NIMH vs DSM-5: No One Wins, Patients Lose
Allen Frances writes in the Huffington Post that "DSM-5 certainly deserves rejecting. It offers a reckless hodgepodge of new diagnoses that will misidentify normals...
“The DSM is not Being Abandoned — Psychiatry is Finally Growing up”
Forbes magazine finds that the change in the NIMH's relationship with the DSM is "not so much that studies that use the DSM-5 will...
“Dr. Insel’s Blog is not big News… It’s an Affirmation of Something That has...
1 Boring Old Man incisively analyzes NIMH director Thomas Insel's disavowal of the DSM, saying "it’s not likely to be a shock to the...
“Bipolar Writer Comments on Debate Over ‘Crisis in Psychiatry'”
John Horgan, who announced that The NIMH's move away from the DSM was "a move sure to rock psychiatry, psychology and other fields that...
“Psychiatry’s Guide Is Out of Touch With Science, Experts Say”
"Just weeks before the long-awaited publication of a new edition of the so-called bible of mental disorders, the federal government’s most prominent psychiatric expert...
“Mental Illness Still Hurts, no Matter What you Call it”
"(Director of the NIMH Thomas Insel's) announcement is nothing short of a cataclysm in mental health. Imagine that you have a child who's been...
“The NIMH Withdraws Support for DSM-5”
From Psychology Today blogger Christopher Lane: "Just two weeks before DSM-5 is due to appear, the National Institute of Mental Health, the world's largest...
Psychiatry in Crisis! Mental Health Director Rejects Psychiatric ‘Bible’ and Replaces With… Nothing
John Horgan of Scientific American writes that "in a move sure to rock psychiatry, psychology and other fields that address mental illness, the director...
“Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.”
A previously "solicitous and loving" young undergoes "a classic onset of schizophrenia", followed by "a changing regimen of antidepressants." He is now in jail...
“Harvard Student’s Suicide as a Case Study”
The case of a Harvard student who was diagnosed as ADHD and prescribed Adderall based on cursory information collected by a nurse, then committed...
“Psychosis, healing and rebirth”
Our friend Monica Cassani muses "Psychosis is, among (many) other things, also, quite often, a deep attachment to one’s (not consensually reasonable) thoughts and...
“What Do Scientific Studies Show?”
The New York Times explores the problematic nature of reporting science and of science reporting.
Article →
Thanks, Anonymous, for pointing this out.
“Concern over anti-psychotic drug given to soldiers”
ABC News discovers that the military is resorting to antipsychotics to quiet traumatized soldiers, rather than treating the trauma.
Article →
“Doctor: Possible Links Between Antidepressants, Pregnancy And Autism”
MIA blogger Adam Urato on Boston's WBUR radio station, talking about recent research linking antidepressants with autism.
Article →
“Mental health: On the spectrum”
Nature writes of the paucity of agreement on how to define or describe mental illness. "The problem is that biologists have been unable to...
“Does Psychiatry Need Science?”
Gary Greenberg writes in the New Yorker about psychiatry's longstanding quest for scientific validity.
Article →
“Stop Taking Your Meds, Right Now… (NOT!)”
The ever-sagacious Monica Cassani writes "Some people are so terrified and reactive they assume that I am somehow suggesting that everyone come off their...
“Trauma Inducing Medical Care During the Birth Experience is Often the Cause of Post-partum...
Beyond Meds explores one mother's story that suggests an explanation for post-partem depression: the effect of medicalized childbirth.
Article →
“The Obama Plan — Spending Mental Health Money in All the Wrong Places “
Allen Frances writes about Obama's $235 million investment in a new mental health system, in the Huffington Post; "Most of the kids singled out...
“How America Breeds Mental Illness from Birth Until Death”
Alternet's article about how "The over-diagnosis and over-prescription that dominates the mental health care scene in the US contributes to a system that is...
“Letter to a Foreign Psychiatrist”
Nassir Ghaemi responds to "a young psychiatrist beginning a career in another country" that "We have lost the ability to accurately recognize our patients’...
“Throughout History, Defining Schizophrenia Has Remained a Challenge”
From Scientific American: "Less than 200 years ago schizophrenia emerged from a tangle of mental disorders known simply as madness. Today its diagnosis remains...
“Power failure: Why Small Sample Size Undermines the Reliability of Neuroscience”
An article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience about low sample sizes suggests, according to The Guardian, that "the likelihood that any claimed effect (based on...
“Brains as Clear as Jell-O for Scientists to Explore”
A process that turns brains into something like clear Jell-o offers "a much more precise picture of what is happening in the brains of...
“Your Child’s Religion may be ‘Mental Illness'”
“Fastidiousness to religious practices” may be a sign of mental illness, according to an article on Time Mgazine's website. "It’s not unusual that children...
