Yearly Archives: 2012
Bottle Fish. Going and Doing. Being.
It seems that all the wants I have now for going and doing are a drug withdrawal, of sorts. I have been hooked, addicted to motion, fed on credits, isolated from the earth, from my humanity and from myself.
Building a Bridge to Hope
Hope heals. Thousand of years of experience and, more recently, numerous hope studies, prove this to be true. Yet hope is still a 4-letter word in many mental health settings. How can we build a bridge to hope from hope-stealing physical and emotional pain, hopeless diagnoses and prognoses, and hope-numbing side effects?
Psychiatry Beyond the Current Paradigm, and DSM-5
Recently, two more waves of criticism have broken onto the beach of opinion concerning mental health services and practice. Allen Frances has mourned approval of DSM-5 in his Psychology Today blog and the British Journal of Psychiatry has published a paper by members of the UK Critical Psychiatry Network. What is notable about both of these is that they give further voice to criticism of conventional mental health services by those who have spent years providing and researching them.
The Other Side
How does it feel to live free of psychiatric medications and the shackles of any attendant diagnoses after years of dependency, both on the drugs and the system? And perhaps more importantly, how did I persist through the hell of withdrawal and reintegrate into the world in a meaningful way, all the while with no guarantee that it might ever happen? Upon deliberately leaving behind the doctors and the hospitals, I wrote my own discharge plan, since theirs â a chemical straitjacket of manmade molecules â wasnât working for me.
The Road to Perdition
The recent research scandals out of the University of Minnesotaâs Department of Psychiatry may be alarming, but they are not new. Back in the 1990s, when the university was working its way towards a crippling probation by the National Institutes of Health (for yet another episode of misconduct (this time in the Department of Surgery), the Department of Psychiatry hosted two spectacular cases of research wrongdoing, both of which resulted in faculty members being disqualified from conducting research by the FDA.
CRPD Defeated in Senate – What Now?
Yesterday December 4, 2012, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by a 2/3 vote. Â Right...
Do Diagnoses Injure People?
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.
Big Brother Is Watching: A Strategy to End Kendra’s Law in New York State,...
As embodied in the U.S. Constitution, all levels of government have two types of power which enables them to make and enforce laws : police power, which empowers them to protect the individuals who live within their jurisdictions, and what is deemed parental power, formally parens patriae, which allows government to protect those individuals who canât protect themselves.
I Believe Most of us Have a Broken Heart, Not a âMental Illnessâ
Some of you might know me from co-founding The Icarus Project, an online community, real-life support network, and alternative media project by and for people living with the complex gifts that are too often labeled as âmental illness.â Some of you might not know that I'm also a poet. I've been asked to share my work here on Mad in America. This first poem I'm going to offer you is about trauma and resilience; the ways that the world breaks our hearts, and the ways we survive to find our voices again.
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
Those of us with lived experience, here in the US and now around the world have discovered that most mental health professionals have little understanding of what extreme mental states are like. They think those states are a sign of illness. They think that hearing voices and having vivid dreams are symptoms of those illnesses. We who have been through our own recovery know that we are all basically healthy people who have experienced a variety of traumas.
Big Brother Is Watching: Children and Older Adults, Part I
If involuntary outpatient commitment, popularly known as Kendraâs Law, is to be ended in New York when it sunsets or expires in 2015, the reductive stereotypes used to characterize the individuals most likely to be affected, viz., those persons labeled with serious mental illnesses and caught up in the public mental health system, must be discredited and discarded.
A Recent Study of Atypical Neuroleptics: “The Results of our Study are Sobering”
This week, MIA highlighted a recently published study of the four most commonly prescribed neurolpetics. As noted in the post, the major outcome was that these drugs were not found to be effective or safe. This important study, co-authored by Dilip Jeste the current president of the American Psychiatric Association, is worth reviewing in greater detail.
Reparations: It is Conceivable
Reparations for forced psychiatry is conceivable and is actually required under international law. Recent developments at the UN make it easier to make this argument, as detailed below.
The Denial of Pain and Mortality: Or, the Art of Self-Prescribing and the Philosopherâs...
âDonât look at me! Save yourself!â
Andrew* was a 25 year old with an imposing build that was mollified only by his despair and terror. Andrew was losing his mind. I didnât have to see Andrew and I somewhat wish I never did. I had received a call late at night from Andrewâs nurse. âYou gotta give him something man, I mean, heâs freaking out and I feel really bad.â
Getting Involved in Prison Issues – Making Alliances With Mental Health Advocacy
In my recent Alternatives keynote I talked about mental health issues and our unjust prisons, including the shameful racism of the criminal justice system...
Thoughts About Depression From Under the Sheets
Scientific American guest writer Nicole Baganz, a neuroscientist from Vanderbilt University, explores the connections between depression, "sickness behavior", and the immune system.
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Continued Reflection On Labels And Defining One’s Identity: The DSM Should Not Be One’s...
Kim Wombles continues to reflect, in Science 2.0, on the significant harm caused by those in control of psychiatric labeling.
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More Lawsuits Likely in Zoloft-Related Birth Defects
Injury Lawyer News reports on the many lawsuits filed in relation to Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn (PPHN), a birth defect linked to...
Suckling Pigs, Stray Dogs, and Psychiatric Diagnoses
In "The Order of Things", Michel Foucault, the great French philosopher cites a âcertain Chinese encyclopediaâ that notes âanimals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like fliesâ.
How 7 Historic Figures Overcame Depression without Doctors
While Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway received extensive medical treatment for depression but tragically committed suicide, other famously depressed peopleâincluding Abraham Lincoln, William James, Georgia OâKeeffe, Sigmund Freud, William Tecumseh Sherman, Franz Kafka, and the Buddhaâhave taken different paths. Did those luminaries who took alternative paths and recovered really have the symptoms of major depression, and did their antidotes really work?
Philosopher Raymond Tallis – Challenging Pop Neuroscience
There's a widespread belief in psychiatric and mental health circles that human experience can be reduced to the biology of brain chemistry -- the "medical model." But this is just the tip of the iceberg: our whole society is in the grips of a faddish pseudo-science of "neuromarketing," "neuropolitics" "neurotheology," and 'neuroeconomics."
“But It’s Just the Way Things Are”
My sabattical of last winter has spun off a second one. I remain uncertain of my role as a physician in a society which values pills over personal growth and change. Last summer, unplugging my life from the âAmerican dreamâ seemed in order. Itâs not easy to make changes with chains and weights in place. Itâs not easy to think, decide and move with the financial shackles that are the bones of everyday life.
Do Antidepressants Cure Depression? Are Psych Drugs Safe? Dr. Colin Ross on Psychetruth
Psychetruth Correspondent Corrina Rachel interviews psychiatrist Dr. Colin Ross about Psychiatry and if antidepressants work to cure depression. What are the facts we should...
Four Leading Antipsychotics Aren’t Safe or Effective in Older Adults
A 5-year study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and conducted by U.C. San Diego School of Medicine, Stanford University and the...
NY Supreme Court Awards $1.5 M in Antidepressant-Related Suicide
The New York State Supreme Court found in favor of Janice Mazella, widow of  basketball coach and teacher Joe Mazella, in a malpractice suit...
