Blogs

Essays by a diverse group of writers, in the United States and abroad, engaged in rethinking psychiatry. (The directory of personal stories can be found here, and initiatives here).

“Multigenerational Poverty”

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The practice of medicine in our country is being swallowed whole by a snake. The snake started with the poor, the black, the brown; the already disenfranchised of the deep south and inner cities many years ago. It was an easy sell to the better-off taxpayers. Who wants to give up money to take care of poor people?

Call Me “The Doctor”

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I seem to have generated unexpected ire with my biographical information. This deserves more than just a few lines in the reply section. When...

Investigate the Markingson Suicide? Not So Fast, Says University President

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Responding to a letter signed by 175 scholars asking for an inquiry into the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, the Faculty Senate voted to investigate clinical research at the university. But the university president says the Markingson case will not be part of the investigation. What is he trying to hide?

NCMHR Does Not Speak for Me

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I am appalled to read a press release by the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery that lauds the proposals emerging from the Vice President's Task Force and accepts in principle a national database of individuals with mental health diagnoses that is "limited to those with a known history of violence."

Stranger Than Kindness

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A couple of years ago I had a novel called Stranger Than Kindness published in the UK. It was about  the cumulative trauma that can accompany work in the caring profession; how people can become bruised and reshaped by caring for a living, and what they might do to repair themselves. It was essentially a comic novel about hurt nurses. When promoting the book I found myself talking to two different audiences. The first, were people who like books and come along to events and chat about them. The second were occupied by people with a special interest or expertise in mental health.The questions asked and the conversations that we had were different in those two spaces.

Upon the U.K. Launch of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness: A Reflection

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This is a study of psychiatry. It is a study of an area officially a branch of medicine and overwhelmingly seen as legitimate, benign, progressive, and effective. But what if society had it wrong? What if this were not legitimate medicine? Dare we imagine a world where helping is not professionalized, where caring is not commodified. Where, in the spirit of community, we go about the business of life together?

Creatively Managing Voice-Hearing Through Spiritual Writing

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I am a psychiatric survivor of over thirty-six years. Since my nervous breakdown in 1978, I have undergone multitudinous experiences ranging from the subtly humiliating to the horrifically debilitating at the hands of incompetent psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists who, in the name of medicine, did more harm than good.

Pain’s Promise, and the Problem with Pills

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Equating pain with promise may sound strange, and even uncaring, to all who experience it — especially to a significant, chronic degree. To clarify, I am not minimizing the horror that pain is for millions of people, and the need to provide compassionate care for those whose pain negatively affects their lives. But I firmly believe that for almost all of us, pain is a mechanism that exists for many reasons — it is not something we should necessarily attempt to extinguish without first giving adequate consideration to the messages that it may be sending. Doing so not only further jeopardizes our well-being. It may also prevent us from realizing a richer, more meaningful, grateful course than we ever imagined.

Are We Discovering More ADHD?

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This is an important issue. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of children with an ADHD diagnosis continues to increase, from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007 and to 11.0% in 2011. The CDC also notes that the base rates for ADHD varies substantially by state ranging from a low of 4.2% in Nevada to a high of 14.8% in Kentucky.

Dr. Friedman Criticizes the Overuse of the Atypical Antipsychotics

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Just being “safe and effective” is not a strong endorsement, and it lacks any justification for the exorbitant amounts of money that have been paid for these medications. Their commercial success was due to the fact that they were advertised as “better” not just safe. Texas and 36 other states have now realize that they were misled about second-generation antipsychotics being better, and they are recouping their money.

SAMHSA, Alternatives, and the Story of an Opportunity Lost

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In the last chapter of my book Anatomy of an Epidemic, I noted that if our society is going to stem the epidemic of...

Electroshock Survivors Taught Me Eight Lessons in International Protests

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Last month almost 30 grassroot protests of electroshock were held in nine countries around the world. I had the great honor of organizing the protest here in Eugene, Oregon, USA, even though I am a survivor of psychiatric drugs and not electroshock. Electroshock is the psychiatric procedure in which electricity is run through people’s brains. Here are eight lessons that this historic event taught me.

Tipping the Scales in Favor of Collaboration

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In caring for patients with mental illness or distress as a naturopathic physician, I am either indirectly or directly working with the conventional (allopathic)...

Do Antidepressants Worsen the Long-term Course of Depression? Giovanni Fava Pushes the Debate Forward.

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In 1994, Italy's Giovanna Fava, editor-in-chief of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, wrote for the first time of his concern that "long-term use of...

Challenging the Ongoing ICD 10 Revision: How You Can Help

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Mental health policy does not sound exciting. It is - you’ll just have to take my word for it-, but even if you don’t, you might agree with me that it’s crucial. Mental health policy shapes mental health legislation, and mental health legislation shapes issues such as consent, access, equal opportunities and de-institutionalisation, to name but a few. Influencing policy is key to reframing the debate around mental health, and changing the reality on the ground for people with lived experience. With this in mind, here is an introduction to Mental Health Europe’s work on the revisions to ICD 10, and a call to action, for you to get directly involved in this international debate.

“Come Out for Health Week”: March 26-30, 2012

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My personal + professional advocacy and mission work didn’t start with mental illness. I Chaired the University of Washington’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender student...

Exploiting The Placebo Effect:  Deceiving People For Their Own Good?

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There is an enormous irony in a psychiatrist using the epithet "thought police" to express censure, when it is psychiatry itself that routinely incarcerates and forcibly drugs and shocks people on the grounds that their thoughts and speech don't conform to psychiatry's standards of normality.

Mad in Brasil TV

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Mad in Brasil launches MIB TV, an innovative communication space open to public participation. Every two weeks mental health professionals, researchers, users of psychiatry, family members and leaders of popular movements will discuss articles of interest on Mad in Brasil.

Thoughts on the Meaning of Neuroscience

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For me there are at least four separate questions to be addressed. The first is whether neuroscience is capable of understanding human emotion and higher level cognitive experiences. The second is the extent to which that understanding - even if it is achievable - is critical to our being able to help people in distress. The third is whether is it is correct to assume, as many people seem to do, that if we come to some basic understanding of brain function as it pertains to core human emotion and suffering that this will automatically translate into treatments that are commonly thought of as "biological," such as drug treatment. The fourth relates to the limitations and relevance of studying the brain in isolation when we are constantly in interaction with our environment.

Hypermodern Hyperactives

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ADHD (or “Attention Deficit Disorder” - with or without Hyperactivity) is not among the “cutting-edge pathologies” of contemporary clinical practice, such as the addictions, eating disorders, narcissistic disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, or fibromyalgia; however, in my view ADHD is paradigmatic of the contemporary ethos that some have described as hypermodernity. The advocates of ADHD explain to us that a hyperactive child with an attention disorder is a disturbed and often disturbing child, who does not comply with the adults’ rule, often has his own idea of development, and whose problems, unless they are treated, threaten to undermine his autonomy and self-esteem; the two supreme values of the hypermodern society.

It Gets Better!

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A little more than 10 years ago, when I was 29 and 2 weeks away from turning 30, I was a patient in the psychiatric system here in Copenhagen. I am a pharmacist and I specialized in neurochemistry and psychotropics throughout my studies. While I was working in the labs at The Royal Danish School of Pharmacy I was intent on getting a job as a medicinal chemist at Lundbeck – the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Celexa and Lexapro and in their own words the only company specializing solely in developing drugs for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. We were taught that psychiatric disorders were diseases just like diabetes and hypotension.

Justina Pelletier: The Debate Continues

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On April 1, 2014, Slate published an online article titled Mitochondrial Disease or Medical Child Abuse?  The article tries to explore the central question in Justina's case:  does she have mitochondrial disease or is she a victim of medical child abuse?

I Got a Break from Reality for Christmas!

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The more we worry about the separation from reality, the more scared we get and the more separated we get. This month I found out about another trap. When you can see the beauty and spirituality and mystery and magic of what is going on, it's tempting to do things to make it last longer and help yourself get further into it, like skip sleep or skip meals or use drugs. I had to fight those temptations often through this month, and still am, to be honest, because there is so much of this process that was not just scary, but glorious and giganticly interdimensional and impactful.

What is #toppmote2015 and Why Does it Matter?

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Toppmøte is Norwegian for ‘summit,’ and Toppmøte2015 is the second of two very successful seminars bringing together professionals, academics, and policymakers with citizens, voters and users of services – under the aegis of the Norwegian ‘Nasjonalt senter for erfaringskompetanse innen psykisk helse’ or “National Centre for Knowledge through Experience in Mental Health.” That’s a rather wonderful organisation, funded by the Norwegian government, which ensures that the experience of people who have used mental health services is reflected in the commissioning, design, management and evaluation of those services.

On “Schizophrenia”

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The first time I heard someone labeled schizophrenic I was about 10 years old. A man was talking to himself and appeared to be house-less and perhaps on drugs. My mom, a very good teacher and explainer of things to me, said, “That man is schizophrenic. That means he can't tell the difference between what's inside of himself and what's outside.” In retrospect this seems like a relatively sophisticated and sensitive explanation; Falling in love, hearing music that enters our heart, having children/giving birth, connecting powerfully with another person in a meeting of the minds, feeling empathy, deeply caring about something, experiencing oneness with nature, are all examples of times when the line between inner and outer reality is blurred.