Around The Web

From PESI UK: While it might be tempting for therapists to think that drugs are the sole concern of the prescriber and the province of the medical arena, this would be misguided.

From SuzanneZeedyk.com: In the 21st century, we find ourselves at the very beginning of a public consciousness of the ‘catastrophic burden’ of emotional poverty.

STAT reports that the drug industry’s top lobbying group is attempting to boost its funds in anticipation of a show down with regulators. Clinton...

From The Guardian Letters: Prof. John Read and Dr. James Davies argue that a recent review’s findings are not relevant to the majority of real-world antidepressant users, while readers offer their own experiences of using the drugs.

From Steamboat Pilot & Today: Colorado state officials kept secret an investigation into a pattern of potentially fatal prescription errors at one of its regional mental health centers.

From CBC: Wang says she was experiencing mental distress and her boyfriend called the RCMP. The officer did not provide assistance.

In the Atlantic, Cari Romm describes “what it is like to earn a living as a research subject in clinical trials.” “Phase 1 trials are almost always where the money is,” she writes, but they are “also the least regulated” and “companies aren’t legally required to register a trial with Clinicaltrials.gov.” “It seems to me like if you were considering signing up for one of these things, you would at least want to know the data that’s out there about [safety],” said Carl Elliott, an author for MIA and expert on the ethics of human subject research.

The Melbourne Herald Sun reports that "The prescription of some atypical antipsychotics has more than doubled . . . Psychiatrist Dr George Halasz who has been vocal about...

From World Association for Infant Mental Health: By the time most of us reach adulthood, we have not only lost the capacity to regularly access states that we achieved routinely as infants, but we have also lost awareness of that loss.

From KERA News: "These children are being repeatedly raped in [DFPS's] care," said Judge Janis Jack. "They’re being drugged in your care if they complain. If their behavior is not up to snuff, they’re getting psychotropic drugs. And that is not safe."

In the Atlantic, Todd Rose explains that the concept of the “Average person” is actually a relatively new idea in history. The invention of...

Two public thinkers contribute food for thought that fits, if obliquely, into the conversational pot-luck on MIA. The New York Times' David Brooks writes in...

In this interview for Scientific American, psychiatrist John Halpern discusses some of the potentially therapeutic effects of peyote, ayahuasca, psilocybin, MDMA and other psychedelics. "Once when...

From The Conversation: A new university in Africa is taking steps toward decolonizing the social sciences, including assigning students non-English texts, studying non-textual sources, and...

From NBC News: "Mental health has become a crisis among America’s youth, and experts say the unique challenges and needs of young men are not...

The Toronto Star interviews the man "who brought neuroplasticity to the masses."

Brian Daniels writes in the Belfast Telegraph that the role of antidepressants in the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash needs to be investigated. “The safety...

John Markowitz, a clinical psychiatrist and professor, argues that the NIMH’s exclusive focus on neuroscience research is failing patients in The New York Times....

From BBC Future: We’re all familiar with the mind-bending properties of psychedelic drugs, but it turns out ordinary medications – from paracetamol (acetaminophen) to antihistamines, statins, asthma medications and antidepressants – can be just as potent.

From American Civil Liberties Union: Last week, the defense attorneys of the psychologists behind the CIA's torture program, James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen, compared their...

From the BMJ: Lisa Cosgrove and colleagues report that 60% of the panel and task-force members of the DSM-5-TR received payments from industry. Collectively,...

This week a national pharmacist group, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, joined the physicians of the American Medical Association in a call to...

“Two Scots whose lives have been ravaged by prescription drugs are battling for ­recognition of the devastating withdrawal issues as well as proper support for victims,”...

-An article In Disability and Society asks why iacademic research approaches which "at first seem inviting and like they might even help to disrupt psychiatric control," so often seem to "ultimately resort to marginalising mad people’s own knowledge."

For STAT, Judith Graham tells the story of her sister who had always strongly opposed aggressive life-sustaining measures for herself until she developed dementia....