Yearly Archives: 2013

My name is Mark Ragins. Most people at The Village call me Dr. Mark, except those who have known me long enough to forego that pedestal and just call me Mark. I’m a psychiatrist, a story teller, and the kid who used to drive his parents and teachers crazy asking “Why?” unendingly and then, never satisfied with their answers, looked for my own answers and returned to tell them that their answers were wrong. When I meet someone new I usually try not to tell them I’m a psychiatrist too soon. There are so many strange and scary ideas about psychiatrists and mental illnesses out there that I’m afraid I’ll be rejected before I even have a chance.

A Road to Recovery: Mark is the Medical Director at the MHA Village Integrated Service Agency, a model of recovery based mental health care....

A ROAD TO RECOVERY Mark Ragins, MD, is the Medical Director at the MHA Village Integrated Service Agency in Long Beach, California, an award winning model...

Israeli researchers find that maternal skin-to-skin contact with pre-term infants are related to "dynamic cascades of child physiological regulation and parental provisions in shaping...

Sandra Steingard writes in Community Psychiatrist about Lex Wunderink's study, published in the August JAMA Psychiatry, which found that people who discontinued medication have...

It has been twenty years since my last suicide attempt. I was barely eighteen years old, and had already spent the last four years, my entire adolescence, really, in and out of the mental health system. On that day, twenty years ago, I left the hospital with nothing but a prescription for yet another drug in my hand, sent back to the decrepit group home where I began my adult life.

Singer Sinead O'Connor announced on her website that after several "second opinions" she has learned "I do not in fact suffer from Bi Polar...

As I see it this website is about filling the gaping hole in the official literature on mental health problems and their treatment. Since these problems were declared to be diseases, ‘just like any other’, academic papers present them as if they were simply technical glitches in the way the brain or mind works. They can be identified by ticking a few boxes, and easily treated by tweaking the corresponding defect with a drug or a few sessions of quick-fix therapy. What it is like to experience these problems and their treatments is nowhere to be found. Yet in post after post on this site among others, we hear about the harm produced by drugs that are prescribed for mental health problems.

Researchers in Spain and the U.K. find a similar pattern of brain volume changes in a group 76 controls and 109 patients with schizophrenia...

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

Psychiatrist Mark Ragins writes in Community Psychiatrist about a new approach to his practice, "Prodded by Robert Whitaker’s books, I feel the need to...

ACES Too High, the trauma blog, analogizes the rise of medication to the concept of manifest destiny. Issues of personal responsibility, depletion of resources,...

PharmaWatch Canada details the paradoxes of off-label prescribing, in which doctors may prescribe but pharmaceutical companies may not promote medication for conditions for which...

ACES Too High, the blog about Adverse Childhood Experiences, recalls the excruciating experiment and films concerning the impact of childhood neglect.  A one-year-old baby...

The Mail sent three women to their doctors, reporting fictional symptoms of short-term, mild depression.  Two walked out with prescriptions for medication, despite expressions...

An article in PLoS One, by researchers at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, finds that less than half (45%) of clinical...

Miriam Carey, who was shot and killed yesterday by D.C. police after she attempted to drive through a White House barricade with her 1-year-old...

The 2013 ISEPP conference in Greensboro is all about finding alternative ways of helping children and youth who are diagnosed with mental disorders and their families: Alternatives to the present system in which the children are very likely to be drugged, a treatment approach which will not be very helpful to them or their parents.

Psychiatrist Sharon Packer writes of the role that psychiatrists can play in making differential diagnoses, and a case of 'schizophrenia' reassessed in the emergency...

Psychiatric Times chronicles the peripatetic progress of "schizophrenia" research, from schizophrenogenic mothers to unspecified genetic lesions and back again via second-trimester embryonic insults, to...

Psychiatric Times reflects on the rise of ketamine as an antidepressant, MDMA (ecstasy) for the treatment of PTSD, and cannabis' use for neuropathic pain...

Researchers at Dartmouth College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that 60% of prescription drug ads and 80% percent of over the counter drug...

A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine asked 1,620 medical students and 739 residents doctors-in-training across the U.S. about their contacts...

An article ostensibly showing cancer growth inhibition by a molecule derived from lichen — but which was in fact a spoof written by an editor...

Researchers from Tel Aviv, Singapore and New York find that  although "Warnings that a promoted product can have adverse side effects (e.g., smoking cigarettes...