Yearly Archives: 2013

Dr. Monasterio is a psychiatrist and senior lecturer at the Christchurch School of Medicine. His interests include off-label use of psych meds, metabolic complications,...

Originally from Bolivia, but now working and living in New Zealand, Dr. Erik Monasterio is a forensic psychiatrist and senior clinical lecturer with the...

Ashley Smith was a very troubled and rebellious teenager. By the time she was 13, she was getting into trouble in school. On one occasion, Ashley was charged with the crime - actually a childish prank - of “throwing crabapples at a postal worker.” Ashley was convicted and sentenced to detention in New Brunswick Youth Centre. Prison psychologists and psychiatrists labeled her defiant behavior a “mental health issue”; a thinly disguised term for “mental illness.” There is no record of any detention or prison staff or health professional trying to understand Ashley’s resistance to authority as youth rebellion.

The New York Times quotes Keith Connors, an early advocate to legitimize Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, as saying that current rates of diagnosis and...

In Salem Village in the winter of 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams began exhibiting strange behavior.  A local doctor could find no physical evidence of any ailment. When other young women in the village started exhibiting similar behaviours, Sarah Good, a homeless begger, Sarah Osborne, a woman who rarely attended church, Tituba, a slave from a minority ethnic group, and Dorothy Good, a four-year-old child, were accused of bewitching the girls. They were interrogated and sent to jail.

Rep. Tim Murphy, a former psychologist, introduced the "Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act" to congress today, a bill aimed at stopping violence...

Consumer Reports writes that the number of children prescribed antipsychotics has tripled over the last 10 to 15 years, despite a lack of evidence...

One thing that amazes us is that even though information linking nutrition to physical health is quite advanced, and generally very prominent in the media as well as in public awareness, people seem to be surprised when told that nutrients are essential for brain function. It may be silly to remind everyone of this, but we need to begin with this simple fact: the brain is part of the body. But to add some heft to this point, let us also recall that the brain is the organ of the body with the greatest metabolic demands (the heart is second).

Just Thinking: Jim Schroeder's writings focus on natural, readily accessible interventions for parents and professionals. Most recently, he has published the book Wholiness:  The Unified Pursuit...

JUST THINKING Jim Schroeder, PhD, is a pediatric psychologist at St. Mary’s Center for Children in Evansville, Indiana.  He resides there with his wife, Amy,...

When Richard Price was a young man, he experienced extreme states for which he was labeled schizophrenic and forcibly ‘treated’ with psychiatric medications, ECT, and insulin shock. He suffered from residual effects from this for the rest of his life. In 1962, Price and Michael Murphy founded the Esalen Institute on the Big Sur coast of Northern California. From its beginning, Esalen worked to create sanctuary for people who, like Price, experienced extreme states. "Esalen was Price's revenge on the mental hospital!" says Murphy.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Pfizer's appeal of a $142 million award to the Kaiser Foundation for illegal marketing of Neurontin.  The...

Force in '‘mental health' care’ has been a popular topic for decades now, yet it’'s scary how similar the conversation remains. Jonathan Keyes'’s recent blog certainly generated quite a bit of commentary caught between conflict and assimilation, and the very mention of the infamous Treatment Advocacy Center gets many of us boiling over. Yet, the conversation has also seemingly lost its way. There’s a vastness between what we think we are demanding and what is actually being conveyed that can sometimes feel impenetrable. Often, I'’m not sure we'’re really even engaged in the same conversation, as much as we superficially may appear to be. I've said many things, but I'll summarize with the following statement: "“If you’'re going to force it, you better make sure that what you'’re forcing works.”" The facts of the matter are that forced treatment - –and particularly forced drugging - –simply doesn’'t work.

The Washington Post yesterday published an article by MIA blogger Sandra Steingard, titled "A Psychiatrist Thinks Some Patients are Better off Without Antipsychotic Drugs." In...

In my work facilitating depression support groups, I have discovered three essential factors to healing from depression, which I call ”the three pillars of mental health recovery.”  In my earlier blogs for Mad in America I wrote about two of these pillars --connecting with community and using a holistic approach to treat symptoms. Now I would like to present the first and MOST IMPORTANT pillar — Setting the Intention to Heal.

The psychiatric survivor movement (and our overall “movement,” some of whom don't identify as psych survivors) is about as diverse and varied as the world itself. We are becoming perhaps the largest social justice movement ever to exist. Almost all women and queer people have been categorized by DSM diagnoses for being women (PMS, postpartum depression) or queer (homosexual, gender identity disorder), not to mention all the other groups who have been affected. Everyone is a survivor of the effects of the psychopharmaceutical industry on our consciousness.

Sanctuary is a hot topic.  It is applicable outside of mental health.  I am learning that many, many, many people provide Sanctuary for a time in one way or another and for a number of different reasons.  So I keep thinking about it and asking people about it, and I want to share more of what I am hearing and learning.  The topics that seem to be "on top" for me right now are support, perfectionism, structure and flexibility.

A featured article in the British Medical Journal relates the perspective of FDA investigator Thomas Marciniak, who says “Drug companies have turned into marketing machines. They’ve kind of...

Kelvin Young is the manager of Advocacy Unlimited’s intentional living space, “Toivo.” He believes that healing begins from within. After many years of suffering...

Our lives changed the day we began looking inside ourselves for ways to move towards more joy and less suffering for us and those around us. We took ownership of the good and bad from our past and learned that if we came from a place of inner strength we could frame much of our future. The lessons and necessary mentoring that led to us reshaping our experiences happened within the context of addiction treatment. This treatment for us, and many others, consisted of working on ourselves with the guidance of people who had re-built - or built for the first time - daily lives rich in meaning and social connection.

Counsel for ex rel Watson v. King-Vassel - Psychrights' latest effort to show that prescribing medication for children that is not supported by scientific evidence constitutes fraud...

The Cannabis and Psychosis Awareness Project, a four-year study from Canada that was released on Tuesday, finds that smoking marijuana - particularly heavy use in...

A Pennsylvania Superior Court has affirmed a lower court's ruling that GlaxoSmithKline is not responsible for the congenital heart defect that lead Joanne Thomas...

LAW360 reports that a Pennsylvania federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit over a movement disorder attributed to Bristol-Myers' drug Abilify.  The judge held that...

What distinguishes the pharmaceutical industry from the producers of other potentially harmful products, is the fact that, governments have passed legislation allowing detention of potential customers and forced administration of its product to consumers who do not wish to purchase it. Imagine if goverments passed laws allowing other industries to detain potential customers and force them to use their products.