Yearly Archives: 2012

After reading E. Fuller Torrey’s latest article in the Treatment Advocacy Center newsletter, in which he sharply criticizes Dr. Sandy Steingard for writing about anosognosia on madinamerica.com, and then goes on to attack me for my various writings, I have to confess that this time—after getting over the feeling that my head was going to explode—I thought, my patience with such dishonesty is running out.

LEARNING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS Second Story Respite is a short-stay, sleeps six, voluntary opportunity to learn to use relationships to move out of old roles and...

Learning Through Relationships: Staffed by people who have learned from their lived experience of mood swings, fear, voices, visions, etc., Second Story is an opportunity...

The Los Angeles County coroner's department reported yesterday that Tony Scott, the  director of films such as "Top Gun" and "Beverly Hills Cop II,"...

David Crespi is serving a life sentence following his 2006 slaying of his five-year-old twin girls while being treated with antidepressant medications. David Carmichael,...

What if your doctor told you about data collected on antidepressants AFTER they had been released on the market. New Zealand data that shows aggression and death are as common as dizziness in reports from doctors about adverse reactions to antidepressants. That suicidal ideation and suicide attempt are as common as insomnia. Imagine you were told that while being exposed to these risks, the data showed that the most likely adverse reaction you would experience would be that the drug didn't work or stopped working. How might your decision on this particular treatment option be affected?

Researchers in Singapore find that antipsychotic medications are associated with changes to colonic architecture, which could result in difficult colonoscopy and increased colonoscopy-related risks....

A Call To Action: Daniel writes about human rights as a framework to mobilize and organize for liberation and self-determination. He presents strategies for...

A CALL TO ACTION: RADICAL SOCIAL CHANGE - FREE THE PEOPLE! Daniel Hazen is a survivor of the psychiatric and penal systems. Daniel is a...

Researchers from 11 nations in Europe and North America find, in the largest study to date of possible links between genetic markers and antidepressant...

After failing to win a postponement earlier this week, Pfizer settled with the widow of Minnesota man who suicided while using the stop-smoking drug...

Canadian researchers, publishing in Neurology, find in a meta-analysis of controlled observational studies comparing SSRI therapy with a control group that SSRI exposure increased...

Dr. Peter Breggin blogs in the Huffington Post on the need for programs to support psychiatric drug withdrawal, rather than more diagnosis and medication. Article...

Challenging the disease model of addiction should not be viewed as just another interesting scientific and philosophical debate. Calling addiction a “disease” is not only wrong from a scientific perspective, but the promotion of this model of treatment can actually be harmful to some people trying to understand and recover from this life damaging and life threatening problem.

The 'Initiative to Reduce the Impact of Schizophrenia" (IRIS) has updated its 1998 guidelines for early intervention in psychosis to state that not all people...

How did the APA talk go? Overall a success-- the audio went viral on the internet, and the talk itself was so crowded we had to move to a larger room -- more than 70 psychiatrists and behavioral healthcare professionals attended. Afterwards many stepped up to shake my hand and congratulate me: I was told by two people I was a gift to the conference, asked to present at a Grand Rounds, encouraged to do a TED talk, thanked for my compassionate response to a question about forced treatment, and invited to do more trainings in the future. I even met several psychiatrists who are Madness Radio listeners. Psychiatry is clearly not a monolithic profession and many in it are beginning to think differently.

Is “recovery” a useful concept or is it overused, co-opted or simply not an accurate way to describe the process of learning to work with and through madness and life’s challenges. Mother Bear Community Action Network explores these arguments and makes a case for recovery.

Utilizing strength and empowerment: Promoting dialogue and knowledge that for a strengths-based, systemic approach to diverse mental health conditions, this blog's focus is on...

Mo Yee Lee, PhD, is Professor of Social Work, College of Social Work, The Ohio State University. My expertise is primarily in the area...

I believe that one of the underlying reasons it is difficult to move through the obstacles to fully embrace the CRPD (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and fight for our rights, is that discrimination continues to affect us on many levels. We have accommodated in some ways to a system that hurts us - not just the mental health system but the legal system that supports these violent acts and the society that condones them. It can be painful to change, to shift gears, to move in different ways.

Sharna Olfman, PhD, is the editor/author of the Childhood In America book series for Praeger Publishers, a Professor of Clinical and Developmental Psychology at Point...

Childhood In America: Sharna Olfman, author, academic and psychologist, critiques America's failure to support children's psychological development through its public policies, parenting practices, educational and...

Psychiatry’s desperate drive to legitimize itself as a profitable medical authority has resulted in a mass delusion so pervasive and destructive that it's put us on a path towards societal collapse. This is not an overstatement, in my opinion, as the statistics are mind-boggling— one in five Americans are on psychiatric drugs. One in five. By my calculations, this means that 62,913,200 people ingest mind-altering, body-altering, spirit-altering pills they believe to be “medications” on a daily basis.

Even though more and more researchers have become interested in investigating the complexities of voice hearing in and of itself (as opposed to treating it simply as one of a number of so-called "positive symptoms" of schizophrenia), the lack of a clear identification of the defining characteristics and significance of the experience for voice hearers makes it difficult to compare results across different studies.

Alt_Mentalities corrects the record on why people with mental health diagnoses are dying young. Article →