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We find ourselves in very interesting times with regard to our understanding of mental health. We find ever more heated, passionate and polarized discussions taking place with regard to the so-called mental disorders — how or even whether to try to classify them, which factors are generally helpful in recovery vs. which factors are generally harmful, what does “mental disorder” or “mental illness” even mean, and what does “recovery” even mean. Given the way my own mind works, I find it helpful, when such conundrums appear, to try to take the issues all the way down to the most fundamental assumptions and experiences that give rise to them, and then try to reconstruct an understanding that is more conducive to meeting our needs. This discussion, then, is an attempt to do just that.

Research by Andreasen et al. published in American Journal of Psychiatry in June of 2013 reported that the dosage of antipsychotic medication correlated with the reduction in the cortex volume; higher dosage was associated with greater reduction. In that same article, the authors suggested that, since they found brain shrinkage correlated with duration of relapse, curtailing or preventing the relapse would probably decrease damage. Their suggested mechanism for shortening the relapse process was to prescribe more drugs. Before advising fellow physicians to increase the dosage of antipsychotic drugs to prevent brain volume reduction, it is important to show the following: first, demonstrate that symptoms, in fact, reflect the occurrence of a damaging process; second, demonstrate that any treatment intervention actually targets the damaging process itself and not just the downstream symptoms of this process.

The use of seclusion and restraint in mental health care in Ohio is legitimately subject to the assessment, criticisms and recommendations of the United Nations Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Today I read Psychiatric News, the newspaper of the American Psychiatric Association, and I was drawn to an article about the new APA President, Jeffrey Lieberman, because the front page teaser announced that "he is 'mad as hell'".

It's been fourteen and a half years since the moment that first set me on my path to becoming an activist - a moment that overwhelmed me, cowed me even, but did not, in the end, destroy me. It was the day I was physically broken because I had tried to assert what I felt was an absolute right to some meaningful hearing on my detention. It was the day I learned about torture.

To respond to controversy and resistance developing in response to the recommendation of Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Méndez for an absolute ban on nonconsensual psychiatric interventions, I suggested to use June 26, the International Day in Solidarity with Victims of Torture, to raise awareness and support for the recommendations. What started out way more ambitious became a relatively informal call put out over email lists, Facebook and with the help of the Mad In America website, to MIA bloggers.

My journey into the dark night of the soul was launched by an adverse reaction to the drug Effexor. Taking this medication triggered a maddening condition called Akathisia--a syndrome characterized by inner restlessness and agitation. My body was possessed by a chaotic, demonic force which led to my shaking, twitching and pacing back and forth across the room. The force of my symptoms was so great that I considered the possibility that I might be possessed by some malevolent demon. What made the situation even worse was that my experience was discounted by the psychiatric community.

“What I’d really like to do is stop everything,” I say. The reality is that psychiatrists are not the experts when it comes to getting people off psychiatric drugs.

In Grimm’s fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, an impish little man helps a girl spin straw into gold. This story seems an apt metaphor for how legitimate neuroscience research can become transformed into sensationalist claims regarding the causes and treatment of ADHD.

I live a slow paced life. I meditate every morning, refuse to get a smart phone (yet), and it takes me generous amounts of time to do things. This isn't because I am “stupid” or slow to get things. Sometimes I wonder how others get so much done each day - yet the quality and vibration of what I do is unique. It needs time. How does this relate with psychiatric drugs? Psych drugs are rooted in impatience, urgency, emergency.

Earlier today, Matthew Cohen announced the launch of Mad in America’s directory of providers who support psychiatric drug withdrawal.  Many thanks to him for...

One of the first things I heard from Bob Whitaker when I joined Mad In America was this, "I get emails every single day from people asking if I know where they can get help coming off their medication, and I don't know what to tell them. We need to do something about this."Since then, I've received many messages with the same question myself, and rarely have I been able to offer concrete advice. Thankfully, that has changed! Today, we are pleased to announce the Mad In America directory of service providers featuring practitioners and programs who support withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, as well as other alternatives to the mainstream paradigm of care.

I am just back from a conference - or what was called a study meeting - at the Vatican, entitled, “The Child as a Person and as a Patient: Therapeutic Approaches Compared.” Held under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, the two-day meeting on Friday June 14 and Saturday June 15 in the Vatican’s Pope Pius X Hall drew some 250 participants from 30 countries. This has been 6 years in the making, mainly representing the hard work and perseverance of Marcia Barbacki. I have also participated for the duration because I thought it was, perhaps, the best opportunity ever to spread the word about the risks of psychotropics for youth given that Catholic Health Care represents 26% of the world’s healthcare and the Church’s ability to disseminate information to all corners of the globe.

Evidence that antipsychotics cause brain shrinkage has been accumulating over the last few years, but the psychiatric research establishment is finding its own results difficult to swallow. A new paper by a group of American researchers once again tries to ‘blame the disease,’ a time-honoured tactic for diverting attention from the nasty and dangerous effects of some psychiatric treatments. People need to know about this research because it indicates that antipsychotics are not the innocuous substances that they have frequently been portrayed as. We still have no conclusive evidence that the disorders labeled as schizophrenia or psychosis are associated with any underlying abnormalities of the brain, but we do have strong evidence that the drugs we use to treat these conditions cause brain changes.

The Vatican conference on “The Child as a Person and as a Patient: Therapeutic Approaches Compared,” which took place on June 14 and 15 in Rome, was not really focused—as I had thought it would be—on the merits of medicating children for psychiatric disorders. The two Americans who had tirelessly campaigned for this conference, Marcia Barbacki and Barry Duncan, had hoped that it would serve that purpose, but the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, as it invited speakers, decided on a broader, more diffuse agenda.

While a 2-year outcome study by Wunderink, et al. has been cited as evidence that guided discontinuation of antipsychotics for people whose psychosis has remitted results in twice as much “relapse,” a not-yet-published followup of that study, extending it to 7 years using a naturalistic followup, finds that the guided discontinuation group had twice the recovery rates, and no greater overall relapse rate (with a trend toward the medication group having more relapse.)

My experience as a clinical psychologist for almost three decades is that many young people labeled with psychiatric diagnoses are essentially anarchists in spirit who are pained, anxious, depressed, and angered by coercion, unnecessary rules, and illegitimate authority. In American history, there have been several shameful periods where groups—including Native Americans, homosexuals, and assertive women—have been pathologized, dehumanized, and meted out oppressive treatments by mental health professionals in an attempt to alter their basic being. Today’s psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors would do well to recognize that historians do not look kindly on those professionals who participated in institutional dehumanization and oppression.

Subscribers to Mad in America might be interested in a Keynote Lecture given by Professor Nikolas Rose in Nottingham on May 15th 2013. In this lecture Professor Rose very thoughtfully challenges a number of the assumptions which underpin conventional and contemporary psychiatric practice. He asks five hard questions:

• Is there (really) an epidemic of mental illness?
• Does the path to understanding mental disorder lie through the brain?
• What is the role of diagnosis and of diagnostic manuals?
• Should we seek early identification of those at risk of future mental pathology?
• What is the place of patients, users, survivors, & consumers of mental health systems?

I graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. The attitude of my professors in the Psych Department was that the science of Psychology was coming to an end. The mysteries of the mind had been unraveled through the new neuroscience, and all that was left was some mopping up. It all seemed very convincing, and I believed it myself for many years.

Patient engagement is one of the mantras of current healthcare improvement efforts. Medical students and junior doctors likely think they are doing it better than their elders ever did. They are after all taught communication skills, where an earlier generation wasn’t. In fact, they are taught that they are being taught communication skills. They are taught how to communicate bad news. They are not taught how to hear awkward or bad news. The younger generation are almost certainly worse than former generations of doctors at listening for or actually hearing “the treatment you put me on, doctor, has made me worse.”

In the film Avatar, scientists are keen to exploit the moon planet Pandora which is inhabited by 10-foot-tall blue humanoids called Na'vi.  To do so they create Na'vi human hybrids called “Avatars” which are controlled from afar by genetically matched humans. When the scientists decide to destroy the eco-system of the planet to gain access to valuable minerals, war breaks out between the humans and the Na'vi. At this point the main character, Jake, who operates an Avatar, has to choose whose side he is on.  Eventually Jake's life is saved and transformed by the Tree of Souls, which the humans are trying to destroy. Why are Avatars in the news again? The latest innovation from psychiatric research is using computer-generated avatars to help people who hear aggressive voices.

When you take a woman who has been eating processed food, taking The Pill, antibiotics, and maybe even a PPI, exposed to xenoestrogens, endocrine disruptors, and friendly-bacteria-slaughtering pesticides and you grow a baby in that womb, there is a good chance you have created a time-bomb. Throw in 70 doses of 16 neurotoxic and immunosuppressive vaccines by age 18, some formula, and genetically modified and processed baby food, 4 years of plastic diapers, and Johnson’s 1,4-dioxane babywash and… Houston, we have a problem.

In 2007 I returned to school to pursue a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I remember being confused by the over-emphasis on biological treatments for suffering which seemed to me much more spiritual and relational in nature. A few years earlier, my misgivings had been stirred as I sat on a California beach listening to a friend tell me about what it was like to be on Prozac. She told me that she couldn’t really cry anymore, or connect to her deeper feelings. She couldn’t orgasm. I recall my throat closing up, my thoughts running panicky and confused. I was so disturbed by the power of this drug to rob her of her tears and climaxes, experiences I associated with the more private, sacred parts of being human.

We are immersed these days in the erroneous idea that only randomized placebo-controlled studies (RCTs) constitute scientific data. We will discuss the origins of the over-reliance on RCTs in a future column. For now, we shall simply assume that many of our readers understand that a well-documented case study can provide information relevant to many. And so, we would like to tell you about a Calgary-based child who we refer to as ‘Andrew’.

The Association for Psychological Science (APS) was founded twenty years ago by psychologists and neuroscientists who were dismayed by trends in the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA had lost its old single-minded focus on the search for empirically based answers to psychological questions. This may have followed from the fact that the APA’s membership encompassed an ever-larger percentage of practicing psychologists with many immediate, practical concerns. Yet it is these very clinicians who are in such dire need of empirically validated procedures. It might be time to summarize newer empirical literature that challenges the assumption that the mere expression of emotion is helpful.