Around The Web

From Gemini Adams: Unlike PTSD, the symptoms of CPTSD are often entrenched in an individual's personality, having taken root during formative years, when attachment styles and brain development are fragile and still maturing.

In this piece for 1843, a psychoanalyst explains why for people feeling “burnt out,” simply trying to relax doesn’t always work. "Burnout involves the loss of the...

From Bad Benzos: "Please educate yourselves, the medical community, and the general public about the devastating effects of benzodiazepines."

From The Toronto Star: Here is a movie that says, loudly and clearly: screw the just-go-get-help discourse that’s been dominating our discussions about mental illness. Because things are not all right. The system is really broken.

The Atlantic features a story about the availability of effective treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).  “Many OCD sufferers and their families say finding the...

From Belfast Telegraph: "He said: 'This drug is poisoning me. It's giving me problems I never had before.' He's handing them the diagnosis on a plate, and the system is not listening," said Professor David Healey.

From Bloomberg Businessweek: Backed by SoftBank and promoted by Simone Biles, Cerebral has built the fastest-growing online mental health business. Former employees say the rapid expansion comes at the expense of patient care.

-A psychiatrist asserts that psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies never promoted the idea that serotonin deficiencies could cause depression, and suggests that no one at Mad in America has evidence that they did.

From Terry Baranski/Healing the Self: Western Medicine is firmly entrenched in three fundamental ideologies when it comes to chronic mental and physical pathology: A disease-based perspective, symptom-focused treatment, and mind/body separation.

From Way of Thinking: The irresolvable tension between authenticity and attachment that many children in our society are faced with results in their self-suppression. And one possible outcome is the development of niceness as a coping mechanism.

From The Conversation: What we learn throughout infancy and childhood are a set of behaviours and ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and others, or what psychologists call a working model of the world.

From Psychology Today: When a threat is so bad or goes on for so long, and there is no way to fight or flee, the nervous system decides there is only one option left: immobilization.

From gustav f./unlearnwithdrawal.substack.com: What we call ‘protracted withdrawal’ is not technically withdrawal; it’s more like withdrawal memories that the brain has learned to play back over and over again.

PsychAlive is releasing a new blog and e-course on “Making Sense of Your Life,” with psychologists Lisa Firestone and Dan Siegel. They draw upon the...

From Psychology Is: The field is comprised of psychiatrists who primarily act as drug prescribers and justify their practices on the basis of "silly theories that are continually refuted," said the UCLA professor.

From The Seattle Times: No private mental-health care operator in Washington state in recent years has pushed to expand as rapidly or racked up as many serious violations as quickly.

From Red Pepper: Capitalism produces much of the mental distress that is categorized as "mental illness" by turning human creativity and connectivity into social isolation,...

From Terapeutiska Tankar: Reification happens when constructs that describe but do not explain behaviors, such as ADHD, are mistaken for causes of behavior. 

Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, author of The Protest Psychosis, has published a brief history of "schizophrenia" in relation to African American culture in...

From Daniel Mackler: It is common for therapy clients to be healthier than their therapists, for two reasons: clients are often humble whereas therapists often are not; and clients are often actively grappling with their feelings whereas many therapists are stuck in dissociation from theirs.

"A long-standing enigma in psychiatry has been why no-one has been able to find someone who has both congenital blindness and a diagnosis of...

From Current Affairs: The cultural pressures to become a self-made individual have intensified at the same time that sources of social support have decreased. Enter the life coach.

From Gabor Maté, MD: Nature has given us the capacity to tune out or dissociate as a survival mechanism to escape overwhelming stress.

From BPS Research Digest: "Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult."

From The Guardian: After years journeying through the traditional healthcare system, could radical alternatives save my son from an endless cycle of hospital stays and drugs?