Yearly Archives: 2019
On Human Nature and Its Implications for the Mind-Body Problem
Peter Hacker's magnum opus explores what it means to be human via an analysis of the language we use. Through disclosing the conceptual framework within which we think, act and come to know things, our deep and implicit understanding of ourselves and our world is revealed.
Mobile Apps for Mental Health Lack Transparency in Data Sharing
Research illustrates privacy concerns with how mental health applications collect and share users’ data.
Fighting for the Meaning of Madness: An Interview with Dr. John Read
Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.
The Answers in the Attic: A Mother-Daughter Story of Overmedication and Recovery
In 1959, my mother suffered what people referred to as a nervous breakdown after my sister’s birth. I puzzled over why Mom never recovered, until I found Dad’s collection of medical records in my sister’s attic. How could anyone give a nursing mother with three small children so many drugs in such a short period of time?
In the Land of Hope and Grief
From Pacific Standard: An art therapy project in an Alaska Native village helps teens talk about suicide in their community.
Exposure to Antidepressants in the Womb Linked to Autistic Behavior in Mice
Researchers experimenting on mice found that exposure to fluoxetine (Prozac) in utero resulted in behaviors considered in animal studies to be analogous to autism in humans.
Service-Users See Long-Term Antipsychotic Use as Compromising Recovery, Review Finds
A new meta-review examines the experiences of antipsychotic drugs use among people diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.
The Empty Promise of Suicide Prevention
From The New York Times: Antidepressants can’t supply employment or affordable housing, repair relationships with family members or bring on sobriety.
Forced Drugging with Antipsychotics is Against the Law: Decision in Norway
In all countries, we need to work for ensuring that forced medication for psychiatric patients is forbidden by law. Virtually all countries, apart from the US, have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which prohibits forced drugging, but not a single country has done anything.
Lou Reed: That Which Does Not Kill Us Can Radicalize Us
Lou Reed’s “Kill Your Sons,” about his ECT as a 17-year-old, gives voice to an event that majorly radicalized him to distrust authorities. Lou’s talents enabled his rage over his ECT to be transformed into the kind of art that deeply touched society’s outcasts and victims of illegitimate authority. But such trauma often only destroys.
A Deeper Dive into System Change in the Mental Health Paradigm
For the past several years, my blogs have centered on how policy can affect practice, especially in public mental health systems. But I haven't taken a deeper dive into strategies, especially focused for advocates who seek significant and even radical changes. I think it's now time.
FDA Medical Adviser: ‘Congress Is Owned by Pharma’
From Yahoo! Finance: "Congress is supposed to have oversight for the FDA...the FDA isn’t going to hold pharma accountable, and Congress is getting paid to not hold pharma accountable."
Study Reveals Inconsistency in ADHD Diagnostic Determinations
Researchers compare differences between research and clinical diagnoses of ADHD and explore the consistency of clinical determinations over time
Investigation: Use of Dangerous Restraint Tripled in Scots Psychiatric Wards
From The Herald: "Restraint is supposed to be a last resort but these figures show that...it is becoming more and more common," said the Scottish Liberal Democrats' health spokesman.
Researchers Find Bias in Industry-Funded Continuing Medical Education
Industry-funded continuing medical education (CME) influences physicians to prescribe more opioids, focus less on the consequences.
Lithium: A Survivor’s Guide for Parents
When I was a young adult, I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed on lithium. I am 61 years old now, living on the edge of end-stage kidney disease. If I could undo everything, by all means, I would not have taken this drug. It is not safe for anyone at any age.
Sodium Nitroprusside Shows No Efficacy in Schizophrenia Treatment
Researchers question biases of preliminary trials that found that sodium nitroprusside, an antihypertensive drug, has positive effects on schizophrenia symptoms.
Snapshots of Spring: Journeying Off Psych Meds After 20 Years of Compliance
My prayer to be taken out of my misery was answered, just not the way I used to envision. I managed to escape the system and here I am in the same lifetime, alive and well. I’m slowly getting acquainted with this new setup and am eternally grateful for yet another opportunity at life, which I hope does not slip through my fingers.
Should Every American Citizen Be a Yoga Teacher?
From The New York Times: CorePower, the country’s largest yoga studio chain, has a distinctly profitable approach: It enlists teachers as salespeople and incentivizes them with bonuses.
Report – Medication Overload: How the Drive to Prescribe Is Harming Older Americans
From Lown Institute: If nothing is done to change current practices, medication overload will lead to the premature deaths of 150,000 older Americans over the next decade.
The Power Threat Meaning Framework One Year On
The team that developed the Power Threat Meaning framework as a diagnostic alternative reflects on the response to the framework after one year.
Cities Can’t Criminalize Homelessness, Federal Court Affirms
From Curbed: An Idaho lawsuit is now established as precedent: cities won't be able to punish people for sleeping on public property unless they provide adequate indoor accommodations.
Activists, Suicide Prevention Groups Seek Bans on Conversion Therapy for Minors
From NPR: "Conversion therapy...is telling somebody that there's something fundamentally broken with them and...it needs to be fixed. That's a lot of trauma."
Remembering Deron Drumm: The Vision and the Hope for Healing and Connection
A memorial blog for Deron S. Drumm, Executive Director of Advocacy Unlimited and founder of the Toivo wellness center, who passed away on April 4, 2019 from a sudden illness. Readers who knew Deron and would like to honor his life and work are invited to share their remembrances here.
25 Lenses Through Which to View How Life is Experienced
Each of us is a real human being dealing with real circumstances and experiencing the passage of time. Each knitted together as a multiplicity, smiling one moment and dreaming of revenge the next, oblivious to the world one moment and marching in protest the next, selfless one moment and selfish the next. Labels do not capture this reality.
