Yearly Archives: 2013

The Los Angeles Times business section explores how it is possible that "so many scientists looking for cures to diseases have been building on...

Kingsley Hall was the first of Laing’s household communities that served as a place where you could live through madness until you could get it together and live independently. It was conceived as an “asylum” from forms of treatment — psychiatric or otherwise — that many were convinced were not helpful, and even contributed to their difficulties. By the time I arrived in London in 1973 to study with Laing there were four or five such places. Getting in wasn’t easy.

The November 5 hearing on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reached new heights of absurdity and opens new ground for concern. It may be worse for us to ratify with the reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) being proposed, and with the legislative record that is being created for the specific purpose of rejecting any application of the treaty's standards to US law than not to ratify at all. All the proponents of CRPD ratification who are allowed a voice in these discussions are in agreement that the US ratification is aimed ONLY at giving the US greater influence over other countries and over the development of customary international law, and NOT at improving the enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities in the US itself.

Bob Fiddamen dissects the issue of suicidality, bizarre behavior and antidepressants in light of BMJ Open's publication of "Suicide-related events in young people following...

The Obama administration will announce today, according to the New York Times, regulations that will require insurers to offer care for mental health issues...

On 25 October 2013, the World Health Organization issued a press release promoting guidelines produced by the Patient-Reported Outcomes Safety Event Reporting (PROSPER) Consortium. The consortium aimed to “to improve [drug] safety reporting by better incorporating the perspective of the patient” with the aim of the guidance produced “to ensure that the patient ‘voice’ and perspective feed appropriately into collection of safety data.” Rather than 'quietly protecting the health of every person on this planet, every day' it seems clear that WHO is quietly protecting the interests of pharmaceutical companies and their advisors on planet 'profit from patients', every day.

The World Health Organisation was established in 1945 to provide leadership on global health matters. According to its Director General Dr Margaret Chan, it...

On October 1st the Connecticut State Legislature’s reactionary response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school went into effect. Public Act No. 13-3 requires all people that voluntarily admit to a hospital for mental health reasons (not solely for drug or alcohol treatment) have their names placed in a database administered by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services - for the purpose of automatic suspension of Second Amendment rights.

The whistleblowers who helped to build the case for prosecuting Johnson & Johnson for illegal marketing of Risperdal will take home nearly $168 million...

Following Johnson & Johnson's $2.2 billion settlement for off-label marketing and kickbacks related to its antipsychotic Risperdal, Pennsylvania legislators Brandon Neuman and Tony DeLuca...

Phil Hickey of Behaviorism and Mental Health picks apart 60 Minutes' segment interviewing E. Fuller Torrey (Untreated mental illness an imminent danger?), and APA...

It was an awesome experience to give a TEDx Talk at my old school, because, frankly, it was an acknowledgement by an elite institution that I've done something in my life worth listening to. I hope you appreciate my talk and share it with others. So many people who are affected by the mental health system in North America today have no idea how much the rise of the DSM and biopsychiatry has to do with the Reagan era and neoliberal economic policies that reshaped the whole language and culture of mental health. It's like a bulldozed neighborhood with shiny new buildings, after a while people forget how they got there and they just seem "normal."

The American Journal of Psychiatry explores the implications for science and ethics of the rising placebo response rate in trials of antipsychotic drugs, in an...

Many months ago I wrote a guest piece on Mad In America entitled, “Corrections Officers, Not Clinicians.” And since that time I have walked away from that job because of the irreconcilable conflicts between its mission and my own heart. I have become convinced that, as an institution, the public mental health system of the United States is a disaster. There are always individuals within any system who are doing noble, beautiful things - For me, one part of my path toward healing included the connection I made with a therapist - But that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to confront institutional norms that are oppressive and dehumanizing.

Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries will pay more than $2.2 billion - one of the largest health-care fraud settlements in history - to...

GSK's continued failure to provide true transparency flies in the face of what the overwhelming majority of people signing consent forms probably intend - which is to make their data available for scrutiny by independent experts. If those who participate in trials thought some remote risk of a breach of privacy were being used to prevent disclosure of details that would save someone else's life - but threaten GSK's profits - most of us would likely be horrified.

Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial: Professor Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD, co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration. He has published more than 70 papers in the top 5...

Whenever I write or speak publicly, I feel compelled to frame cutting, burning and hitting myself as something I used to do. I don’t actually outright say I’ve stopped, but I use the past tense and thus I suspect most hear it as implied. Somehow, the pressure to appear outwardly ‘all better’ in that way still seems big. Self-injury (of that type) ranks pretty high up there on an awful lot of people’s scary meters. Just saying you are someone who has ever done that sort of thing seems disconcerting enough for most.

This blog was prompted by an invitation to do a guest post on the site of one of my favorite bloggers, 1 Boring Old Man. This is my response to the notion that there are certain conditions - Schizophrenia among them - that correspond more directly to biomedical conditions

Anoiksis (the Dutch association of and for people with a psychotic vulnerability) has introduced a new name for the disease schizophrenia: Psychosis Susceptibility Syndrome (PSS). Together with the old name, its attached prejudices, misleading significance and stigma can be thrown overboard.

The Journal of Psychosocial Nursing reviews the evidence for peer support, finding "outcomes across a range of measures no different than when services had...

David Healy posits the Secret Health Ingredient in Treatment (SHIT)  . . .  "In the early twentieth century SHIT was some supposedly secret magic...

Dr. Philip Hickey does the play-by-play on Allen Frances' interchange with Lucy Johnstone about prospective "overreaching" paradigm shifts in mental health. Johnstone, Frances fears,...

1 Boring Old Man points out the link between (possibly spurious) research findings and a subsequent wave of media articles and ad campaigns based...

Research from the universities of Cardiff, Cambridge and Bristol finds no evidence of a link between genetic associations with schizophrenia and adolescent psychotic experiences....