Free to Check In, But Not to Leave: WA State’s For-Profit Psych Hospitals
From The Seattle Times: For-profit psychiatric hospitals in Washington routinely have held patients by claiming they wouldn’t be safe if released, only to be contradicted by government evaluators who find no grounds for committing them.
International Experts Call for Services for Millions Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs
From the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: The 40 experts attending last weekend’s meeting of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal voted to endorse the recent Public Health England recommendations on prescribed medicines.
Hi, I’m David. I’m a Drug Addict
From Los Angeles Times: "Most people aren’t prepared for the changes these drugs can cause to the body," says Adam Bisaga, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
Infancy and Early Childhood Matter So Much Because of Attachment
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.
ACLU Suing Officials on Behalf of Traumatized Separated Families
From Truthout: "We think that the family separations was so extreme and so unprecedented that if ever there was a case warranting damages, it’s this one," an ACLU spokesman said.
We Need to Treat BPD for What It Really Is – a Response to...
From The Conversation: Thinking about BPD in terms of its underlying cause would lead to better treatment and reinforce the importance of preventing child abuse and neglect in the first place.
Inspectors Discover Poor Standards at 28 UK Mental Health Units
From The Guardian: The disclosure of such widespread substandard care in privately-run mental health facilities has prompted psychiatrists to call for a public inquiry to investigate.
Understanding Voices: New Website for Voice-Hearers and Their Supporters
From Hearing the Voice: New website offers practical techniques and information and sheds light on the links between voice-hearing and inner speech, trauma, creativity and spiritual or religious experience.
How a Parent’s Affection Shapes a Child’s Happiness for Life
From Motherly: A number of recent studies highlight the relationship between parental affection and children’s happiness and success.
Ancient Singing Tradition Helps People Cope With Trauma in the Modern World
From YES! Magazine: "Lament [singing] is a very old, traditional way to express your feelings...If you are hurt or you have sorrows...you cry it out, you let it come out. That’s what they would do in the old times."
Arab-Americans’ Mental Health Suffers Due to Census Box
From Scienceline: Beyond cloaking millions of people in invisibility, the lack of a Middle Eastern and North African ethnic box has also complicated efforts to research the minority group’s mental health.
People, Heal Thyselves: Nigeria’s New Mental Health Approach
From The Guardian: Informal mental health support networks like Nigeria’s MANI are becoming more prevalent around the world as people realise that health systems cannot cope with mental illness.
Schizophrenia and Suicide: Is There a Drug Connection?
From The Baltimore Sun: In current psychotropic trials, there are more dead bodies in the active treatment groups than in the placebo groups. That's quite different from what happens in the trials of drugs that really work.
Is It Time to Make Peace With Voices?
From Discursive of Tunbridge Wells: Hundreds of years of ignoring voices has only made them more desperate and challenging. Is it time to respectfully invite them to the peace table?
Johann Hari: This Could Be Why You’re Depressed and Anxious
From TED: I was only able to start changing my life when I realized my depression was not a malfunction. It's a signal. Your depression is a signal. It's telling you something.
‘Shocking’ Study: Most Common Antidepressant Barely Improves Depression
From The Telegraph: The new trial of sertraline is by far the largest to be conducted without the involvement of the pharmaceutical industry.
‘Disturbing Staff Abuses,’ ‘Serious Staff Violations’ of Law at DC’s St. Elizabeths Hospital
From Washington City Paper: By law, hospitals can only use restraints as a last resort. In 2018, St. Elizabeths used them almost 20,000 percent more than in 2013.
Prescription Drugs Are No Cure for Deprivation
From The BMJ Opinion: The highest proportion of patients receiving prescriptions for antidepressants and opioids is located in areas of greatest social deprivation.
Prozac Maker Paid Millions in Secret Deal in Mass Shooting Lawsuit
From USA TODAY: Eli Lilly vigorously shielded the payment for more than two decades, defying a Louisville judge who fought to reveal it because he said it swayed the jury's verdict.
Yale COPE Project to Study How People Control Their Voices
From Yale School of Medicine: The goal is not necessarily to get rid of the voices, said the project's co-director, but to empower voice-hearers with the skills to influence those experiences.
Groundbreaking Report by Public Health England on Prescribed Drug Dependence
From the All Party Parliamentary Group on Prescribed Drug Dependence: The report reveals the disturbing scale of the problem in England and makes several urgent recommendations.
Systemic Constellations: Healing Situations Other Therapies Don’t
From the Findhorn Foundation: I had been trying to think my way through something that needed to be felt and engaged with spiritually. As soon as I partnered with the larger energetic system I am a part of, it helped me with the needed answers.
My Brother Rescued Me; I Wish I Could Have Rescued Him
From The Baltimore Sun: It has taken me until now, nearly three decades after his death, to fully understand how childhood trauma crept up and destroyed him.
Opioid Crackdown Forces Pain Patients Into Sudden Tapers Off Their Drugs
From The Washington Post: The CDC opioid-prescribing guideline authors acknowledged that medical experts don’t really know what happens to people forced to taper suddenly from high dosages.
Response to Criticism of Recent Article on Antidepressant-Suicide Risk
From the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry: Far from undermining our findings, the critique by Hayes et al. provides us with a unique opportunity to address important issues that were not covered in our original paper.
