Blogs

The Low Histamine Chef published a post yesterday: The vagus nerve inflammation connection. I was tickled to get a list of various self-hacks on how to stimulate the vagus nerve. Once the vagus nerve is stimulated we calm down! It’s like magic. The vagus nerve is implicated in all sorts of stress.

Many people are now familiar with the BPS report, Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, and they have appreciated how it integrates both science and a humanistic understanding to convey a fresh and progressive approach to difficult and extreme experiences. But it has come under attack by psychiatrists, using arguments that are often quite slick, and sound reasonable to the uninformed. But they are wrong, and the better we can articulate how and why they are wrong, the better we can advocate for a more humane and skillful response to people having the experiences that are called “psychosis.”

Health systems are extremely hierarchical and, rather than empathy, the dominant approach to people's difficulties is based on top-down management practices which assume experts know what is best for people. I am hopeful that we can help people within the mental health system and other parts of society to strengthen their empathic ways of relating. However, I've noticed how easy it is for me to get self-righteous about mental health workers who are more 'medical' or 'expert-lead' in their approach. I realise that if I really want to help change things for the better I, too, will need to understand people who seem to be my opponents.

A fictional shock survivor was the narrator of my novel, but her memory loss was such that she did not know huge sections of the story she was trying to tell. In finding solutions to such problems, I came to take in not only the extent of the injury but the sheer ingenuity of the daily work that shock survivors have to do to manage and inject meaning back into their lives.

With current self-publishing capabilities, there’s little that can stop anyone with the slightest messianic complex from actualizing their potential as a prophet—except perhaps the tactics psychiatry employs: forced drugging, locking people up and limiting their abilities to communicate with the rest of the world.

In response to critics of psychiatry, doctors sometimes argue that medication is just a part of care, not everything. But if a grand rounds presentation intended to educate the profession doesn’t mention anything at all except medication, what are we teaching young therapists and doctors?

First Aired 5-1-2012 What is it like for a prisoner diagnosed with mental illness? Should we have more mental health treatment in prison -- or...

Hearing distressing voices is highly correlated with traumatic experiences, and many people report that their first experience with distressing voices occurs after a trauma....

Before the early 1990’s the use of antipsychotic medications was largely reserved for adults with severe psychotic disorders; unpleasant involuntary movement disorders (extrapyramidal side-effects) and cardiovascular risks appear to have largely limited their use outside these disorders. The introduction and intense marketing of what seemed to be better tolerated and safer (now proven not to be), second generation atypical antipsychotics (AAPs) such as risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, ziprasidone and aripiprazole from the mid 1990’s led to a rapid expansion of antipsychotic medication use for a wide variety of unlicensed conditions and in more diverse clinical populations.

America’s answer to questions, demonstrations, and other countries is - increasingly - to don riot gear and show up with big guns no matter the issue. Today, April 3, 2014 the Murphy Bill will be debated by a House subcommittee. It appears to ask for dollars to help those diagnosed with mental illness, but it is Orwellian doublespeak for taking rights away, forcing treatment, and placing blame on the people who are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Why not address violence as the cause of violence?

When we are emotionally dysregulated or in an otherwise emotionally reactive state we act impulsively and without consciousness or interest about consequences because we want relief from that momentarily intolerable emotional state. We cannot imagine an alternative in that moment. Until consciousness comes to such behavior we effectively have no choice.

Depressed, anxious, and substance-abusing people can beat themselves up for being defective. And psychiatrists and psychologists routinely validate and intensify their sense of defectiveness by telling them that they have, for example, a chemical-imbalance defect, a genetic defect, or a cognitive-behavioral defect. For some of these people, it feels better to believe that they are essentially defective. But the “defect/medical model of mental illness” is counterproductive for many other people—especially those “untalented” in denial and self-deception—for whom there is another model and path that works much better.

Rethinking Psychiatry and MindFreedom International convene the first International Peer Respite and Soteria Summit: Creating Compassionate Alternatives for People in Crisis and Distress.

The year before I was born, E. Fuller Torrey published ‘The Death of Psychiatry.’ Therein, he repeatedly made statements that are disdainful of the psychiatric profession and its core concepts. He also asserted that known brain diseases were responsible for "no more than 5 percent of the people we refer to as mentally 'ill’.” As recently as 1991, he has been quoted as calling for the end of psychiatry. In October of that year he said, “Now, if you give the people with brain diseases to neurology and the rest to education, there's really no need for psychiatry." I want to ask: “Edwin Fuller Torrey, what happened to you?”

Study 329 seems to fit the classic picture: It has Big Pharma ghostwriting articles, hiding data, corrupting the scientific process and leaving a trail of death, disability and grieving relatives in its wake. But is it at fault alone? Both Big Pharma and Big Risk (the insurance industry) were once our allies in keeping our hopes alive – in keeping our children alive and well. They are now a threat. And of the two – Big Risk is the bigger threat.

Stories related to psychosis can be intense, and can lead to traumatic recall when a sufferer retells them and does not feel contained or believed within the relationship. I have a number of suggestions for how to encourage the telling of stories without retraumatizing survivors in group settings and in individual encounters.

Homebirth was a reflection of how the mental health system should work: Informed person-centered care while respecting your agency.

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.

There are no set rules for grief. It takes however long it takes, sometimes years, sometimes more. Grieving operates on its own time. The very idea that the DSM-5 gives a two-week grace period before diagnosing a ‘biological depression’ is obscene on the face of it, never mind the handing out of Prozac. Other psychiatrists would like to push the window all the way to three or even four weeks. How compassionate. There is no place for antidepressants, ever

Earlier this year the British publisher PCCS Books published Tales From The Madhouse: An insider critique of psychiatric services, by Gary Sidley. Gary's criticisms of psychiatry are cogent and convincing. But in addition he has drawn on his extensive experience working in the system to describe in close detail psychiatry's devastating effects in the lives and hopes of real people. Through Gary's sensitively written anecdotes, psychiatry's "treatments" are exposed as the disempowering, hope-destroying tactics that they are.

The Commission was addressed by organizations engaged with various aspects of addiction treatment. Much of the input seemed apropos, but one voice was missing. Speakers failed to include even one practicing physician or advocate for the pain patients who have been blamed for the so-called “opioid epidemic.”

Dear Bob-- I want to share a case from this past week the reveals a disturbing misuse of stimulants in treating a poorly diagnosed case...

Dear Bob-- I've had a couple of remarkable conversations, not with my own patients, but with friends and acquaintances asking me for advice.  Each example...

“And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for and shield them from harm and give them the...

Les Ruthven addresses a ghostwritten study claiming effectiveness of antidepressants for children and adolescents.