Yearly Archives: 2013

I received the following question from a reader regarding the controversial CAFÉ – Comparisons of Atypicals in First Episode of Psychosis - study. (This was the study in which Dan Markingson committed suicide.) "It appears that there was no head-to-head with a control group taking a placebo pill. Nor was there a control group featuring 'old' types of 'antipsychotic'. If that was the case then it is very poor study . . . what on earth can you hope to show from the data?" I started to write a response, but the subject is complex, and my response became the following article.

Neuro-Boom or Bust? Neuropsychology has seen a great rise to prominence over the last 20 years, largely due to the increase in neuroimaging and...

NEURO-BOOM OR BUST? Stephen Weatherhead, DClinPsy, is a UK-based clinical psychologist, specialising in brain injury and mental capacity. His clinical work is primarily focussed on...

Last week, Rep. Tim Murphy (PA) introduced the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013 to Congress and almost simultaneously mental health and disability rights advocates voiced their opposition to the proposed legislation with a statement from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. The bill, as many people who follow what's happening in mental health law know, calls for the enactment of assisted (involuntary) outpatient commitment laws at the Federal level and is purportedly crafted to ensure the safety of those deemed "severely mentally ill" by giving families, courts and mental health providers increased authority to commit individuals to outpatient treatment.

FDA regulators have updated the warning labels on methylphenidate products such as Ritalin, Focalin and Concerta to reflect reports of prolonged, painful erections (priapism)...

Research from the U.K. shows that involvement in bullying between the ages of 8 and 11, whether as victim or perpetrator, is linked to...

Mental health services today are almost completely dominated by the view that extreme distress such as psychoses are biological disorders that require treatment with drugs or other medical interventions. This is despite the absence of evidence that such conditions have a biological basis. In addition to this, recent work within the evidence-based medicine paradigm casts doubt on the effectiveness of most forms of physical treatment in psychiatry. At the same time the evidence accumulates that many physical treatments, such as the long-term use of neuroleptic drugs, are fraught with risks and danger.

In a first for a major drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharma that was fined $3 billion for illegal marketing of Paxil and Wellbutrin,...

Daniela Drake, MD, writes on Salon about her son's misdiagnosis of ADHD - later found to be an auditory processing disorder and an allergy...

Dr. Peter Stastny is a New York based psychiatrist, documentary film-maker and a founder of the International Network toward Alternatives and Recovery (INTAR). He...

A New Zealand judge has upheld the appeal of a sexual abuse survivor against a decision that sexual abuse cannot cause schizophrenia.  The judge...

After talking for awhile about big pharma corruption, the distortion of research and academic psychiatry, and the overselling of psychiatric medications a bright social work intern who has been on our team for about six months pointedly asked me, “So, do you enjoy helping people by prescribing medications or by helping them in other ways?” I had to pause for a moment to think about it. “I don’t enjoy prescribing as much as I used to.”

Researchers from Australia find that chronic treatment with SSRIs significantly increases the rate of epileptogenesis in rats.  Although SSRIs are commonly prescribed to people...

Paul Woodward of Beyond Meds critiques the Washington Post's report on the reduction of gun control, and increase in mental health-care budgets, following Sandy...

Attorney Lynn Garson memoir of escape from psychiatric drug treatment, "Southern Vapors", is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's highlighted book of the month.  "The idea that...

Salon magazine reports on an article in October's Translational Psychiatry that finds "rather than a shortage of serotonin, a lack of synaptogenesis (the growth...

Attorneys representing about 300 lawsuits alleging that Risperdal causes enlargement of breast tissue in men have asked a Pennsylvania judge to unseal relevant clinical...

BEHAVIORISM AND MENTAL HEALTH Philip Hickey is a retired psychologist.  He has worked in prisons (UK and US), addiction units, community mental health centers, nursing...

Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Brigham & Women's Hospital analyzes several ads for A.D.H.D. medications for the New York Times to see how they play...

Thomas Insel, in an interview for the Boston Globe, discusses the historical tension within psychiatry about "being medical," saying "Freud himself was apoplectic about...

Responding to a letter signed by 175 scholars asking for an inquiry into the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, the Faculty Senate voted to investigate clinical research at the university. But the university president says the Markingson case will not be part of the investigation. What is he trying to hide?

Roger Colvin, PhD, considers the problem of withdrawal from antidepressants for the Huffington Post. Article →

The Telegraph reports on a pregnant Italian mother who, having flown to England for a two-week training had a panic attack which lead to...

These 10 areas are not the only ways that mental health professionals can increase misery in suffering people, as there are other physical, psychological, spiritual, and societal adverse effects caused by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals. The article was written in response to AlterNet's recently republished Psychotherapy Networker article, "The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People," authored by psychotherapist Cloe Madanes, which enraged many readers. The reality is that we human beings can sometimes become so trapped by overwhelmingly oppressive forces (financial, interpersonal, and otherwise) that lecturing us into behaving more joyfully only creates more pain. This leads to the first of "10 Ways Mental Health Professionals Increase Misery in Suffering People."

Before the early 1990’s the use of antipsychotic medications was largely reserved for adults with severe psychotic disorders; unpleasant involuntary movement disorders (extrapyramidal side-effects) and cardiovascular risks appear to have largely limited their use outside these disorders. The introduction and intense marketing of what seemed to be better tolerated and safer (now proven not to be), second generation atypical antipsychotics (AAPs) such as risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, ziprasidone and aripiprazole from the mid 1990’s led to a rapid expansion of antipsychotic medication use for a wide variety of unlicensed conditions and in more diverse clinical populations.