Blogs

What worked for participants is the compassionate, welcoming, inclusive and non-judgmental approach of DDA. It is about peer support, role modelling, hope, building skills… acquiring self-confidence and building a new identity.

Dr. Lieblich's critique of psychiatry is precise, hard-hitting, and uncompromising, a superb and compelling summary of the case against psychiatry.

Because the “scientists” who study, categorise, and establish guidelines for autism can’t find anything definitive, they resort to scientism. Over time, it becomes part of our cultural “common sense.”

An analysis of the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics’ regulations on dual relationships: Indications for self-disclosure and problematic consequences for peers entering the social work workforce.

Solitary confinement is not a substitute for medical isolation and its conditions are not conducive to care or recovery, but rather a tool to manage and silence those struggling with trauma exacerbated by conditions they are trapped in indefinitely.

It’s common that both people are contributing to the issue in one way or another. However, there is at least one instance that renders “it takes two” unavailable for blanket-statement use, and that is abuse.

Sami Timimi discusses the lack of findings for a genetic or neurobiological basis for ADHD, and explores the short- and long-term effects of stimulant drugs.

I trained in psychiatry in the 1950s. I saw psychiatry switch from trying to help patients to understand themselves better to trying to find a drug that would relieve their symptoms.

Both the idea that there are some characteristic brain-based abnormalities for those diagnosed with ADHD, and that the medications used have specific properties that target a disease process—like a chemical imbalance—are false.

An interview between Drs. Aftab and Pies reveals a deep mistrust of patients' reports of their own experiences, and devolves into a game of semantics in an attempt to prove psychiatry's relevance.

It is hard to step out of the space of diagnoses because of the power it holds. The “doctor” who inflicted on you the awful label of “schizophrenia” or “bipolar” damages you because of the power he holds.

Paying attention to the science tells us that we need to look beyond formal services. People need connection and meaning as well as basics such as safety, housing, and work.

One label in the DSM that applies to cognitive abilities—“Intellectual Disabilities”—is crucial in determining whether people accused of crimes in some US states will be executed.

Mental distress is often perceived as something devoid of context, as an individual medical condition or a failure instead of a human condition linked to the social context one exists in.

Medically-induced harm—affecting tens of millions of people worldwide—has taken the field decades to take seriously.

We now spend over twenty billion dollars a year on treatment for something called “ADHD.” For that amount of money, we could pay the mid-career salaries of an extra 365,000 teachers or 827,000 teachers’ aides.

Wherever you find mental health services to have expanded, you find a parallel increase in the numbers who have been classed as disabled due to a mental health disorder.

There is clear evidence of a double standard and attitude that favors and privileges one side of the binary—the clinicians—over peers. This discrimination must be made visible and revealed to mental health advocates and changemakers.

Coupled with a burgeoning new movement (AA) for temperance members to refer to, the movement changed from a public policy interest group to what we would now call a treatment-based outreach organization.

Soteria House’s history is complex and fascinating. Soteria Houses have never had the support they needed, but they still managed to change so many lives.

Megan Wildhood discusses the flaws in phrases like "fake it till you make it," "you can choose how you feel," and "no one is responsible for your life but you."

I am not immune to what I call weaponized empathy, which I see as the pure intention of compassion for another tainted with aggression around eradicating pain, pain that could be a source of growth for the sufferer if allowed to arise and pass away without force.

The concepts we use have undermined our natural resilience, sensitised us to an idea of our vulnerability, and encouraged us to transfer our agency to practitioners who use a system as if it has scientific validity and is clinically useful.

Public mental health authorities continue to oppress persons with psychosocial conditions through a combination of punitive and discriminatory laws that are constructed with a "best interests" paradigm in mind and a medical model that pathologises difference and dissent. 

Please join us on Friday, October 23 for OpenExcellence, HOPENDialogue, and Mad in America’s ongoing Town Hall conversation about what Open Dialogue is — and is becoming.