16, 2014. Today, ISEPP and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs are delighted to bring you videos of 13 of the 15 invited plenary talks. Each video is accompanied by a crisply written interview with the speaker, focusing on the goals of their work, challenges facing their profession, and how they evaluate any salient changes in mental health practice and research. These smartly produced and edited videos range from 20 to 30 minutes in length and are freely available on www.TransformingMadScience.com