Yearly Archives: 2015

Brian Koehler’s long-term research interests include the effects of profound stress and social isolation/social defeat on the brain, neuropsychoanalysis, individual psychotherapy, as well as...

Brian Koehler is an adjunct associate professor in the departments of Social Work and adjunct faculty and supervisor in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy...

In our nation's history, in the face of fear, we have often risen to achieve noble goals. Other times we have behaved tragically — for instance, interning and seizing property from Japanese Americans during World War II. Certainly, there were spies among us then. Only in hindsight did we recognize that our treatment of the larger group — who were not — was gravely mistaken. We are on the verge of witnessing such an event in our own time.

Jim Probert is a psychologist at the University of Florida, and an individual with lived experience of recovery from a diagnoses of severe mental illness including...

Jim Probert is a psychologist at the University of Florida Counseling and Wellness Center. He talks openly about his own lived experience of emotional...

As I write this, the New York Times is asking readers to respond to the question “What should be done to prevent mass shootings?” The more responses the New York Times receives from people who understand that the answer is gun control — not misguided legislation that would only harm those it purports to help — the more they will take notice. Please write!

The strongest evidence we have as to whether a drug causes a problem does not come from RCTs or any other controlled study but rather from good clinical accounts. Even if RCTs were done by angels, so there was no hiding, no miscoding, nothing untoward, RCTs can still hide adverse events. The onus is on large and powerful corporations who have a lot of resources to pinpoint the populations where the benefit is likely to exceed the risk, if they want to continue to make money out of vulnerable people.

A new poll, published in the Washington Post, explores the public’s connection to prescription pain killer abuse. “A surprising 56 percent of the public say...

Following an eye-opening FDA report, the Obama administration is attempting to pass tighter regulations on medical tests. “Inaccurate and unreliable medical tests are prompting...

The Wall Street Journal highlights a new study that found that off-label medications represent about 12% of drug prescriptions and are resulting in negative...

According to a study published in this month’s British Journal of Psychiatry, people diagnosed with depression in high-income countries are more likely to limit...

Eugene Raikhel reveals ads from 1966 where Ritalin, now prescribed largely for ADHD, was marketed as a “kind of mind antidepressant for housewives.”  “I...

“The National Women’s Health Network launched the 'Pass on the Pink Pill – Or Pass Out' campaign, to warn women of the marginal benefits...

The New York Times Mind blog covers a recent study that suggests that watching three-hours of TV every day is associated with diminished cognitive...

Mad in America readers are familiar with the variety of negative effects caused by emphasizing biologically based treatments for psychological disorders. Yet, over the past five years, research has identified another negative consequence which, I think, is less well known: increased prognostic pessimism. Long story short: numerous studies have found that individuals who more strongly endorse biological etiologies of psychological disorders tend to have increased prognostic pessimism.

Although it is axiomatic in psychiatry that genetic factors are involved in bipolar disorder (manic-depression), and that they play a predominant role, there currently exists little if any scientifically acceptable evidence that bipolar disorder and other “affective disorders” are caused by disordered genes. Given almost 50 years of gene discovery claims that were not confirmed by replication attempts, we must assume by default that current gene finding claims are false-positive results as well. In the 1920s, pioneering psychiatric geneticist Ernst Rüdin decided against publishing his large family study of “manic-depressive insanity,” most likely because the results did not fit his theories of Mendelian inheritance, and failed to support his advocacy of eugenic policies.

In the wake of transitioning from relationship to true friendship with my Beloved, I am continually struggling with what to do with myself in light of heartbreak, hardship on socially moving forward — alone, as it were — and ways to keep Hope alive. Were I to ably move forward in silence and in privately held pain and suffering, weeping in heartache, hoping for relief and release, wouldn’t falling apart be easier without as much aforethought? Placing blame on my mental diversity, my moods, as it were…

In inpatient eating disorders care, we were required to step on the scale but were not allowed to know what we weighed. We were told it was “against recovery” to know our weight; that knowing it would surely cause a devastating relapse.

Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vermont. She has written extensively on issues relating to mental health, women, politics,...

Sometimes as a journalist one thing leads to another and you suddenly find yourself going down a dark rabbit hole that you hadn’t planned to visit. That’s what happened to me recently when I was writing a piece about how the Veterans Administration’s mental health system and the military in general were failing women in need of care following sexual assault. Retaliation is rampant in the military against those who tell the truth about what happens to victims of abuse, with pseudo-psychiatric diagnoses like “Borderline Personality Disorder” often used to damage or end a victim’s career.

Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vermont. She has written extensively on issues relating to mental health, women, politics,...

This is my 31^st article on MIA and the most personal. It's about being tender and loving with myself when I'm suffering, and how for me that means being merciful and defiant at the same time. For me to mercifully nurture myself and allow my need for comforting myself to be claimed, I have for long now, first needed to defy the perceptions of others that would say I don't deserve such loving mercy.

Scapegoating the “mentally ill” every time violence or chaos breaks out allows us to absolve society of any blame. It allows us to ignore the problems that give rise to anger, distress, and violence (i.e., poverty, rejection, discrimination, oppression, injustice, abuse, etc) and instead focus on the one thing that can never be proven or defined and yet so easily can be identified in another. It provides relief without any reflection on how our society and way of life, and the inevitability of death, may be contributing to the terror that overwhelms us.

Johanna Ryan is a workers’ comp paralegal and a union and healthcare activist in Chicago. She may or may not have a biological brain...

Johanna Ryan is a workers’ comp paralegal and a union and healthcare activist in Chicago. She may or may not have a biological brain disease,...