Yearly Archives: 2013

A review of the literature from 2001 to 2011 on child abuse, neglect, and psychiatric disorders finds that early life stress subtypes can predict...

Thirty years ago, the prescription of neuroleptic drugs to children under 14 years of age was almost unheard of. It was rare in adolescents, and even in adults was largely confined to individuals who had been given the label schizophrenic or bipolar. By 1993 about a quarter of 1% of the national childhood population were receiving antipsychotic prescriptions during office visits. The percentage for adolescents was about three quarters of 1%. By 2009, these figures had increased to 1.83% and 3.76% respectively. The devastating effects of these neurotoxic drugs are well known, and it is natural to wonder what forces might be driving this trend.

A century ago Freud and Jung made us aware of the biases underpinning what patients say. Not everything should be accepted at face value. In particular claims of abuse may not be based on reality. We needed experts – analysts – they claimed, to tease out what is real from what is not. The Catholic Church was once intensely hostile to Freud, but when it came to child abuse adopting a Freudian approach was very convenient. But while Freud essentially denied that real abuse was taking place and got away with it in his life-time, the Catholic Church has learnt to its cost that many claims of abuse are real.

From The Unbounded Spirit, which "was created with the sole purpose of providing valuable and interesting information that will provoke its readers to get into...

An NPR blog critiques the reliability of a study that found an increased risk of schizophrenia diagnosis among left-handers. Article →

I really valued the massive Melbourne Hearing Voices conference last week. The theme of reconciliation between voice hearers and mental health workers was a powerful one. This emphasis on creating understanding conversations at the conference was encouraged with dialogues between people on specific subjects - medication, spirituality, psychological approaches to voices etc. - rather than keynotes. It seemed a move away from presentations of competing knowledges, toward a more dialogical conference; a respectful exchange of different viewpoints, feelings and values. When you have a range of views in a presentation it’s less easy to adopt a “good guys vs. bad guys” mentality; you start to see the complexities in more relief. The surprise for me was that I liked it.

Law 360 reports that Johnson & Johnson asked a Pennsylvania judge to keep a series of clinical studies related to the drug Risperdal under...

Yes, the boycott of the DSM-5 continues. I can’t tell you how many fewer DSMs have so far been purchased as a result of the boycott; and conversations I have had with professionals in New York’s public mental health system lead me to believe that the great majority continue to accept the validity of the biomedical model and the centrality of psychoactive medications in the treatment of persons caught up in the public system. Perhaps that’s the most important argument in support of the boycott’s continuation – we have so many more folks to reach.

The widow of  Darwin Stout - who murdered their son and took his own life while taking the nicotine-cessation drug Chantix - has filed...

Telling people emphatically how much I am suffering at times, asking for reassurance that my dear ones love and care about me and sense my purpose, may make me unpopular with some who pride themselves on being “more together,” yet it also fosters the intimacy, closeness and trust I feel with so many. And because of it, I don't need to ask myself if anyone will care if I die. I can experience that reassurance while I'm alive, if I have the humility to ask for it, and keep asking until my soul is met with other souls who genuinely care. That experience humbles me greatly and somehow makes all of my brokenness feel like love and open heartedness.

Modern “civilized” cultures do not have a good relationship with the wild. It seems we are always doing everything possible to shut it out of our lives, or to kill or tame it to the point where it is unrecognizable. Yet that which is wild is always still lurking, somewhere over the edge of our boundaries and frontiers, and also inside people, both inside the “others” we might approach warily on the street, and even inside our family members and ourselves.

Under Canada's Mental Health Act (MHA), police respond to anonymous calls expressing concern about a person's mental health, often leading to that person's detainment...

When someone is in severe crisis due to feeling emotionally overwhelmed, one of the main access points for care is an inpatient hospital setting.  Though many disparage the hospital setting, there are few alternatives to this setting during an acute mental and emotional crisis. At the same time, there are a number of barriers to individuals getting optimal care. I will try to examine some of these barriers and some of the main critiques of hospitalization. In a perfect world, those experiencing severe emotional crisis would be able to find true sanctuary; a place for rest and healing. With enough time, nourishment and self-care, people experiencing severe emotional distress can and do get better.

• Incoming president of WPA questions medical model
• Focus should be on functioning, not symptoms
• Says psychiatry has much to apologize for

Kid’s Voice: Vicki Martin, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who over 20 years became disillusioned with the mental health system, writes about developing training programs...

KID'S VOICE – PROMOTING RESILIENCY: RETHINKING MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES FOR VULNERABLE CHILDREN Vicki Martin, MD, is a board certified child & adolescent psychiatrist with over...

The mental health care of young people has increased more rapidly than that of adults, and has coincided with increased psychotropic medication use, according...

Allen Frances adds to his catalog of DSM-5 mistakes with the return of the controversial - and ultimately rejected - "Psychosis Risk Disorder", under...

I do not claim to know how to heal the wounds from the tragedy that occurred in Newtown on December 14th, 2012. Nor do I claim to know how to prevent future tragedies of this sort. The intent of this post is to oppose ineffective and inhumane practices, prompted by reactions to the events in Newtown and other communities, that are falsely thought to be effective.

In Belgium, patients with mental health problems mostly receive drug treatment despite the emphasis in international guidelines on the importance of psychological approaches. Currently one in ten Belgians takes antidepressants. That makes Belgium the European leader when it comes to antidepressant prescriptions and costs our country 300 million euros annually. This has been a glaring concern for our Minister of Health. From January 1, 2016, all psychologists and psychotherapists in Belgium will need to register in an official list. This should slash the number of unqualified therapists and help more Belgians stay off antidepressants.

The ocean’s waves are constant and unchangeable, bound by earth and gravity; for a long time I believed life was this way, too—that who I was and how I felt and what I believed about myself were all bound by some invisible force that would always keep me trapped in a perpetual state of agonizing being. What a beautiful thing to know that after so many years of believing this, I’ve proven myself wrong.

Presentation by John Read at the Meanings of Madness Conference. (Presentation begins at 5 minutes in.)

For a scathing, 11-minute overview of the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, and new allegations of coercion into psychiatric clinical trials, you can't do much better than this excellent investigative report by Jeff Baillon.

The authors of a paper that endorses a computerized test for depression have acknowledged failure to disclose joint ownership of a company formed to bring the test to...

Britain's HealthTalkOnline.org offers videotaped interviews with 36 people in their homes, talking about their decision to take antidepressants and the impact of that decision...