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The controversy surrounding Justina Pelletier and her family has expanded its scope in recent months, and has now become a general public scrutiny of Massachusetts’s Department of Children and Families. I think there’s a very real risk of confusing some issues here. Every state in the US has a social services department, one of whose statutory responsibilities is to investigate reports of abuse and/or neglect. The system isn’t perfect. But this I do know: the spotlight has been taken off psychiatry. This is critical, because without the “diagnosis” of somatic symptom disorder and the subsequent allegation of medical child abuse, none of what’s happened to Justina and her parents could even have gotten off the ground.

The movement to radically reform the modern mental health system is rooted in a desire to offer people going through emotional distress a wider variety of options for care. As a society we have largely shifted to a model of care that is limited to a select few options that primarily advocates the use of strong psychotropic drugs and simplistic diagnostic labels for complex and widely varying narratives. The stigma of going on an antidepressant has been lessened to such a degree that one out of nine people in the US now takes this class of drug. In the context of this astronomical growth in drug-based therapy, reformers are rightly calling for a dramatic reappraisal of how we are treating emotional distress.

It has been almost a year since DSM-5 was released in May 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Critics have lined up to outline significant concerns about the consequences that will result from its use. Among many issues, DSM-5 has been lambasted for its overpathologizing of normal, fluctuating patterns of development, aging trends, social responses, societal fads, and general behavioral patterns. The controversy that has ensued has brought about significant questions about the future of DSM.

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!

Twenty-five years ago, I organized a Mother’s Day Protest demonstration at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in NYC. We were 12 mothers and one male. The highlight of that APA meeting was the launching of Clozapine, the first of the so-called atypical neuroleptic drugs, which the APA promoted as a “scientific breakthrough treatment for schizophrenia.” Those atypical neuroleptics proved to be weapons of destruction.

I recently had the great pleasure of hosting a Hearing Voices workshop with Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Many people described this as one of the best trainings they had ever attended. Ron's message is inherently uplifting - after all this internationally known educator was once a mental patient given a poor prognosis. But in addition, they offered pragmatic suggestions for how to think about voices and talk to someone who is experiencing them.

As my readers know, I am a great fan of Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA. In his capacity as president, Dr. Lieberman writes a regular bulletin in Psychiatric News. These literary and intellectual gems have been a wonderful source of inspiration to me in my efforts to draw attention to psychiatry's flaws, and I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that in many respects, Dr. Lieberman has been one of our greatest allies.

My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

Denmark is now screening pregnant women for depression. Given the clear risks and the unclear benefits of antidepressants, the process of screening pregnant women for depression can take on a bizarre dimension. Here, Peter Gøtzsche imagines one of the conversations that might take place.

Your next move will be an amendment to another measure. Do not attempt. You've pulled bogus crap with this since the beginning. You've lied about task force recommendations. You've pulled suprise buttsex scheduling, when proponents somehow got the message, and opponents were left scrambling to get there. Twice. You basically filibustered us on Wednesday, which was also scheduled without notice.

Thanks for everyone who supports the peaceful protest of the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in New York City on May 4, 2014. There are too many wonderful people to mention here! Thanks to the millions of people all over the world who want real change in the mental health system.

In the last few years I’ve developed a sincere admiration for those youth workers who specialise in working with young people pushed out onto the edge of society. I’ve witnessed, first hand, the ease with which they can broach topics that would leave many of us feeling uncomfortable. The best of them can speak about sex, violence, drugs and exploitation in a real and pragmatic way that signals a deep acceptance and understanding of the dilemmas young people face – with no blame or judgement. This ability to transform the taboo into the ordinary is something I’ve tried to develop in my own work. Through Voice Collective, a project supporting children and young people who hear voices in London, I specialise in training youth workers to do the one thing that can push them far outside of their comfort zone – talking with young people about hearing voices.

I hadn’t seen this psychiatrist or any other now in several years. I chose to make this visit to the man who prescribed the drugs for my 6-year-long psychiatric drug withdrawal for several reasons. Upon reflection, I think the primary one was ritualistic. Something to mark the end of that phase of my life. A goodbye to psychiatry, concretized.

This — this moment — is a gift, just as every moment of my post-Psychiatry life is, and I view it as a second chance, this life I’m living on borrowed time. This is why I’ll be protesting the APA, because Psychiatry took me as far from this life as I could possibly have gone, and it is my duty to use this gift to fight for the freedom of those still enslaved.

I am one of the few lucky ones to have survived this long after being forcibly locked up in four different mental institutions over 50 years ago. I feel a responsibility to the memory of those who died and to the millions around the world who are still subjected to the inhumane, torturous "treatments" of the mental health system. With a heavy heart and fire in my voice and spirit, this is what I plan to say on May 4.

I will be traveling from Alaska to attend the protest of the American Psychiatric Association in New York, because psychiatry is a morally and scientifically bankrupt enterprise that causes great harm and must be held accountable. Here you can see my speech at last year's protest in San Francisco.

I will visit the shrink who prescribed for me today. It’s been many years since I’ve seen him. I wrote this as a status update on Facebook a few minutes ago and decided to post it here, too. It will be part one I guess. Part two will come after the visit.

On May 4, 2014, I will be speaking out with many others at the Annual Protest of the American Psychiatric Association, which is organized this year by MindFreedom International and the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights. It is just a few days away and I am so inspired by the outpouring of support people have given to this effort!  There are literally people coming to the protest from all over the country - including Alaska, Florida, Massachusetts, and Detroit (that I know of).

I have been noticing the neuroplasticity of my brain. For 8 years I wore progressively stronger over-the-counter (non prescription) reading glasses. Two years ago I began working out at the gym more intentionally and intensively. At the same time I also began eating more nutritionally. About 2 weeks after I started my new routine, I went to read and my glasses were not handy and I noticed I didn’t need them.

The other day I talked to a friend who I hadn’t seen for quite a while. She told me that she had been prescribed Seroquel for sleep problems about a year ago. But when she started to read about it a couple months ago she got really nervous that it was causing her long term health complications and she stopped taking it - cold turkey - without tapering. I wondered about our conversation afterwards and thought about the countless amount of people who don’t tolerate their psychiatric meds and quit cold turkey.

I oppose HB1386 and request it be voted down. That, though, is not enough and I know it. So, here, I propose an alternative plan to HB1386.

On April 11, 2014, journalist Alan Schwarz published an article in the New York Times on this topic, titled Idea of New attention Disorder Spurs Research, and Debate. In the article Alan draws attention to the fact that sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) is being promoted as a new disorder  "… characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing."  He makes the obviously valid point, that the formalization of such an entity  "… could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems."

In 1993, the World Health Bank estimated that domestic violence, or intimate partner violence (IPV), was a greater cause of poor health than traffic accidents and malaria combined. It was believed that 5-20% of healthy years lost for women were attributed to IPV. By definition, violence is considered to be any physical, verbal, or sexual assault that significantly comprises a person’s body, trust, and sense of self. But it is not solely a female issue even as women are disproportionately perpetrated against in this way. Results from a study conducted in the United States found that 22.1 percent of women and 7.4 percent of men reported acts of IPV in their lifetime.

People with mental disorders or differences are often experienced as “hot stoves” in society — at work, at school, at home, in friendships. In addition, providers and consumers who embrace the medical model and those who don’t are often “hot stoves” for one another. The result of arguments for and against those and other divisive perspectives is interference with empathy, understanding, creative solutions, and forward movement as a mental health community.

Being an ex-accountant I am always interested in figures (not to mention that prescribed benzodiazepine drug addiction has played such a major part in my life). According to a yearly booklet released by the Home Office in the UK, benzodiazepine drugs accounted for more deaths than ALL the so-called hard drugs put together.