Blogs

The World Psychiatric Journal has published an interesting article, Uses and Abuses of Recovery: Implementing Recovery-Oriented Practices in Mental Health Systems, that outlines "7 Abuses of the Concept of 'Recovery.'"  This effort to identify problems in the use of the term "recovery" is important,  and it is good to see the many issues they raise being discussed in a major journal.  I encourage people to read the article, as I won't be able to touch on many of its points here.  Instead, what I want to do is to add some to their list of abuses of "recovery" and to critique  some of their reasoning about what alternatives should be supported.

In order for an experience to create a life mission and strong sense of purpose, it has to affect you to the core. Though I was only on psychiatric drugs for a few years of my life (and the very lowest “clinical” doses available), they affected me so strongly and took away so much that I could never forget or simply leave that experience behind me. I share this list, not to torture people who are on them or struggling to get off, reminding them of how much is being taken away (or could be taken away), but rather to validate the desire that many won't have to take these substances, and will be supported in better ways.

I’ve come to understand that a single-minded focus on either therapy or medication can do great, if unintended, harm. I’m sharing this brief history of my journey, with both my good and bad decisions, to illustrate the importance of conscious care, and of maintaining the ability to change course.

A deep blue blanketing of 1AM sky envelops my car as I sit in my parents’ driveway in February 2010, pondering my next, last...

Last week, Rep. Tim Murphy (PA) introduced the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013 to Congress and almost simultaneously mental health and disability rights advocates voiced their opposition to the proposed legislation with a statement from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. The bill, as many people who follow what's happening in mental health law know, calls for the enactment of assisted (involuntary) outpatient commitment laws at the Federal level and is purportedly crafted to ensure the safety of those deemed "severely mentally ill" by giving families, courts and mental health providers increased authority to commit individuals to outpatient treatment.

Yes, we all like to say people should be able to choose whether or not to take psychiatric drugs, and for the most part I say the same thing. It’s politically correct and it sounds diplomatic, it sounds like offering people respect and self-determination, but is it really that simple anymore?

Subtly and insidiously, my medications, once merely inert composites of chemicals, acquired an agency of their own and took center stage in my life...

The controversy over “Study 329” on the effects of Paxil in teen depression has raised questions about the state of ALL medical research. I decided to look at the research for the most recent psychiatric drug approved by the FDA, a new antipsychotic called cariprazine or Vraylar.  I located twenty studies of Vraylar on www.ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. government-sponsored registry for clinical trials.  Three were still in process, and seventeen were completed.  Not one had shared its results on the government website, a supposedly mandatory step.

Several months ago, two professors at the University of Pennsylvania were accused of ghostwriting. The university has now announced the results of their investigation, which is partially based on work by the great moral philosopher, George Constanza...

I just made a new film, called PROTEST PSYCHIATRY, on the psychiatric survivor-lead protest of the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in New York City. And I’m thrilled by how it turned out. For starters, I filmed it on no budget whatsoever, created the entire film in three days, and have uploaded it straight to Youtube, so it’s freeeeeee!

Many families trying to support someone in psychosis fall into the same trap professionals find themselves caught in: power struggles: "How can I make my relative change? What should I do to get them to see they are sick?" While it's hard to argue with wanting someone to get better, control and conformity are at the heart of everything wrong with the standard psychiatric approach. The deeper families dig themselves into forcing change on their relative, the more they flounder.

For my entire career a vicious debate has raged about involuntary outpatient treatment largely pitting parents and clinical professionals on the pro side against consumers and rehabilitation professionals on the con side. Like it or not, packaged as Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT), involuntary outpatient treatment is increasingly coming to a neighborhood near you. The cornerstone of the con position has always been that even if AOT is done with the best of intentions forcing someone to do something or to change in a way they don’t want to change is inherently an assaultive thing to do. There is a large risk the coerced person will react resentfully and even aggressively in response. There is also a large risk that the people exerting power coercively will be corrupted by their power and abuse it. This damaging effect on staff who forcibly treat people is why I personally wouldn’t want to be involved in it.

I don't usually talk about this much because it's still somewhat traumatizing. I don't really do advocacy around shock treatment because it still triggers too much stuff. But this is a modern day advanced story of medical harms and misinformation, and you should comment on the FDA ruling.

Every one of the Fageda Cooperative’s 300 workers - from milking shed to packing plant - will tell you that this cooperative makes the finest yogurt in all Spain, if not in the world. Last year, they made 1.4 million yogurts every week. In Catalonia, only Nestle and Danone sell more. But Fageda isn’t in business to make yogurt. For over 30 years, its sole mission has been to provide fully-paid, flexible employment to anyone from the region diagnosed with a mental health problem but who still wants to work.

The first of New York State's "mental health homes," which are intended to serve as the bedrock for a reformed public mental health system, are now open. Will this reform deliver improved care for those with "serious and persistent mental illness?"

My previous pieces for Mad In America caught friendly eyes at Indian Country Today Media (ICTM), and they’ve recruited me to write a forthcoming multipart series on oppression in mental health in Indian Country. I’m very grateful for this opportunity, especially to you, dear reader, and all the folks at Mad In America. I’ll be linking ICTM readers to my blog site here and will hope it causes them to investigate the MIA website more deeply. Before I back away for a while, however, let me offer a few words about the current epidemic of youth suicide at Pine Ridge Reservation, and a recent story for the New York Times

This week, Dr. Insel announced new guidelines for NIMH-funded research that will require clinical studies to link to an underlying brain mechanism. This is a response to psychiatry's poor track record thus far. I do not think this will solve the problem.

So who is James Holmes and why did he do what he did? Is he a lone wolf psycho or a lone psychopath who...

I am constantly around people who build their lives around negative beliefs. More specifically, I am around people that build their lives around being “broken” because of something they identify as being a “brain disease.” It breaks my heart to hear the way people view themselves.

Thanks to the work of Dr. Irving Kirsch, we now know that the majority of the effect of antidepressants is attributable to the "active placebo effect" or the belief that receiving a memified brain-chemical-corrector will actually help alleviate symptoms. As I discuss in this post, evaluation of published and unpublished data, in two metanalysis, demonstrated a non-clinically significant difference between placebo and antidepressants. A fascinating new study entitled The Role of Patient Expectancy in Placebo and Nocebo Effects in Antidepressant Trials further explores the power of belief in psychiatric treatment.

Matthew Aldridge, a psychiatric nurse at London's Lambeth Hospital, just published a new article in the 2011 Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, "Addressing Non-Adherence to Antipsychotic Medication: A Harm-Reduction Approach." This is an extraordinarily well researched clinical discussion of professional medication practice.

As we made our way out of Boston and to the psychiatric hospital on the hill, I watched the ‘normal’ world— the world beyond the Plexiglas rear window of the ambulance I was strapped into— drift past me into the distance.

On November 4, the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee marked up an amended version of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 (H.R. 2646), introduced by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX). However, the bill still does not reflect the voices or meet the needs of millions of Americans with lived experience of mental health conditions because the E&C Health Subcommittee failed to incorporate our recommendations.

An issue that we think deserves more media attention than it is currently receiving is the idea of Preventive Intervention in Psychiatry. The goal of Preventive Intervention is to reduce the rate of psychiatric diagnoses in an at-risk group of people by pretreating all the group members with a medication. For instance, could the rate of PTSD in the military be reduced by pretreating everybody in the military with an SSRI?

Are colleges unrealistic in their demands academically, or are we failing to equip our children with the tools they need to live mentally and emotionally healthy lives? I’m leaning toward the latter. We need to provide more support for today’s college students and raise awareness that mental and emotional distress is not something one should suffer alone. It is our responsibility as a society to prepare our kids for life.