Around The Web
Involuntary Care Doesnât Work. What BC Should Do Instead
From The Tyee: An evidence-based approach clearly shows that the reliance on detention, force and coercion over the past two decades has not led to better outcomes.
Beyond Pharmacare
From Briarpatch Magazine: Prisoner advocates and family members of institutionalized people depict the overprescribing epidemic as attempts to âcontrol behaviourâ turning people into âzombies.â
The U.S. Disconnecting & Numbing Epidemic: The Culprit and Our Options
From CounterPunch: We are increasingly being forced to become machine components alienated from our humanity so as to fit into a large machine.
Targeted: For Those Who Hear Voices, the ‘Broken Brain’ Explanation Is Harmful
From Aeon: If psychiatryâs medical vision is failing, what should we replace it with? How can we break out of this bind?
Descriptive Labels Are Not Causes, No Matter How Hard You Try: A Response to Pies and Ruffalo
From Psychiatric Times: If circular claims are presented together with unfounded claims about purported brain mechanisms, they may further bias people towards falsely assuming that biological causes and mechanisms have been identified for psychiatric problems.
Psychiatric Diagnoses Donât Explain âWhyââOnly âHowâ
From Psychology Today/Denise Winn: Finnish researchers found that the most influential health organizations "used language that inaccurately described depression as a causal explanation to depressive symptoms."
Microbes and Mental Illness
Monica Cassani, in her Beyond Meds blog, explores the "infection connection" between Lyme disease and...
Neoliberalism and the Global Export of Psychiatry: Interview with Justin Karter
From Depth Work: A Holistic Mental Health Podcast: Neoliberal values have led to a great deal of institutional corruption and also have been exported beyond the Western world across the globe.
In Defense of the Long, Painful Grind of Therapy
From GQ: It is difficult to calculate, though easy to imagine, the uplift it could have on society if more people had a chance to work seriously on their mental wellbeing.
Tuskegee Syphilis Study Whistleblower Peter Buxtun Has Died at Age 86
From AP: Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role in bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal in U.S. history.
Mount Sinai Aggressively Sought to Stifle Debate Over Its Controversial Brain Research
From STAT: Leading neurologist Michael Okun at the University of Florida Health said the revelations about Mount Sinai's brain research should âset off the alarm bells."
Nearly a Third of Adolescents Getting Mental Health Treatment, Federal Survey Finds
From CBS News: This works out to around 8.3 million young people between the ages of 12 and 17 getting counseling, medication or another treatment.
Overcoming Stigma as an Academic With ‘Schizophrenia’
From PublicSource: My success stands in contrast to the hundreds or thousands of brilliant individuals with significant disabilities who have been locked out of academia for all the wrong reasons.
Medication Overuse in Mental Health Facilities: Not the Answer, Regardless of Consent
From Medscape: Consent, while I support it, is not the solution to what is fundamentally an infrastructure problem, a personnel problem, and lousy long-term mental health care.
The FDA Just Quietly Gutted Protections for Human Subjects in Research
From Newsweek: The new FDA rule gives thousands of IRB committees the unilateral ability to determine that researchers need not obtain true informed consent from research participants.
Why Your Brain Needs Other People
From The Guardian: Developmental psychology has long recognised the social element in thinking. The emergence of individual thought can be understood as the internalisation of interpersonal dialogue, as the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky observed almost a hundred years ago.
Ghosts in the Machine: The Fantasies of Psychopharmacology | David Healy
From David Healy/RxISK: This lecture outlines a radical new view about what antidepressants do and don't do. It covers issues that need input from everyone on how best to move forward with these treatments.
Landmark Win for Patient Autonomy in CA Supreme Court ECT Device Ruling
From Wisner Baum: The Court rejected the argument by Somatics LLC that it should be immune from liability because the plaintiffâs doctor would have prescribed ECT anyway, even with a warning of the risk of brain damage.
Paris Hilton Testifies She Was âForce-Fed Medications and Sexually Abusedâ While Institutionalized as a Teen
From The Guardian: The socialite has called on lawmakers to pass the Stop Institutional Child Abuse act and is an advocate for a âBill of Rightsâ for children in youth facilities.
I Take ‘One of the Worst’ Antidepressants for Withdrawal – And Don’t I Know It
From LancsLive: It's like I can hear the blood flowing through my ears. It is truly terrifying and impossible to ignore
What Every Therapist Should Know About Working With Prescribed Psych Drugs
From The British Psychological Society: The BPS has collaborated to deliver guidance materials for psychological therapists to support them in working with issues of prescribed drug dependence.
Patient Safety: A Letter to the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
From Hole Ousia/Peter Scott-Gordon: Antidepressants have never been conceptualised as âaddictiveâ. This ânon-addictiveâ descriptor is being used to imply drug safety in a highly dangerous way.
Why We Are Sceptical About This Study of Antidepressant Withdrawal Symptoms
From The Guardian Letters: Prof. John Read and Dr. James Davies argue that a recent reviewâs findings are not relevant to the majority of real-world antidepressant users, while readers offer their own experiences of using the drugs.
Book Review: Truth and Consequences for Medical Whistleblowers
From Undark: In âThe Occasional Human Sacrifice,â Carl Elliott notes that those who expose medical wrongdoings are hardly hailed as heroes.
How an Opioid Giant Deployed a Playbook for Moulding Doctorsâ Minds
From The BMJ: A document trove released by opioid giant Mallinckrodt shows an extensive marketing playbook designed to influence medical science and opinion, or "ghost manage" medicine.