Yearly Archives: 2013

There used to be a wonderful cartoon series called 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, which led me 25 years ago to give a talk at a British Association for Psychopharmacology meeting entitled 101 Uses for a Dead Psychiatrist. That was back in the days when Psychopharmacology meetings were places of debate and the British Journal of Psychiatry was guaranteed to have something of real interest in every issue.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the roles of trauma and medication as a "common factor" in tragedies similar to the Sandy Hook shooting....

Injury Lawyer News provides an overview of the legal claims against Chantix, for such effects as suicidal thoughts, depression, panic attacks, terrifying visions, aggressive...

I hope this post doesn’t seem like a stretch, because it’s about something so basic it’s almost embarrassing: Walking, the intuitive act of putting one foot in front of the other to carry you from one place to the next. Yet if you’ve ever endured damage or a withdrawal syndrome from a psychiatric medicine, you’ll also know that things, like walking, that look and seem basic to others, and that did so in your past, “pre-medication” life, do not in fact come easily. Sometimes, on the worst days, they don’t come at all.

Dan Fisher's letter to the editor, regarding the wave of calls for outpatient commitment, in the Boston Globe. Article →

Steven Soderbergh's upcoming film about a psychiatrist who prescribes "Ablixa" (a fictional medication) to a patient who then commits murder. The PR campaign includes...

This video by Pat Deegan, inspired by the Newtown tragedy, was brought to our attention by BeyondMeds.com. Beyond Meds →

It has been a year this since the Mad In America website launched and I posted my first blog. You have been a smart and well informed audience. I know that many of you are eager to change the mental health system; for what it is worth, you have changed one doctor.

‘Diagnosing’ someone with a devastating label such as ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘personality disorder’ is one of the most damaging things one human being can do to another. Re-defining someone’s reality for them is the most insidious and the most devastating form of power we can use. It may be done with the best of intentions, but it is wrong - scientifically, professionally, and ethically. The DSM debate presents us with a unique opportunity to put some of this right, by working with service users towards a more helpful understanding of how and why they come to experience extreme forms of emotional distress.

(This commentary originally ran on Beyond Meds) In his New York Times op-ed entitled “Our Failed Approach to Schizophrenia“ Paul Steinberg, a psychiatrist in private practice, proposes we...

Suicide needs to come 'out of the closet' as a public health issue. But this in turn requires a broad, ongoing community conversation rather than the current status quo of 'experts' talking about us without us. We also need to move beyond the excessive medicalisation of suicide that blames it on some notional 'mental illness'. This is my first post where I introduce myself, telling you a little of how I came to do a PhD in Suicidology. And an invitation to join me in a radically different conversation about suicide, here at Mad in America.