Yearly Archives: 2013

At the University of Minnesota, the answer is apparently $1,446. If harmless clerical errors were to blame for oddities like this, that fact should be easy to clarify simply by looking at the relevant documents.  But if there are systematic issues with the administration of clinical trials that makes it possible to bill for a visit with a dead subject, those issues would be important for other universities and private trial sites as well. 

While some people find their lives ruined by belief in imagined conspiracies that affect them personally - they may isolate from, or even attack, friends and family, and get diagnosed with psychosis - many other people believe in conspiracies on the basis of little evidence, yet have prominent places in society or even bodies like the US Senate. Yet it seems clear to me that the same dynamics are often involved in both.

A previously "solicitous and loving" young undergoes "a classic onset of schizophrenia", followed by "a changing regimen of antidepressants." He is now in jail...

MindFreedom believes in the dignity and VOICE of every human being, no matter how mentally or emotionally distressed. We all have the right to CHOICE and true, informed consent in mental health care. We alert the mental health activism community to the proposed Texas House Bill 2212, which will dramatically expand the population eligible for assisted outpatient commitment. In a blatant assault on the right to bodily integrity, the bill would allow psychiatric interventions including what the state says is “clinically necessary medication” to be administered by force to law-abiding citizens living in the their own homes based on a few, elastic criteria.

The case of a Harvard student who was diagnosed as ADHD and prescribed Adderall based on cursory information collected by a nurse, then committed...

In November 2012, Cardiff, Wales, more than two hundred and fifty people who hear voices, see visions and have other unusual and extreme experiences (referred to as “hearing voices” in the rest of this post), family members, friends, activists and allied experts by profession came together from around the world. The purpose of the three-day meeting was to celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary of the formation of hearing voices movement, to consider the lessons learnt so far and to envisage what we should be doing over the next 25 years. The excellent film, "Voices Matter", that you can now view on this site is a record of the event and I strongly recommend that you take a look.

In the New York Times’ recent autobiographical account of a “bipolar” woman’s struggle the main message is that the current mental health care system has some real problems but that the general paradigm from which this treatment model has emerged is not to be questioned. Anyone who knows my work knows that I have a real problem with this paradigm, believing that it generally causes much more harm than benefit. So, what is it then about this story that grabbed me? I recognized that if we read Linda’s story while holding a different paradigm, then this story reveals what I believe are some of the most fundamental issues at the heart of this epidemic of “mental illness” that so pervades our society.

A study of 530,000 patients who underwent surgery at 375 U.S. hospitals found a 10% increased risk of post-operative complications including bleeding, transfusion, hospital...

                              Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer artist, writer, organizer, and healer. Jacks co-founded The Icarus Project and is the subject of the poetic documentary Crooked Beauty. They...

Rethinking Madness: With the rare perspective of someone who has experienced extreme states from both sides — as a psychologist/researcher and as someone with lived...

RETHINKING MADNESS In the midst of a successful career as a hang gliding instructor and competition pilot (winning a World Champion title and multiple National...

MIA blogger (and lawyer) Jim Gottstein presented a 20-minute Oral Argument in ex rel Watson v. King-Vassel in front of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago last Thursday. "The technical issue on appeal is a lawyer nerd question about whether expert testimony is required," said Gottstein, "but I like to think it contains a succinct and clear explanation of why even though a doctor can prescribe a drug for anything, if they prescribe one off-label to a child they are causing a False Claim (committing Medicaid Fraud) unless the use has support in at least one of the specified drug references called Compendia."

After filling with anger from listening to parents' testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly for hours, I realized: Parents believe what they are told and what society believes – that certain emotional experiences are signs of a disease that needs to be treated like other medical illnesses. The reality is that those parents want exactly what I want – for our children to be happy. We owe it to our communities to channel the voices of parents who feel that all the system offers children is diagnoses and drugs.

The norm in science is that there is free access to the data underpinning experiments. If free access is denied; it’s not science. In the case of branded pharmaceuticals, we do not even know what trials have been done. What is put in the public domain is not data. The selected highlights of a football game and the comments of the pundits afterwards don't change the score. The selected highlights of pharma studies and the comments of pundits routinely change the score.

Fear. Omnipresent. Difficult to ward off or ignore. Just to advise readers, this long, somewhat involved article has been written for purely didactic purposes. Frankly, I’d like more folks to learn how to challenge their fears, how to organize and do systems change work. I trust readers will find it useful and that I managed to at least approximate what I intended.

One of my very favorite questions: How long have you been ‘in Recovery’? These unnecessary delineations between those who are living ‘in recovery’ and those who are simply living continue to foster an ‘us’ and ‘them’ that inherently negates the truth that ‘us’ IS ‘them.’ All I can think to say in response is, “Just when was it decided (and by whom) that what you get to call ‘life,’ I have to call ‘recovery’?”

Our friend Monica Cassani muses "Psychosis is, among (many) other things, also, quite often, a deep attachment to one’s (not consensually reasonable) thoughts and...

The New York Times explores the problematic nature of reporting science and of science reporting. Article → Thanks, Anonymous, for pointing this out.

I remember looking out of my living room window, drawing on my connection to all the women in the world who had felt this energy before, all that were in that moment, and all that would in time to come. This energy, this incredible power, was like a wave that I was riding for a brief window of my life, and sharing with my baby to move us through time into a new type of union. To me, this wasn’t anything to resist, to be afraid of, or to suppress. All I had to do was be there to witness, and keep my mind from getting in the way.

I first learned about the significance of our country’s Bill of Rights around the same time I started on my first doses of SSRIs for depression and suicidal feelings. At the same time I was learning in school about the “inalienable” freedoms to which citizens of the United States are entitled, I was learning in a psychiatrist’s office about how I might be a “danger” to myself and lose some of these freedoms “for my own good.” I don’t claim that I was conscious of the contradictions at the age of 13 or 14, but the significance is not lost on me now.

Believing that mental disorders are reactions to life situations, are how people are avoiding pain, protecting themselves, feeling more adequate, reconstituting themselves, having the illusion of control, is associated with good treatment. It gives people the message that their symptoms are understandable, meaningful and potentially useful, that they can use them to learn about themselves, develop some compassion for themselves and learn how to manage their thoughts, emotions, intentions, perceptions and behavior in a way that will enable them to live more the way they want to live.

It has been 7.5 years since I got off benzos, the drug that damaged me the most, and 6.75 years off all meds; the final medicine I tapered was a tricyclic antidepressant, nortriptyline, in autumn 2006. Since that time, I have not taken another psychoactive medicine, nor have I had any desire to. Neither have I sought out therapy or the like. Personally, I’m sick of labels, sick of the industry, sick of talking about my “problems,” sick of navel-gazing, and would just rather live.

When people call someone in their family “mentally ill,” what does it mean? The term mental illness has gotten out of control vague. There is no way to prove someone does or doesn't have a mental illness in the way it is referred to, so why don't we hear people say, “There's someone in my family who's extremely challenging for me (and others perhaps)”? Why don't we hear descriptions of the behavior, how people feel in response to it, and what concerns it brings up in an honest way where the speaker owns their own experience?

Anyone who has used benzodiazepines and sleeping pills knows how difficult it is to get off them (worse than heroin!) and how much time it takes to recover. Although there is a lot more helpful information on the web these days, a lot of it is based on anecdotal accounts, personal stories and theories rather than “real” evidence.

Hey I did an interview this morning on WNYC about my new book, Maps to the Other Side, and told the thousands of listeners to check out the Mad in America website if they want strong and articulate views on what's happening in the world of mental health. I have this exciting feeling that the Icarus Project underground culture is breaking up out of the pavement and crossing paths with the mainstream. Check out the interview here and tell me what you think!