Blogs

In 2009, my friend Leonie’s 22-year-old son Shane killed himself and another young man after taking Citalopram for 17 days. Eighteen days after Shane’s death, Psychiatrist Dr Michael Corry publicly stated his view that he could not have done what he did had he not been on Citalopram. Initially Leonie admits to thinking he was mad. How could medicine prescribed by a doctor have anything to do with what had happened to her son?

A great American passed away the other day. Ordinarily, I never indulge in such chauvinism, but how else can you describe Pete Seeger? Who else has contributed as much to the country’s emotional and spiritual well-being?

At the Nordic Cochrane Centre, we have researched antidepressants for several years and I have long wondered why leading professors of psychiatry base their practice on a number of erroneous myths. These myths are harmful to patients. Many psychiatrists are well aware that the myths do not hold and have told me so, but they don’t dare deviate from the official positions because of career concerns. Being a specialist in internal medicince, I don’t risk ruining my career by incurring the professors’ wrath and I shall try here to come to the rescue of the many conscientious but oppressed psychiatrists and patients by listing the worst myths and explain why they are harmful.

A little over a year ago, there was consternation in psychiatric circles as a French psychiatrist, Daniele Canarelli was found guilty after her patient hacked a man to death. She had not recogized the hazard he posed. Doctors didn’t like the implications they saw. In a series of lectures I have raised the question as to how long it might be before doctors would be found guilty for a suicide or homicide linked to an antidepressant, given that we have known that these drugs can cause suicide or homicide for over 50 years.

The point of this post is to bring your attention to the writings of some fellow bloggers, particularly 1 Boring Old Man (1BOM). For the past 6 months , but particularly in the past month, he has brought attention to a conflict of interest with David Kupfer, the head of the APA's DSM-5 task force.

In recent weeks I have taken part in some very powerful meetings at my work place, the Family Care Foundation. By "powerful" I mean that they have been both moving and demanding, Many people who did not know about us before seeing Daniel Mackler´s movie, Healing Homes, have contacted the Family Care Foundation looking for a place where it is possible to get off pharmaceuticals, and to be supported. Even more importantly, they are longing for a place where they are met as a human being, amongst other human beings.

Hello and welcome to my inaugural blog! It's an honor to join the insightful and talented team of writers at Mad in America. This exciting opportunity is the perfect complement to my efforts to help kids worldwide live childhood drug-free.

In 1972, prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia were paid $3 to have their eyes held open with clamps and hooks while Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo was dropped into them. In 2011, mothers of newborns were arrested when their babies tested positive for exposure to cannabis, a false result caused by the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Head-to-Toe Foaming Baby Wash. Young men have undergone mastectomies to remove breasts grown as a result of Johnson & Johnson antipsychotics, which were used as a result of Johnson & Johnson's criminal promotion of its drugs for off-label purposes. And now, Johnson & Johnson has announced the removal of carcinogenic chemicals from their No More Tears baby shampoo.

Justina Pelletier has been moved from Boston Children's Hospital to another psychiatric facility, but her ultimate fate, and perhaps her very survival, is still in doubt. The next hearing about her custody is scheduled for February 4. Another hearing, about the dysfunctional Department of Children and Families, who removed the child from her parents and placed her on a psychiatric ward for the past year, is scheduled for January 23, and I encourage readers to attend both hearings.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” For those of us diagnosed with mental illnesses and our families and loved ones, we know all to well the effects of these inequalities from personal and first hand experiences. For those of us like me, we also know of the extreme health and mental health disparities that exist within our communities of color.

In the last 30 years, acupuncture and Chinese medicine have become increasingly popular as a modality for helping people not only with health concerns but also with emotional distress and addictions issues.  Acupuncture has been especially helpful for people who are detoxing from drugs and alcohol as well as those who have experienced a high degree of trauma, such as returning military veterans.  One of the most innovative and wide spread ways of helping this population is through something known as the five needle protocol, or the NADA protocol.

After majoring in psychology in college, I entered medical school in 1986 with a strong interest in psychiatry. While in medical school, I was exposed to the subspecialty of child psychiatry, and was very attracted to the idea of making a difference in the lives of vulnerable youth. Child Psychiatrists were experts in understanding normal development through the life cycle. This was particularly fascinating to me and I believed that it would be personally meaningful and fun to work with children. During this time, child psychiatrists often directly provided individual psychotherapy and family therapy to their patients. The use of psychotropic medications in children was not typically a first line treatment.

Now that biological psychiatry has been discredited, I am championing a pro-suffering cultural shift. It is time to stop pretending that, with the assistance of hoped-for medical "miracles," we can eliminate everything we are afraid of. It is time that we get over ourselves and appreciate that a full existence as humans is fleeting and full of pain, suffering . . . and beauty.

Does antidepressant use during pregnancy lead to autism in the exposed children? This is a very important question, which new research is beginning to address—and the findings are concerning.

Note: The episode did not air as expected. ABC indicates it will air Tuesday, January 21. Six weeks ago a producer from ABC World News with Diane Sawyer contacted me. “ABC wants to do a piece on addiction and prescription drugs,” she told me. “Would I agree to an interview?” I was not without reservations. I have a healthy disregard for much of mainstream news, but I also realize their reach and potency. The proposition was risky, but one which I decided to take. It’s a cliché, but one with truth: If one person can benefit, then it’s worth it. I said “yes.”

This has got to stop. Around the world a million people die from suicide each year and the response internationally is to pour more funding and channel more people into psychiatric services. Three large studies have now found that the more we spend on mental health services the higher our suicide rates. In addition, a recent study has completely discredited claims that 90% of those who die from suicide are mentally ill at the time of their death. We need to use this evidence to stop the expansion of psychiatry as a suicide prevention measure.

A few days ago, I was sitting next to my wife on the couch reading Spark: The Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain written by John Ratey, a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University. As the title states, it goes well beyond the adage that exercise is good for you, and takes a much deeper, and more scientific look at how research in this area can be (and is in certain places) used to address all kinds of everyday needs. I found myself saying out loud, “Now this what psychiatry should be doing.”

Danish psychiatry has been besieged by scandals. Or perhaps it is better to say 'exposed', as many of the scandals - like massive overmedication, deaths etc. - have been an ongoing problem for years. 2014 has started off with a bang. Two deaths due to psychiatric drugs acknowledged as being the cause of death. This is the first time this has happened.

This email came to me from one of my advocacy friends. It seems to me like this would be a super good opportunity to point out that "quality care" includes doing more good than harm, using evidence-based treatments, which may or may not be medication, and various other approaches we are all working for.

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.

On December 23, I wrote a post called DSM-5 - Dimensional Diagnoses - More Conflicts of Interest?  In the article I sketched out the role of David Kupfer, MD, in promoting the concept of dimensional assessment in DSM-5, and I speculated that at least part of his motivation in this regard might have stemmed from the fact that he is a major shareholder in a company that is developing a computerized assessment instrument. The article precipitated a fairly lengthy debate in the comments section. The discussion was wide ranging, and some of the issues addressed were fundamental to the entire psychiatric debate, in particular: whether or not psychiatry is based on valid science.

On January 6th, 2014, a teenager with a diagnosis of schizophrenia died in North Carolina. He was shot and killed by the police that his parents called for help after he wanted to fight his mother. It is said that he was "having an episode."

In an era of prescribing rights for psychologists will psychology become a more marketable, less tarnished version of psychiatry, a target for pharma marketing and a new distribution channel for psychotropic drugs?

I’m not sure how I feel about horseback riding. Well, actually, I know that the act of horseback riding itself terrifies me, but really what I mean is: I’m not sure how I feel about the process of ‘breaking’ a horse to make it rideable. However, when I conducted some (admittedly superficial) research on the topic, I came up with an abundance of information.

I woke up to the sound of steady rain. Outside, four inches of snow still lay on the ground from the previous weekend. The temperatures had remained just above freezing, and the rain that was scheduled to come would likely only be intensifying as the morning wore on. But I had committed to the long run, knowing that my training was as much about being prepared for anything as it was for preparing my body for the actual number of miles to come.