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I understand that some people are staunchly opposed to public mental health services, and I understand why. However, millions of people reach out to these organizations and agencies for assistance in getting through difficult times. It is common knowledge that the “help” they get is not always helpful, but I have known a few people who found the support they were looking for and, let’s face it, until there are widely available and accessible alternatives that people are able to turn to, many people who are struggling reach out to public and private providers for help. Some people call me naïve because I have faith in the human capacity to make good choices, when given the opportunity and presented with evidence that supports a decision that is informed not only by data, but by recognition of their potential to be a force of healing and justice in the world.

Like most doctors, I feel like I prescribe medications ethically and effectively. The basic foundation for that confidence is three things: 1) Knowing that my primary motivation is almost always to help my patients. 2) I try to defend myself as best I can from being too influenced by the profit seeking motivations of the pharmaceutical industry. And 3) I try to resist responding to various self destructive motivations of my patients. Prodded by Robert Whitaker’s books, I feel the need to build a more comprehensive approach to ethical and effective prescribing than I was taught or modeled or even than is expected of me. Here are four more foundations I’m building: 1) Individualized prescribing, 2) Recovery-based prescribing, 3) Trauma-informed prescribing, and 4) Toxicity-informed prescribing.

At a time when psychiatrists are considering whether suicidal behavior constitutes a disorder rather than a symptom, there is strong evidence that physicians have far higher rates of suicide than the general population, with psychiatrists found to be at the highest risk of suicide. In light of this information, you may be asking yourself, as I am, whether it would be wise to conduct a brief mental state examination of any physician we consult (particularly any psychiatrist) as a way of ensuring our physical and emotional safety? To this end I have prepared a quick diagnostic test that you may carry in your pocket or purse for easy administration next time you are visiting a health professional.

I had the good fortune to be working at a dynamic Recovery program for adults beginning in 1990. I passionately believed that not only does recovery happen – but that we would be able to demonstrate it by reporting significant improvements in quality of life outcomes such as employment, housing and social supports. The program's commitment to Supported Employment, for instance, was emphatic and we took pride in doing “whatever it takes” to support our members’ integration into the community. The Recovery movement was just taking root in California and throughout the U.S. When I look back on the following 19 years, I can’t help but feel some sense of disappointment about the overall outcomes.

In my last blog, I talked about how I was attempting to cope with a “mini-relapse” without using psychiatric drugs. One Sunday morning in the midst of this episode I awoke in a particularly dismal state. I didn’t have a structure planned for the day. And without something to look forward to, both my anxiety and depression increased.

As you may know, the annual Alternatives Conference is the largest peer-run conference in mental health in the country and will take place December 4-7 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Austin, Texas. You may not know that this year Alternatives is truly a cannot-miss event, for several reasons, the top ten of which are outlined below. But first, perhaps a little background on the conference would be helpful.

Oddly enough, it had occurred to me over this past year as I’ve been writing these essays for Mad in America that maybe I was “too healthy” to speak to the withdrawal experience with authenticity, to have street cred. It’s now a moot point. I write this not to scare people, but to present a reality. This reality has been difficult to accept, but the fact remains that my nervous system is more sensitive than before and might always be so, at least to some degree.

This summer, Sera Davidow, Laura Delano, Sean Donovan and Caroline White began a collaborative process with many others from the Western Mass RLC and beyond to develop two new films (not yet titled) focusing particularly on the topic of psychiatric drugs. And that’s where YOU come in.

On September 21, I posted here that the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities took a definitive stand against psychiatric commitment in its Concluding Observations on El Salvador and Austria.  The Committee held that the "danger to self or others" standard cannot legitimize psychiatric detention, and that all legislation authorizing such detention must be repealed. This is of huge significance, which I did not expand on in my earlier post.  Another set of Concluding Observations has now been released, this time on Australia, which gives me another opportunity to discuss what has happened.  I hope that both lawyers and non-lawyers will follow the discussion, since it has both legal and political implications.

A few years ago I had the intuition that meditation was the most important survival skill for these shifting times. It came after reading...

I’d like to share a bit about what happened to me after being placed on these medications, and how I successfully got off. Until recently, I was embarrassed to talk about my personal experiences publicly, as I’m a professional who specializes in anxiety and depression. Today, medication free, I feel better than ever before, and I am now on a mission to help my current clients get off medications, and to inform others through my writing about the dangers and pitfalls of starting antidepressants.

If you are reading this, you are probably involved in the mental health system. You might consider yourself a patient. You might consider yourself a professional or perhaps a caregiver. Maybe you consider yourself a survivor of the system. If you are reading this, you are probably interested in change. The interest of change, and the exploration of its possibilities, unites the readers of this site.

We would be much better served if we were told by mental health professionals from the very beginning to trust ourselves. Instead, the entire system is fraught with the infantilization of the client. This is (in general) true of both psychology and psychiatry as currently practiced.

Living in this very complex, demanding, stratified modern society has produced an epidemic of personal alienation. There is often a tragic gulf between our emotional experience and our awareness of it. 1 in 5 Americans are now taking a psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 women are now taking a psychiatric medication. All of those medications suppress, modify, or block emotion.

As Frederick Douglass said 150 years ago, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never did and it never will.” As we look at our situation now and try to figure out how to respond to it, we should keep those words in mind. People with psychiatric labels, like me, are now being systematically attacked as less than human, as “walking time bombs” who might kill someone at any moment, as not-quite-human creatures who should not be allowed the rights of all other citizens.

My name is Mark Ragins. Most people at The Village call me Dr. Mark, except those who have known me long enough to forego that pedestal and just call me Mark. I’m a psychiatrist, a story teller, and the kid who used to drive his parents and teachers crazy asking “Why?” unendingly and then, never satisfied with their answers, looked for my own answers and returned to tell them that their answers were wrong. When I meet someone new I usually try not to tell them I’m a psychiatrist too soon. There are so many strange and scary ideas about psychiatrists and mental illnesses out there that I’m afraid I’ll be rejected before I even have a chance.

Sandra Steingard writes in Community Psychiatrist about Lex Wunderink's study, published in the August JAMA Psychiatry, which found that people who discontinued medication have...

It has been twenty years since my last suicide attempt. I was barely eighteen years old, and had already spent the last four years, my entire adolescence, really, in and out of the mental health system. On that day, twenty years ago, I left the hospital with nothing but a prescription for yet another drug in my hand, sent back to the decrepit group home where I began my adult life.

As I see it this website is about filling the gaping hole in the official literature on mental health problems and their treatment. Since these problems were declared to be diseases, ‘just like any other’, academic papers present them as if they were simply technical glitches in the way the brain or mind works. They can be identified by ticking a few boxes, and easily treated by tweaking the corresponding defect with a drug or a few sessions of quick-fix therapy. What it is like to experience these problems and their treatments is nowhere to be found. Yet in post after post on this site among others, we hear about the harm produced by drugs that are prescribed for mental health problems.

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

The 2013 ISEPP conference in Greensboro is all about finding alternative ways of helping children and youth who are diagnosed with mental disorders and their families: Alternatives to the present system in which the children are very likely to be drugged, a treatment approach which will not be very helpful to them or their parents.

We are seeing an increasing cycle of high-profile media stories linking an act of random multiple shooting to an allegation that the perpetrator is "mentally ill." We have to understand that it is nothing more than a libel. It cannot be debated rationally, and every time we have tried to point out the the absence of evidence for a statistical linkage, these rational arguments have no effect; instead they almost seem to add fuel to the fire. I want to point out something about how profiling works and why it is always wrong.

I find it surprising that 60 Minutes,” which has a history of serious investigative journalism, would do such a slipshod job on the segment “starring” E. Fuller Torrey. The “60 Minutes” producers made a serious error in relying upon Torrey as its main source. Torrey admits to fabricating “evidence” to further his goal of making it easier to lock up people who have psychiatric diagnoses. Toward this end, he has for years engaged in “an intensive public relations campaign linking mental illness with violence.”

One of the most bizarre statements of many made by E. Fuller Torrey on national television in the last few days was his complaint that people opposed to his totalitarian views are “anti-psychiatry.” In the context of his rant, the implication was that anyone who opposes his plans for unchecked power for organized psychiatry is somehow either the equivalent of a Muslim terrorist or at least a homicidal “schizophrenic.” What does it mean to be “anti-psychiatry?” To me, it’s simply being opposed to psychiatry’s abuses.

There are terms in psychiatry that are designed to portray violent and distressing events as benign, and normal human rights, feelings and behaviours as threatening – things I think we need to name for what they are. The term ‘antidepressant’, for instance, shapes the way we think of these drugs. It renders the fact that they can worsen depression and cause suicidal thinking and behavior counter-intuitive, and makes people skeptical of claims they don’t work and make distressed people feel worse.