Blogs

We live in a culture bombarded by media and sped up by rapid-fire social interactions. It's definitely useful to grab hold of a simple, short, sound-bite term, to quickly describe what we are feeling or suffering. "Depression" is such a word - it evokes and encapsulates, conjures the images of that ugly pit of despair that can drive so many to madness and suicide. Yet at the same time the words we use, strangely, become like those pens deposited in medical offices and waiting rooms around the world: ready at hand, easily found, familiar -- and tied to associations, marketing and meanings we were only dimly aware were shaping how we think.

My tipping point came last week after learning about the killing of 3 police officers in New Orleans, which had followed very shortly after the murder of five police officers in Dallas. I felt a deep and ancient fear and anxiety rumbling within. I wondered if others felt this tremblement de terre - this inner earthquake. My heart aches from the pain inflicted on others, as well as experienced by the individuals who acted out their fear in a murderous rampage.

It’s time to change how we think about and relate to people whose makeup is or appears to be different from the norm. Currently, the dominant way in research, practice and the general public is to think of what’s different—let’s say a biological or neurological difference—as the source of disability and difficulty, and to relate to and treat (in various ways) that biological or neurological difference. But there’s another way to go, and more and more researchers and practitioners are taking it.

Dear Senator Deeds: Hello from another fellow Virginian. First, I want to extend my deepest condolences for the horrific tragedy that befell your family last year, and for the loss of your precious son Gus. I think I know, at least in part, how agonizing it is when our loved ones cannot access helpful supports, and how it feels to watch in horror as they spiral downward into darkness and despair. We all agree that our mental health systems are broken. Those of us who have been down the hellish road of struggling with our mental health and have found recovery have developed a new vision that will take us forwards, not backwards. Please give us the opportunity to share that new vision with you.

I just wanted to do a brief followup on my last blog post about my latest psychotic break adventure. I am a recent Psychonaut exploring the inner workings of the mind, and finding out what was my reality versus Consensus reality. I am starting to come out of the experience. It is like waking from a dream. Questioning one's self is a standard part of this process of coming back to consensus reality — at least for me. It's good to reconsider some of the conclusions I've come to in the last month or so, when some of my inputs may have not been a part of consensus reality. But I'm getting stronger.

Autism rates are on the rise, with the latest report from the US Centers for Disease Control showing 1 in 50 children to be affected.  Prozac, the first of the SSRI antidepressants, was launched in 1987 and sales have risen since then. Estimates are that up to 13% of US pregnancies are exposed (or around 500,000 US pregnancies per year). Available scientific data from animal and human studies raise serious concerns that exposure to SSRIs during pregnancy damages the developing brain and may cause neurodevelopmental abnormalities, including autism.

(Speech delivered by Daniel Fisher at the rally in front of the Boston State House, June 2,2012) How can residents of Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC)...

In Paris today we have a lot of people mouthing words that come easily: "Je Suis Charlie." For anyone who wants to be Charlie, who wants to get to know what modern politics is all about, by feeling it in your marrow, try reporting an adverse event on treatment to your doctor. Outside your doctor’s surgery/clinic/ consultation room you can believe you are operating in a democracy. Inside the room you may be treated with courtesy and apparent friendliness but you are being treated in an arrangement set in place to police addicts. This is not a domain in which ideals of Liberty, Equality or Fraternity are welcome.

How we think about health, happiness, and self-fulfillment, how they are linked with flawed systems of government has been assigned to the domain of social scientists. The most influential of those are the psychiatrists who have been given the government-mandated power to diagnose, incarcerate and forcibly drug those who are perceived to have a form of mental illness. I believe that such power is arbitrary, unjust and frequently harmful.

A little ways back, a close family member of mine saw an orthopedist for chronic hip/knee issues. He described it as a positive experience. He was very pleased with the time spent and thoroughness of the physician and staff, both through conversation and scans done to determine what was wrong. He went in expecting the worst — a joint replacement recommendation — but instead came out with a prescription for advanced pain relief and reassurance that his joints looked much better than expected. As we talked further, though, he admitted being surprised that there was little conversation around lifestyle issues or other treatment options.

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."

Electric shock "treatment" is no more effective than sham ECT, in which the client is prepared and anaesthetized, but not actually shocked. When one considers the pains to which real doctors go to protect their patients from seizures, I suggest that the deliberate induction of grand mal seizures, often involuntarily, constitutes neither "a remarkable discovery" nor a "remarkable medical advance," but rather aggravated assault by a person in a position of trust.

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?"

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has become the province of geneticists, neuropsychologists, and physicians. The prevailing view is that ADHD behaviors are caused by a neurobiological delay and that treatment must include medication and stringent management. While this general attitude may continue to prosper, there is increasing concern that we are proposing the existence of a medical problem when there are no biological markers or dysfunctions that reliably correspond with the behavioral criteria. It is vital that we more closely examine traditional beliefs about ADHD and review the shortcomings of commonly used treatments.

Perhaps the most alarming current trend in psychiatry, documented by Domino and Schwartz (2008), is the rise in prescriptions for the class of drug...

A few weeks ago, while I was at a birthday celebration, a friend who works in a mental health setting remarked that she was...

People who are considered the highest functioning in American culture such as politicians, lawyers, medical doctors (including psychiatrists), major league sport players, etc., all lack certain abilities that I possess (and, of course, vice-versa). Are their abilities actually the real ones and mine “soft,” surreal, abstract, inaccessible and useless? In order to redefine health, we must redefine worth. Are you sure the “abled” are able to accomplish what you value? Are you sure the “disabled” aren't more able to heal the world?

Today I paid a visit to the Managing Director of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Lloyd Price. Mylan is the company that manufactured the antidepressant Fluox1 which, according to the NZ government, is the most likely cause of my son's suicide. My dealings with Mylan in the time since Toran died have not been entirely fruitful.

Anne Hull and Dana Priest, of the Washington Post, received a Pulitzer prize for breaking the story of the horrid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center where men were “afloat on a river of painkillers and antipsychotic drugs” Each morning, they were expected to rise at dawn for formation, though most of them were snowed under by benzodiazepines, opiates, alcohol – anything that would push Iraq and the pain away. A year later I too would be snowed under and would fight an invisible war of my own. It wasn’t until months later, deep in withdrawal tolerance that I realized my slide into disability was caused by the drugs.

I built Usorum around the belief that we can tap into our collective experience and begin building the generational knowledge to improve everyone’s quality of life.

Behind the apparent Biblical Authority of the Clinical Trial Literature in medicine lies an Inquisitional-like apparatus run by company PR agencies and agencies whose job it is to manage the perception of science - linking in academics - aimed at silencing dissent and ensuring that prescribing doctors continue to prescribe. It focusses most clearly on anyone who suggests that a brand-name drug might have significant adverse events.

Roberto Ferdman recently wrote an article for the Washington Post titled “Why you shouldn’t blame yourself for binge eating.” Long story short, Mr. Ferdman concluded:

“... the next time you find yourself in a rut, and eating too much, know that the unbecoming scene isn’t merely a question of will power – it’s rather, in all likelihood, a matter of your genetic makeup.”

In other words, it’s not you being “lazy” or “weak-willed” or a “bad decision maker” that is causing you to binge-eat. Your binge eating is a consequence of your genes – “a matter of your genetic makeup.” This claim is one of a growing, widespread belief that the definitive way of understanding psychological disorders is by identifying biological correlates and pathologies. However, the evidence strongly suggests that this belief is wrong and dangerous.

There is a class of “naturalistic” research that can only be conducted if the researcher happens to be in the “right” place at the “right” time. Julia Rucklidge was running clinical trials using micronutrients to treat Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in adults when major earthquakes hit New Zealand. She and her research team contacted all current and past participants to establish whether they were taking micronutrients and for how long, and then they assessed how anxious, depressed and stressed people were one and two weeks post-quake. The results were revealing.

I am committed. Fully committed to creating a solution. Are you with me? I think medications and labels for people experiencing emotional distress should be almost entirely eliminated, and should not be applied first, for everyone and forever, to people experiencing extreme states. Our current mental health system is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. We need mental health exit ramps, we need human ways to help each other in crisis and through adversity, we need compassion and love and friendship in times of struggle. We need each other.

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.