doctor

Benzo Withdrawal: Why Don’t Doctors Know?

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Many have asked: “Why doesn’t my doctor/provider know what is happening to me?” Benzodiazepine tolerance and withdrawal are not new. So, why isn’t it simple to diagnose and treat? As both a health care provider and a withdrawal sufferer, I’d like to offer an inside and outside perspective on this question.
pregnancy

How Should We Treat Depression in Pregnancy?

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What depressed pregnant women need is compassionate care and accurate information that recognizes the potentially severe consequences of depression while making it clear that chemicals going into a baby throughout its development will likely have consequences for that development.

Effort to Tackle Overuse of Antipsychotics in Older Adults Backfires

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A partnership designed to decrease antipsychotic use in elderly patients may have led to increased use of medications with even worse risk/benefit profiles.
depression sleeping woman

The Breaking Point

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How did I become someone who could barely function? I was a high-performing sales executive ranked in the top 2% of an international business communications company. But now, after using powerful psych meds for depression and anxiety for more than a decade, I couldn’t do basic things like go to the grocery store, plan a meal, make dinner, or get together with friends.

Chosen Name Use in Transgender Youth Linked to Reduced Depression and Suicide

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The ability of transgender youth to use their chosen name is connected to reduced depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts/behaviors.
psych drug withdrawal takes a village

“How Did This Happen?” – Being Injured By Pharmaceuticals Once Again

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How did it happen to me? It happened because none of us have enough resources for the sort of brain injury and impairment the psychopharmaceutical drugs impart upon us. No one knows what is really being done to our brains and some of us are clearly more sensitive than others.

Psychiatric Diagnosis Can Lead to Epistemic Injustice, Researchers Claim

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A discussion of the role of epistemic injustice in the experiences of patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

Study Calls for Consensus on Overdiagnosis Across Medical Disciplines

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Lack of overdiagnosis parameters stifles communication across fields seeking to mitigate its potential harm.

Most Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertisements Do Not Adhere to FDA Guidelines

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Few DTC drug advertisements fully adhere to FDA guidelines, the overall quality of information provided in DTC advertisements is low, and some advertisements market off-label indications.
crime scene school shooters

Calm, Organized, Homicidal Behaviour – My Connection to School Shooters

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There is little doubt in my mind that many school shooters were in an antidepressant-induced state of psychosis, which is a loss of contact with reality that makes it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is not real. That's what happened to me. I started taking 60mg of Paxil a day. Three days later, I planned my suicide. Then I planned a murder.
school shootings and psychiatric drugs

Psychiatry and a Near Mass Shooting at Cornell

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Nearly all perpetrators of mass violence have had some contact with psychiatry or related mental health services. The idea of giving more power and money to psychiatry to prevent violence is a great political talking point but it is disastrous for public health and safety. Psychiatry seems averse to recognizing violent patients but eager to give them violence-inducing drugs.

Antidepressant Anarchy in the UK

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In this blog, I want to give some personal reflections on the events of the last few weeks in relation to the Lancet antidepressant meta-analysis and the lodging of a formal complaint with the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists. The issue of antidepressant withdrawal has been brought into the public eye in the UK like never before. What happens next will be very interesting.

New Study Concludes that Antidepressants are “Largely Ineffective and Potentially Harmful”

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A new study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry concludes that “antidepressants are largely ineffective and potentially harmful.”

Psychiatrists Warn Policymakers Benzodiazepine Overuse Could Lead to Next Epidemic

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Although opioid addiction and overuse have garnered significant national attention, similar trends in benzodiazepine overprescription and overuse continue to go unnoticed.
climbing hill

Psychiatry Poured Oil Down the Hill I Was Climbing

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I have nothing good to say about the psychiatric drugs prescribed to me or about the psychiatrists that prescribed them. I did not have a condition that needed to be medicated. There was no informed consent about the severe and indefinite damage that the drugs caused me, and I did not have the appropriate help withdrawing from them.
integrative mental health

8 Years of Mental Health Research Distilled to 4 Infographics

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Pictures are worth a thousand words. So I’ve chosen pictures to distill the mountain of mental health research I’ve examined over the last eight years. Three infographics summarize research on psychiatric drugs, and one asserts why I think Integrative Mental Health is the best path available for mental health recovery.

ADHD More Severe in Children Exposed to Pollution and Economic Deprivation

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ADHD behaviors were linked to the presence of both high levels of pollutants and persistent economic deprivation at birth and through childhood.
Cruz school shooting

Psychiatrist Says: More Psychiatry Means More Shootings

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Psychiatry not only increases the risk of violence by giving violence-inducing drugs, it lulls patients, families, professionals, schools and the public into an unrealistic and even disastrous sense of security. It's an irony of tragic proportions: Cruz was left unsupervised and free to buy a gun because he was faithfully taking psychiatric drugs that can cause violence.

Study Explores Meanings of Bipolar Disorder to Those Diagnosed

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The narratives about Bipolar Disorder promoted by drug companies may influence how those diagnosed understand themselves.
Marci Webber

A Mother’s Worst Nightmare Continues

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Marci Webber is a single mom who experienced a medication-induced psychotic episode, during which she killed her daughter, believing it would "save" her, and then tried to kill herself. For over seven years now, Marci and I have been trying unsuccessfully to get the mental health system and judicial system to acknowledge the true cause of her crime and let her go.

Study Confirms Higher Suicide Risk for Sexual Minority Adolescents

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Researchers report that sexual minority adolescents have considered, planned, and attempted suicide substantially more than their heterosexual peers.
gavel of justice

Seeking Justice

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My life flashed before my eyes as my entire medical history over the last decade was rewritten from having a genetic brain disease to being a victim of a medical scam. It was bittersweet, for I realized that I was not sick and dying, but I had been robbed of so many years of my life due to the psychiatrist’s lies. Now I am suing my former psychiatrist for damages.

CDC Reports Increased Psychostimulant Prescriptions in Women of Reproductive Age

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Psychostimulant prescriptions have increased by 344% (from 2003 to 2015) for women of reproductive age (15-44 years old).
justice

Shock Class Action – Case Update

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In September of 2017, DK Law Group, LLP filed a Class Action Complaint against the manufacturers of ECT shock devices, alleging that they caused injury to patients by withholding from the FDA data relating to serious iatrogenic brain injuries resulting from ECT. The following developments have taken place since then.
binge eating

Is Binge Eating Disorder Just Another Made-Up Disease?

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If a person binges habitually, upon sensing certain stimuli the pancreas prepares the body with insulin, and simultaneously, the stomach prepares by getting more acidic. This means that for many of us, the drive to binge is a physical need. Therapy blames the patient for “bad coping” when all she is doing is responding to her body's signals.