Yearly Archives: 2019
Moral Injury: A Systemic Issue in Medicine
From The Atlantic: The term "moral injury" describes what happens when health care workers following a calling to help others confront a system that cares only about profit.
Lee Coleman – The Reign of Error
An interview with Doctor Lee Coleman, psychiatrist and author of the 1984 book Reign of Error. Now retired, Lee devotes his time to public education that exposes the individual and public harms from today’s “mental health” industry.
Right-Wing Psychiatry, Love-Me Liberals and the Anti-Authoritarian Left
Love-me liberals need to believe that they are completely tolerant and cannot admit that they are intolerant when it comes to certain kinds of defiance. Since love-me liberals are so self-certain of their tolerance, they believe that what upsets them must be a mental illness that requires treatment.
Where Can Families Turn for Help?
Watching my son be subjected to continuous harm by the drugs, how can I pretend that it's okay to maintain this abusive system of care? Who will push for accountability? As a mother, I want to share a meaningful connection with my son. I want to witness him happy, healthy and living the life he chooses.
Does Active Placebo Response Explain Antidepressant Results?
A new study investigated whether participants guessing if they have an antidepressant or placebo affects response rates.
Scottish, Welsh Parliaments Debate Psychiatric Drug Dependence and Withdrawal
From RxISK: The Petitions Committee received an astonishing number of written testimonies from people reporting severe symptoms when stopping psychiatric drugs.
Outcome Misreporting Goes Ignored by Top Medical Journals
From Lown Institute: Journals are supposed to be the gatekeepers separating high-quality evidence from poor science, but when it comes to outcome reporting, they are shirking that responsibility.
Green Space in Childhood May Protect Against Adult Mental Health Issues
A new study suggests proximity to green space as a child is linked to lower rates of mental health issues in adulthood.
“Page Not Found” Ends Up “Telling All” About Psychiatry
Psychiatric censorship tries to hide the damaging effects of psychiatric drugs from everyone, including psychiatrists who happen to go looking for useful information. Just for fun, let's take a look at how far psychiatry will go when a bit of truth escapes from one of its own publications and must be deleted in clumsy desperation.
Peer-Support Groups Were Right, Guidelines Were Wrong: Dr. Mark Horowitz on Tapering Off Antidepressants
In an interview with MIA, Dr. Horowitz discusses his recent article on why tapering off antidepressants can take months or even years.
Connection Is a Core Human Need, But We Are Terrible at It
From Medium: The biggest problem in most people’s lives is trauma, and trauma is what creates a damaged ability to connect with others.
Increasing Prevalence of Mood Disorders Among Teens and Young Adults
Depression, serious psychological distress, and suicide attempts have risen substantially since the early 2000s among young adults – what’s changed?
Even Docs Get Killed by Akathisia
From RxISK: The doctor whose suicide was recounted by Dr. Wible was clearly a victim of his psychiatric treatment far more than his professional or personal angst.
It is Time to Abandon the Candidate-Gene Approach to Depression
The candidate-gene approach to depression goes unsupported and is likely based on bad science, new research finds.
Recovery Porn: Tell Me Your Story, I’ll Tell You Your Value
There is little denying the power of story… until our own stories get taken from us, positioned against us, and used to determine our value as some sort of human commodity. We deserve to have our stories heard and to hear the stories of others, but on our own terms, without being fetishized or controlled, and without competition for paltry awards and recognition.
Together for Sustainable Change: The Launch of Mad in Sweden
It is with great pleasure that I announce that Mad in Sweden launches today. The number of people receiving a psychiatric diagnosis in Sweden has increased dramatically in recent years, and the need for alternative perspectives to today’s biomedical and pharmacologically oriented paradigm of mental health has never been greater.
Real, Not Sham, Mental Health Coverage
Ruling on a class action lawsuit brought against the nation’s largest health insurer, Judge Spero concluded that it had adopted treatment guidelines focused on saving costs through limiting coverage to the management of acute mental health episodes. How much psychotherapy does a person need to achieve meaningful and lasting change in their emotional outlook?
The Disorder That Affects Us All: What You Need to Know About Developmental Trauma
From the Institute for Attachment and Child Development: Two articles discuss the primary cause of many mental, physical, and behavioral health problems, which often goes unaddressed in mainstream approaches.
Saving Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy could, and really ought to, promote itself as the best investigative tool around for understanding emotional health and problems in living. That would change its footing, putting it on much more solid ground. I’m calling this redefined version of psychotherapy multi-lens therapy, to put the emphasis on where it ought to have been put all along: investigating.
Kids Are the Victims of the Elite-College Obsession
From The Atlantic: Education has been eclipsed by marketing..."It comes down almost to marketing one’s soul, which gets to undermining the meaning of one’s entire life."
The Role of Context, Language, and Meaning in Hearing Voices
Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of hearing voices
How to Quit Antidepressants: Very Slowly, Doctors Say
From The New York Times: A pair of prominent psychiatric researchers calls the establishment’s position badly mistaken and the standard advice on withdrawal woefully inadequate.
First-Person Accounts of Madness and Global Mental Health: An Interview with Dr. Gail Hornstein
Dr. Gail Hornstein, author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, discusses the importance of personal narratives and service-user activism in the context of the global mental health movement.
I Get to Decide What’s Helpful for Me
If you’re in a “helping” profession, remember this: it is really arrogant to assume that you know enough to be able to decide what’s helpful for other people. The best thing you can do to help is advocate for people being treated well — which starts with asking them what they need — and say out loud that the harmful ways they’re being treated aren’t okay.
Mental Health Concerns Not “Brain Disorders,” Say Researchers
The latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences features several prominent researchers arguing that mental health concerns are not “brain disorders.”
