In this 30-minute podcast, Peter Simons reports on the latest scientific articles in psychiatry. The goal is to provide more detail than is usually found in conventional research news and to help listeners understand how to interpret the findings.
Articles covered in this podcast include:
- Researchers write that “psychology is fundamentally incompatible with hypothesis-driven theoretical science”;
- Researchers suggest that “evidence-based medicine” is more corporate gimmick than reliable science;
- Psychiatrists deliver the lowest-quality healthcare of any medical specialty;
- A report by the Council of Europe promotes non-coercive mental health treatment;
- Black patients in the US were more than twice as likely to be described negatively in electronic health records;
- A peer-supported Open Dialogue program shows early success in the UK;
- Antipsychotics are often prescribed without informed consent;
- Antidepressants are ineffective for children and adolescents;
- Psychiatric drugs increase dementia risk threefold after COVID in 65+ population; and
- Official guidelines on antidepressant discontinuation fail practitioners and patients.
Evidence base is flawed. The very idea of placing any certainty in it is flawed. We do not know what we do not yet know. So why use evidence base to undermine some other stack of evidence base.
In a jungle you accept the shaman’s leafy mulch in a cup and knock it back with no evidence base and fly off to instant healing. People have been living without evidence base for millennia. People have become slaves to data. Because they place too much “faith” in “facts”.
I prefer meeting people who say thry do not have a clue what makes me tick. People with no evidence of who they think I am. That way I get to be the knower of my own evidence of who I am.
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“The ten stages of genocide”. The real role of psychiatric industry.
Classification – The differences between people are not respected. There’s a division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which can be carried out using stereotypes, or excluding people who are perceived to be different.
Symbolisation – This is a visual manifestation of hatred. Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear yellow stars to show that they were ‘different’.
Discrimination – The dominant group denies civil rights or even citizenship to identified groups. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, made it illegal for them to do many jobs or to marry German non-Jews.
Dehumanisation – Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’.
Organisation – Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out the destruction of a people.
Polarisation – Propaganda begins to be spread by hate groups. The Nazis used the newspaper Der Stürmer to spread and incite messages of hate about Jewish people.
Preparation – Perpetrators plan the genocide. They often use euphemisms such as the Nazis’ phrase ‘The Final Solution’ to cloak their intentions. They create fear of the victim group, building up armies and weapons.
Persecution – Victims are identified because of their ethnicity or religion and death lists are drawn up. People are sometimes segregated into ghettos, deported or starved and property is often expropriated. Genocidal massacres begin.
Extermination – The hate group murders their identified victims in a deliberate and systematic campaign of violence. Millions of lives have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition through genocide.
Denial – The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime.
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