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As a former pharmaceutical ad writer, I not only witnessed the explosive growth in antidepressant drugs, I contributed to it.

As a parent, and a child psychologist, and just as a person, I believe that acquiescing to the idea that we should simply help people “cope more effectively with things as they perceive them” falls short of the most effective and even most loving response.

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.

In this second article, I will further analyze the reasons why the unevidenced biological-illness approach to “schizophrenia” has become so entrenched in our society. Most importantly, I will discuss hopeful alternatives.

The STAR-D study is by far the largest and most expensive study of antidepressants ever conducted, and it suggests that in real life situations, people taking antidepressants do not do very well. This may be the reason why the results of the main outcome of the STAR-D study have remained buried for so long.

The most difficult decision I have had to make as a clinician has been to send a person into a locked psychiatric unit for up to 72 hours. The emotional impact affects the individual who is going to be placed on the 72-hour hold, and their family. The emotions that are involved in the process of observing the person, collecting information, and finally making the life-altering decision are powerful and long-lasting for the person making the decision as well. That is, if they are compassionate and involved, and fully aware of the consequences.

The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, written by Will Hall and published by The Icarus Project and Freedom Center five years...

Southern Oregon physicians—from family practice specialists to psychiatrists—and nurse practitioners, social workers and other mental health professionals have been meeting for several months to...

In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, an article by Siddhartha Mukherjee entitled “Post-Prozac Nation” appeared. I eagerly read this article, wondering what position...

Our "friends" at NAMI Ohio took the occasion of so-called "Mental Illness Awareness Week" to try and drum up support for their efforts to loosen criteria for involuntary outpatient commitment (IOC) laws in Ohio. I would encourage those interested, particularly those in Ohio, to contact Ohio legislators as NAMI suggests; but to encourage them to vote DOWN any changes to the current law. Remind them that anosognosia is deliberately being mis-applied...

I refuse to be one of the doctors that contribute to the next deadly epidemic. I see too many similarities between stimulants and opiates — they’re both strongly addictive, stimulate our pleasure centers, and have long-term dangerous mental and physical effects. And they both “work” in the short term without actually fixing anything.

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.

So many people are feeling so hopeless these days. Sometimes I think twice before I turn on the radio. I don’t want to be reminded of all those being abandoned to their fate, in Aleppo and Mosul as well as other places ravaged by drought, famine and war. But the darkest stories are bearable if there is some ray of light at the end.

In November 2000, I anxiously stood before the gathered four hundred and fifty mental health professionals, administrators, peers and academicians and said, "Hi, I'm Michael Cornwall and I don't believe in mental illness!"

Note: This post originally appeared on August 18, 2014 on dxsummit.org. On August 5 and 6, 2014, a group of roughly twenty persons met in Washington, DC...

Les Ruthven addresses the lack of evidence for antidepressants being better than placebo, as well as a note about ECT.

At the 50th American Psychosomatic Society meeting in New York, Michael Shepherd was speaking. His topic - The Placebo. When the lecture finished, Lou Lasagna said "this paper is now open for questions." Nothing happened. Nobody said anything at all. Lasagna couldn't refrain from commenting: "There are 3 possible explanations. First, you were all asleep and therefore you heard nothing. Secondly, it was so bad that since this speaker has come 3,000 miles you didn't want to embarrass him. Third, it is genuinely so original and new that you don't quite know what to make of it. I'll leave you to decide which it was". What had Shepherd said?

People are encouraged to visit their GP for help with all manner of symptoms — many of which may originate in conditions of stress and distress encountered in our lives and may actually be self-limiting given time, appropriate support and perhaps some change in circumstances.

Beginning with the glamorization of Miltown in the 1950’s, the “I don’t care” pill was a way to ease the growing awareness that the world is indeed unsafe, and that something is deeply bankrupt in the promises of burgeoning science, technology, and industrialization. Still, we sought to heal these wounds through application of more of the same mentality – one of dominance, management, and suppression of all obstacles into submission. As our bodies, minds, and spirits become more and more separated from nature, each other, and ourselves, the worry, discomfort, and unease mount. Now that the going has gotten very tough, we are reaching for medications more than ever. Surely, however, turning off the smoke alarm is not the best way to deal with a fire.

Lou Reed’s “Kill Your Sons,” about his ECT as a 17-year-old, gives voice to an event that majorly radicalized him to distrust authorities. Lou’s talents enabled his rage over his ECT to be transformed into the kind of art that deeply touched society’s outcasts and victims of illegitimate authority. But such trauma often only destroys.

Through the act of deep listening to personal stories of distress and healing, I have become convinced that even the most well-meaning mental health professionals are persistently asking the wrong questions. We are operating within a system that prizes the stability, conformity, and sedation of persons with experiences too unusual or too "disruptive" to social norms. It is a system that asks the question, "What is wrong with you?" and it is a system that defines "fixing" the problem as managing symptoms so that people aren't a bother (financially, logistically, and socially) to other people.

55 Steps is a new film based on a true story that centers around two women: Collette, a lawyer with a tendency to work long hours, and Eleanor, who has spent far too much time incarcerated in hospitals. Over the course of five years, Collette fights for Eleanor’s right to choose whether or not she takes psychiatric drugs. This film is imperfect, but its importance can’t be ignored.

Kevin Gallagher addresses the Reagan era and the "crack" epidemic of the 1980s in this continuing series about the USA and addiction.

The Finnish Psychological Association held a meeting in Helsinki on 1 Sept 2014 titled “Mental Health and Medicalization.” I spoke at the meeting and four days later I sent a letter to another speaker, psychiatrist Erkki Isometsä. Professor Isometsä replied: “I will respond to it in detail within a few days..." As "Open Dialogue" is essential in science, I have published my letter to Isometsä here as well as on my own website, although I didn’t succeed in starting a dialogue.

Since mainstream “mental health” care directly affects the public, the public deserves an overview of the issues raised by the critics of these practices. For this reason, I have created a short video lecture titled The DSM and the Medical Model, summarizing criticism of the medical model of mental distress and offering a sharp rebuke of psychiatry and its narrative.