Yearly Archives: 2012
Common Sense, Deferred: Lessons From the “Fresh Air” Fight, Part One
How does a straightforward, common-sense idea - guaranteeing the elemental pleasures of fresh air and access to nature to those in inpatient and residential psychiatric/mental health facilities – repeatedly fail on a policy level?
Active Engagement More Important Than Type of Treatment
Researchers (including Irving Kirsch) in the U.S., Israel and the U.K. find that a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressants may provide a slight benefit...
Neuroleptic Drugs: Patient vs. Provider Perspective
In January 2012, The Journal of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology published a study which suggests that providers who prescribe neuroleptics are unaware of how impacted their patients are by the adverse effects of these drugs. Now more than ever we need to reevaluate the benefits and harms that can come with psychiatric drugs. The power inherent in this kind of practice -- exercising a marginalized voice or tending to our mistakes -- is the very essence of healing.
Surgeon General Targets Rising Suicide Rate, But Not Drugs Linked to Suicide
An Op-Ed in Op-Ed News discusses the disconnect between concern about rising suicide rates in the general population (and the military) and awareness of...
Death of a Child Linked to Onset of Psychosis
Using data from the National Comorbidity Survey, researchers found that individuals with a psychotic disorder who had lost a child had a significantly later...
Finland: The Pre-Seminar
What follows is my attempt to report on the Pre-Seminar program from the 17th International Conference on the Treatment of Psychosis.
Who Determines Efficacy?
1 Boring Old Man reflects on his work with children and adolescents, in which he directly observes the troubling effects of antidepressants, and the...
Benzodiazepines Associated With 3.5x Greater Dementia Risk
Researchers in the U.K. find in a 22-year prospective study of 1134 men, 103 of whom took benzodiazepines regularly for one or more period...
Why Most Biomedical Findings Echoed by Newspapers Turn Out to be False
Researches in France and the United States found that seven of the top ten most reported-upon studies on ADHD in newspapers in the 1990s...
Misrepresentation of Research in the News
French researchers, publishing in PLoS Medicine, find that the mismatch between perceived and real beneficial effects of new treatments is related to the presence...
Is the GSK Settlement Sufficient
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine asks whether settlements such as the $3 billion GlaxoSmithKline agreed to last July regarding off-label...
Vikram Patel on (something like) Peer Support
Though there might be discussion of his premises, Vikram Patel seems to be arguing for a global version of peer support.
Antidepressants Associated With Increased Driving Risk
Researchers from the Taiwan and the United States find through a study of 5,183 subjects with motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) and 31,093 matched controls...
Addiction, Biological Psychiatry and the Disease Model (Part 1)
Both addiction and “mental illness” are far more prevalent where there is poverty, patriarchy, and other forms of mental and physical violence; all this creates fertile ground for various forms of trauma experiences on a daily basis. Addiction and extreme states of psychological distress will never be fully eradicated, or even humanely treated on a broad scale, until the material conditions from which they have emerged are transformed in a truly revolutionary way.
Richard Lewis – Long Bio
ADDICTION, BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY, AND THE DISEASE MODEL
Richard D. Lewis, MEd, has worked with addictions for the past 19 years in a community mental health clinic...
All Quiet on the DSM Front
1 Boring Old Man write on the silent treatment echoing from the DSM-5 battlefront.
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Post-Prozac Nation: Did our Drugs Work?
Prozac Nation stands as a reminder of the failed promise and language of bio-psychiatry. It also highlights what the first and real problem was for me at age 16. Still underlined are the words that drew me in, made her an ally, and which could have inspired great dialogue had they not been sidelined by psychiatric drugs. She writes, “I feel like a defective model, like ... my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.”
Richard Lewis – Short Bio
Addiction, Biological Psychiatry and the Disease Model: Richard D. Lewis, MEd, has worked with addictions for the past 19 years in New Bedford, MA. Richard discusses the...
Paul Andrews – Short Bio
Paul W. Andrews is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Canada. His work on the...
Things Your Doctor Should Tell You About Antidepressants
The conventional wisdom is that antidepressant medications are effective and safe. However, the scientific literature shows that the conventional wisdom is flawed. While all prescription medications have side effects, antidepressant medications appear to do more harm than good as treatments for depression.
Vanessa Krasinski – Long Bio
EMBODIED HEALING
Vanessa Krasinski, MSN, RN, has worked for over a decade in various social system settings: a group home for pregnant and parenting foster...
Paul Andrews – Long Bio
Paul W. Andrews is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Canada. He has a PhD in...
Vanessa Krasinski – Short Bio
Embodied Healing: Vanessa writes about the impact of trauma, and the transformative power of embodied healing practices. Her interests in alternative therapies arise from...
Psychotropics Drive Record 4.02 Billion U.S. Prescriptions in 2011
With drugs for ADHD increasing 17%, and an "unprecedented increase in patients taking antidepressants and antipsychotics," overall prescription drug sales in the United States...
Thomas Szasz, April 15, 1920 – September 8, 2012
Thomas Szasz, relentless "critic of coercive psychiatry, the 'therapeutic state,' and the war on drugs," died at his home in Manlius, N.Y. over the...
