Threats, Coercion and Chemical Restraints for Distressed Children
In the face of concerns that large numbers of children were being incorrectly diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder, the DSMâV introduced Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD). In the scramble by drug companies to produce evidence that their drug should be prescribed to this new population of mentally ill children, the manufacturer of Risperidone paid to test their drug on a group of children. The study does not investigate whether treatment with Risperidone has any therapeutic benefit to the children, whether it cures or treats DMDD or ârage outbursts.â It is quite open that Risperidone is being trialled for its efficacy as a chemical restraint.
The House of GSK
In recent months the English pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has assiduously portrayed itself as an advocate of transparency, and in support of access to clinical trial data. Well, in support of "Responsible Access." "Responsible" here essentially means that a researcher commits to the primacy of RCTs and statistical significance over an analysis of adverse events. It would not, for example, be responsible to claim that an SSRI causes suicide, a statin muscle damage or cognitive failure, or hypoglycemics cause hypoglycemia unless a trial has shown this to happen to a Statistically Significant extent â and they never do.
U.S. Renegade History, Psychiatric Survivors, & the Price of Acceptance
The historic divide between the ârespectableâ vs. the ârenegadesâ is the subject of historian Thaddeus Russellâs A Renegade History of the United States, which argues that when renegade groups gain civil rights and social acceptability, they lose their renegade culture. How do psychiatric survivors, mad priders, and those with lived experience of alternate consciousness fit into the tradition of Russellâs historic renegades?
How to Escape Psychiatry as a Teen: Interview with a Survivor
When I lived in Massachusetts I taught yoga and led writing groups for alternative mental health communities. While the organizations I worked for were alternative, many of the students and participants were heavily drugged with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. There was one skinny teenager I'd never have forgotten who listed the drugs he was on for me once in the yoga room after class: a long list of stimulants, neuroleptics, moods stabilizers; far too many drugs and classes of drugs to remember. I was at the housewarming party of an old friend, and who should walk in but that boy who used to come to my yoga classes and writing groups religiously. And he was no longer a boy; he was now a young man. âI'm thinking yoga teacher,â he said. I nodded. Did he remember where? âI'm not stupid,â he said, as if reading my mind. âI'm not on drugs anymore. I'm not stupid anymore.â
Just Who is the Naked One Here?
On the 7th of November, Robert Whitaker was here in Copenhagen to officially launch the Danish translation of his book, . While we were celebrating the day, in another part of Denmark, psychiatry was preparing its attack. A professor of psychiatry Poul Videbech, one of our finest, specializing in depression with a particular emphasis on electroshock, was busy writing a review. The title of his review is âThe Boy Has No Clothes Onâ and as you can imagine with such a title, the review is hardly going to be favorable, indeed it smacks of condescending paternalism framing the well-worn scenario for establishing psychiatric supremacy.
Living in One of R. D. Laingâs Post-Kingsley Hall Households
Kingsley Hall was the first of Laingâs household communities that served as a place where you could live through madness until you could get it together and live independently. It was conceived as an âasylumâ from forms of treatment â psychiatric or otherwise â that many were convinced were not helpful, and even contributed to their difficulties. By the time I arrived in London in 1973 to study with Laing there were four or five such places. Getting in wasnât easy.
Mis- (and Dis-) Information about UN Disability Convention
The November 5 hearing on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reached new heights of absurdity and opens new ground for concern. It may be worse for us to ratify with the reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) being proposed, and with the legislative record that is being created for the specific purpose of rejecting any application of the treaty's standards to US law than not to ratify at all. All the proponents of CRPD ratification who are allowed a voice in these discussions are in agreement that the US ratification is aimed ONLY at giving the US greater influence over other countries and over the development of customary international law, and NOT at improving the enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities in the US itself.
What Are You Doing, WHO?
On 25 October 2013, the World Health Organization issued a press release promoting guidelines produced by the Patient-Reported Outcomes Safety Event Reporting (PROSPER) Consortium. The consortium aimed to âto improve [drug] safety reporting by better incorporating the perspective of the patientâ with the aim of the guidance produced âto ensure that the patient âvoiceâ and perspective feed appropriately into collection of safety data.â Rather than 'quietly protecting the health of every person on this planet, every day' it seems clear that WHO is quietly protecting the interests of pharmaceutical companies and their advisors on planet 'profit from patients', every day.
What Are You Doing WHO?
The World Health Organisation was established in 1945 to provide leadership on global health matters. According to its Director General Dr Margaret Chan, it...
Is Emotional Distress Criminal?
On October 1st the Connecticut State Legislatureâs reactionary response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school went into effect. Public Act No. 13-3 requires all people that voluntarily admit to a hospital for mental health reasons (not solely for drug or alcohol treatment) have their names placed in a database administered by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services - for the purpose of automatic suspension of Second Amendment rights.
Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness: A Counter-Narrative of Psychic Diversity
It was an awesome experience to give a TEDx Talk at my old school, because, frankly, it was an acknowledgement by an elite institution that I've done something in my life worth listening to. I hope you appreciate my talk and share it with others. So many people who are affected by the mental health system in North America today have no idea how much the rise of the DSM and biopsychiatry has to do with the Reagan era and neoliberal economic policies that reshaped the whole language and culture of mental health. It's like a bulldozed neighborhood with shiny new buildings, after a while people forget how they got there and they just seem "normal."
A Stranger in a Strange Land (Pt. 1)
Many months ago I wrote a guest piece on Mad In America entitled, âCorrections Officers, Not Clinicians.â And since that time I have walked away from that job because of the irreconcilable conflicts between its mission and my own heart. I have become convinced that, as an institution, the public mental health system of the United States is a disaster. There are always individuals within any system who are doing noble, beautiful things - For me, one part of my path toward healing included the connection I made with a therapist - But that doesnât absolve us of the responsibility to confront institutional norms that are oppressive and dehumanizing.
GlaxoSmithKline’s Journey to Transparency
GSK's continued failure to provide true transparency flies in the face of what the overwhelming majority of people signing consent forms probably intend - which is to make their data available for scrutiny by independent experts. If those who participate in trials thought some remote risk of a breach of privacy were being used to prevent disclosure of details that would save someone else's life - but threaten GSK's profits - most of us would likely be horrified.
P.S. Sometimes I still Hurt Myself… P.P.S. So do you…
Whenever I write or speak publicly, I feel compelled to frame cutting, burning and hitting myself as something I used to do. I donât actually outright say Iâve stopped, but I use the past tense and thus I suspect most hear it as implied. Somehow, the pressure to appear outwardly âall betterâ in that way still seems big. Self-injury (of that type) ranks pretty high up there on an awful lot of peopleâs scary meters. Just saying you are someone who has ever done that sort of thing seems disconcerting enough for most.
I Wonder if There is Some Axis II Going on Here? Further Thoughts on...
This blog was prompted by an invitation to do a guest post on the site of one of my favorite bloggers, 1 Boring Old Man. This is my response to the notion that there are certain conditions - Schizophrenia among them - that correspond more directly to biomedical conditions
Schizophrenia Becomes Psychosis Susceptibility Syndrome
Anoiksis (the Dutch association of and for people with a psychotic vulnerability) has introduced a new name for the disease schizophrenia: Psychosis Susceptibility Syndrome (PSS). Together with the old name, its attached prejudices, misleading significance and stigma can be thrown overboard.
Pick Up a Pen, I Dare You
When I pick up a pen, I put down my fear. Sorry, they don't both fit into my hand at once. Meditation teachers often say the hardest part is getting to the cushion. The hardest part of writing is probably picking up the pen. So, pick up a pen, I dare you. Write even if you think no one will read it, even if you don't want anyone to read it.
Bogus Journal Articles Distract From the Real Problem in Academic Medicine
The buzz in academic publishing right now is the story about how several hundred open access journals accepted a fake research paper. Of much more concern is that there are top-tier medical journals which have published clinical trials, that were read by thousands of people, that influenced clinical decisions, that we now know were bogus, but have never been retracted.
âTuffâ Love: A Public Safety Alternative
It is no mystery why everyone at the McNair Discovery Learning Center is alive today. Antoinette Tuff was respectful, responsive and kind to a man with a gun. She shared her own difficulties and offered her own humanity. This kind of âTuff Loveâ involves real risk, but not more risk. It reaches across vast expanses of human confusion and distress - not to manage, control or subdue - but to attempt connection and offer a lifeline back to humanity. It is the public safety work of the future.
Photo ID Cards for “Mental Patients” Now a Reality
In Butte County, California, Law Enforcement and NAMI have recently partnered to provide identification cards for people in the mental health system. The cards reveal the person's psychiatric diagnosis and current medication prescriptions. This White Card project may be well-intentioned, but it makes me very uncomfortable. I believe it is a form of psychiatric profiling that could be adopted by law enforcement around the United States.
DSM-5’s âSpeculativeâ 2002 Diagnostic System Based On Expected Gene Findings
According to a leading group of psychiatric genetic researchers, writing in 1999, âFrom the perspective of psychiatric genetics, the Human Genome Project is an immense factory producing and refining the tools we will need to discover the genes that cause mental illness.â A 2002 âspeculative outlineâ by a group helping to revise the DSM envisioned a future DSM-5 practice of classifying disorders on the basis of "the patientâs genotype, identifying symptom- or disease-related genes, resiliency genes, and genes related to therapeutic responses and side effects to specific psychotropic drugs.â A dozen or so years ago, at least some of the DSM-5 architects believed that genes would at long last be identified and would be integrated into the next version of the DSM. As we know, this did not happen.
Elimination of Bias, Not Disclosure of Bias, Must be the Standard
Disclosure is an insufficient strategy for mitigating bias because bias does not result from the concealment of financial ties but from their effects. Even worse, social psychologists have demonstrated that when individuals disclose a competing interest, they give even more biased advice.
It’s NOT all in Your Head
Over 100 million people in the US suffer from chronic pain â defined as pain lasting longer than 12 weeks. Up to 80% of those sufferers are women, many of whom report having been repeatedly brushed off or referred out by medical doctors who could find no discrete medical cause for the symptoms they reported. Some patients report an even harsher finding by their doctors: âTo the best of my ability to determine, your pain is not medical in origin. I believe you need to be evaluated by a psychiatrist or psychologist who is qualified in psychosomatic issues.â
R.D. Laing & Anti-Psychopathology: The Myth of Mental Illness Redux
Twenty-five years after R.D. Laingâs death, are we more humane and compassionate in our treatment of those at our mercy? It is difficult to say. But one thing that we cannot deny, our culture has become even more âmedicalizedâ than at any time in history. The medical metaphor that Laing found more or less acceptable when explaining what he thought therapy is, has become increasingly literal. More and more, anything that pains us is a condition that can be treated.
A Caregiver’s Story- And How I Became an Addict
In 1994, my nineteen-year old daughter, Cristina, was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). It was a diagnosis that came totally out of the blue and as a complete shock. Soon after she was diagnosed, it became clear that I wasnât going to be able to sleep because of the tremendous stress, so I asked the very kind doctor who diagnosed Cristina if he could give me a prescription for something that would help me sleep. He agreed, and so began my ârelationshipâ with Xanax. I had never taken anything like that before and didnât know anything about it. All I knew was that as my daughterâs primary caregiver, I needed sleep in order to fight to keep her alive.