Monthly Archives: November 2019
U.S. Must Provide Mental Health Services to Families Separated at Border
From The New York Times: The ruling marks a rare instance of the government being held legally accountable for mental trauma brought about by its policies.
Increased Antidepressant Use Does Not Decrease Depression Prevalence in Older Adults
The use of antidepressants has risen quickly among older adults but the rate of depressive symptoms in this population has not declined as a result.
Experiential Change and Healing: Early Experiences
From Evergreen Psychotherapy Center: Early attachment experiences shape the brain’s structure, chemistry and genetic expression by activating neuronal firing, triggering and releasing biochemicals, and becoming programmed into the implicit memory systems.
Groups Condemn Human Rights Violations at Ukrainian Institution
From the European Network of (Ex-)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP) and the European Disability Forum: Disturbing footage collected by activists showed residents with disabilities locked up together in a dark, cold room, naked, without support, means of communication, furniture, or access to a toilet.
Lindsay Church: Military Mental Health – Journey from the Brink to Recovery
US Navy Veteran Lindsay Church describes how a surgical procedure led to her being prescribed 16 medications in 18 months and ultimately to consider taking her life. Lindsay now focuses on supporting minority veterans through social engagement and community building.
Involuntary Obedience: Rituals of Humiliation Disguised as ‘Care’
Like slavery took such a long time to be ‘officially’ forbidden, psychiatric hospitals will be with us for some time yet. Their masters, the doctors or administrators, no longer give beatings with their hands but with the far more treacherous chemicals that allow them to keep a good conscience and distribute what are beatings nevertheless.
Hearing Voices Network Launches Family & Friends Support Group
One of the HVN's fundamental principles is that "the person having these experiences is in the best position to decide or discover what they mean" and thus each person must "not try to speak for" another. The challenge for a family group will likely be for members to move past speaking about our loved ones to find or imagine the space where we ourselves are liberated.
Global Health Research Needs More Than a Makeover
From Forbes: Research shows that global health is still struggling to shed its colonial past. This is reflected in who drives the research agenda, who dominates authorship, and who edits the research.
Flint’s Children Suffer in Class After Years of Lead-Poisoned Water
From The New York Times: The city’s lead crisis has migrated from its homes to its schools, where neurological and behavioral problems — real or feared — among students are threatening to overwhelm the education system.
CDC “Disclaimers” Hide Financial Conflicts of Interest
From Lown Report: In a recently-released petition, several watchdog groups are demanding that the CDC be transparent about the industry funding they receive through their foundation.
Sexual Objectification Harms Women: New Research
From Pursuit: Just as passive smoking is harmful to non-smokers, second-hand exposure to sexual objectification may reduce the emotional wellbeing of women even if they themselves are rarely or never objectified.
Dehumanization Linked to Poorer Mental and Physical Health
A new review finds that dehumanizing language, including self-dehumanization, is connected to anxiety, depression, and disordered eating.
High Time for Anarchism in Mental Health
Anarchism has much to offer the debate. It can present a clear voice saying: Liberty is not an obstacle for quality treatment, it is rather the very basis of it. Research shows that the anti-authoritarian elements in methods such as Open Dialogue and Stabilizing Homes actually promote a stronger, fuller recovery in patients.
Parent Marijuana Use Associated With Substance Use in Children
A new study examines longitudinal, intergenerational patterns associated with marijuana use.
Deep Brain Stimulation and Deeply Biased Researchers, Revisited
In the Washington Post last week, a new treatment was being advanced as a breakthrough for opioid addiction. What was this miraculous new intervention? Implanting electrodes deep in the brain, and using a battery implanted elsewhere in the body to zap the addict and keep him from relapsing.
Fear and Belief in “Chemical Imbalance” Prevent People from Coming Off Antidepressants
Researchers interviewed people who were given medical advice to discontinue antidepressants.
Refugees and Immigrants Experience Increased Medical Coercion
Refugees and first-generation immigrants of African descent are at greater risk of experiencing medical coercion when compared to immigrants of other visible minority communities in Canada.
Training Health Workers in Therapy Leads to Improvements and Less Medication Use
A Nigerian study finds that more than three-quarters of patients improved, even when only 13% were prescribed medication.
Bringing Together Young and Old to Ease Isolation of Rural Life
From NPR: Communities in northeastern MN are trying to reconnect a fragmented social fabric through a program called AGE to age, which connects about 4,000 youths with almost 2,500 older adults annually.
Screening + Drug Treatment = Increase in Veteran Suicides
For the past 15 years, the VA's suicide prevention efforts have focused on getting veterans screened and treated for psychiatric disorders, with antidepressants a first-line therapy. This effort has caused veteran suicide rates to steadily rise.
“We Need a New Paradigm” — Rethinking Psychiatry’s Hospitalization Survey
Rethinking Psychiatry put out a survey on people’s experiences of psychiatric hospitalization in the Pacific Northwest. The results showed tremendous dissatisfaction, with the overwhelming majority of respondents reporting that they did not feel safe, secure or respected in the hospital.
CDC: Childhood Trauma Is a Public Health Issue and We Can Do More to...
From NPR: A new report published Tuesday presents the CDC's first estimate of how many Americans are affected by adverse childhood experiences and the benefits of preventing these kinds of traumas.
Capitalism Makes Solutions Impossible: A Review of ‘Rebel Minds’
Psychiatry’s role, Rebel Minds makes clear, is to prepare the population for capitalism’s purposes, and to cull the humans who it fails to prepare. The relationship is symbiotic: psychiatry trades in medicalizing and biologicizing human suffering, which capitalism produces an endless supply of; it’s a match made in heaven.
U of Buffalo Studies Show Protective Effects of Maternal Love
From The Buffalow News: Even for children born to parents who used alcohol, cocaine or other drugs, a supportive, respectful primary caregiver lowered their future health and relationship risks.
Exporting Psychological Concepts Associated With Gender May Have Unintended Consequences
New qualitative research finds a shift in the meaning of gender as it enters the local lexicon of people in rural Malawi, in turn having negative ramifications for those it is meant to help.
