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).

Ending Human Rights Violations in the Mental Health System Institute Alternatives 2012

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People don't understand that when they reach out for help for themselves or someone they care about, it can have threatening and lifelong consequences. If we ask for help, we risk being given a diagnosis that will stay with us the rest our life, that will limit what we can do, that will limit our relationships and activities, that may cause us to be very poor, to be ostracized and even homeless. We risk being "locked up" for years and years and years.

Dear Dr. Torrey: Please, Stop The Lies!

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After reading E. Fuller Torrey’s latest article in the Treatment Advocacy Center newsletter, in which he sharply criticizes Dr. Sandy Steingard for writing about anosognosia on madinamerica.com, and then goes on to attack me for my various writings, I have to confess that this time—after getting over the feeling that my head was going to explode—I thought, my patience with such dishonesty is running out.

The Search for the Miracle Cure

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Challenging the disease model of addiction should not be viewed as just another interesting scientific and philosophical debate. Calling addiction a “disease” is not only wrong from a scientific perspective, but the promotion of this model of treatment can actually be harmful to some people trying to understand and recover from this life damaging and life threatening problem.

On Deciphering Recovery for the American Psychiatric Association: Lecture on 13 Innovations to Improve...

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How did the APA talk go? Overall a success-- the audio went viral on the internet, and the talk itself was so crowded we had to move to a larger room -- more than 70 psychiatrists and behavioral healthcare professionals attended. Afterwards many stepped up to shake my hand and congratulate me: I was told by two people I was a gift to the conference, asked to present at a Grand Rounds, encouraged to do a TED talk, thanked for my compassionate response to a question about forced treatment, and invited to do more trainings in the future. I even met several psychiatrists who are Madness Radio listeners. Psychiatry is clearly not a monolithic profession and many in it are beginning to think differently.

What Are We Recovering From? Making a Case for Recovery

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Is “recovery” a useful concept or is it overused, co-opted or simply not an accurate way to describe the process of learning to work with and through madness and life’s challenges. Mother Bear Community Action Network explores these arguments and makes a case for recovery.

Why Do So Few People Know that CRPD Prohibits Forced Psychiatry?

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I believe that one of the underlying reasons it is difficult to move through the obstacles to fully embrace the CRPD (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and fight for our rights, is that discrimination continues to affect us on many levels. We have accommodated in some ways to a system that hurts us - not just the mental health system but the legal system that supports these violent acts and the society that condones them. It can be painful to change, to shift gears, to move in different ways.

The United Met States of Psychiatry

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Psychiatry’s desperate drive to legitimize itself as a profitable medical authority has resulted in a mass delusion so pervasive and destructive that it's put us on a path towards societal collapse. This is not an overstatement, in my opinion, as the statistics are mind-boggling— one in five Americans are on psychiatric drugs. One in five. By my calculations, this means that 62,913,200 people ingest mind-altering, body-altering, spirit-altering pills they believe to be “medications” on a daily basis.

Hearing Voices Research & Development Fund

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Even though more and more researchers have become interested in investigating the complexities of voice hearing in and of itself (as opposed to treating it simply as one of a number of so-called "positive symptoms" of schizophrenia), the lack of a clear identification of the defining characteristics and significance of the experience for voice hearers makes it difficult to compare results across different studies.

Behavior Modification and an Authoritarian Society

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How, in a democratic society, do children become ethical and caring adults? They need a history of being cared about, taken seriously, and respected, which they can model and reciprocate. Today, the mental health profession has gone beyond behavioral technologies of control. It now diagnoses noncompliant toddlers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and pediatric bipolar disorder and attempts to control them with heavily sedating drugs. While Big Pharma directly profits from drug prescribing, the entire corporatocracy benefits from the mental health profession’s legitimization of conditioning and controlling.

There’s No Duct Tape for Benzo Withdrawal

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It’s stunning what a quarter milligram of a benzodiazepine can do to the body. I’ve been detoxing off a high dose of benzodiazepines since September of 2011. The first few months were a failure. But this past May, I found my expert and thought I had the formula. Things were going well for detoxing off a substance many deem more addictive that heroin. That is, I realized, until they weren’t.

3 Reasons Why Children Are Drawn to Succeed at Video Games

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Video games provide an example of an idealized relationship; in which authority is ever-attentive, un-preoccupied, and in which consequences are immediate and consistent, without prejudice or grudge. How understandable that in our relatively imperfect world, with unpredictable relationships, in which the hope of achievement and mastery is elusive or non-existent, children fall into behavior that appears to be unhealthy in comparison.

“Mental Illness Awareness Week”

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Our "friends" at NAMI Ohio took the occasion of so-called "Mental Illness Awareness Week" to try and drum up support for their efforts to loosen criteria for involuntary outpatient commitment (IOC) laws in Ohio. I would encourage those interested, particularly those in Ohio, to contact Ohio legislators as NAMI suggests; but to encourage them to vote DOWN any changes to the current law. Remind them that anosognosia is deliberately being mis-applied...

New Research Project to be Funded by the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health...

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Over the last 30 years Dr. Martin Harrow, Ph.D., has collected data from over 1000 interviews with people who have lived experience with mental illness. His research has been the basis for a number of papers delineating the effect of medications on those he interviewed. Further analysis of the data will answer several questions that provide the basis for a better understand of the long term effects of anti-psychotics on the treatment of schizophrenia.

West Virginia’s Prescription Drug Abuse Problem: Intersection of Two Industries?

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The line between legal and illicit, "addictive" vs. "necessary", becomes vanishingly thin when it comes to the medications prescribed in areas of the country that are being stripped of their natural resources. The mechanisms of science, medicine and our government that were once thought to protect and serve are instead leaving residents on a trail of pain, addiction, dependence and poverty produced by the intersection of two highly profitable industries. (Editor's note)

Abbott’s Admissions of Criminality: Do They Accomplish Anything?

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The big fines paid by the drug companies are not effective, yet the government is ignoring the simple solution of enforcing Medicaid and Medicare's restrictions to drugs that are prescribed for medically accepted indications. It is hard to take seriously the government's stated commitment to rooting out fraud when this massive fraud is consciously allowed to continue. I know it is consciously allowing the fraud to continue because the government has been antagonistic to our whistleblower cases raising this point. Massive harm is not enough to cause government action. Massive fraud when the government is drowning in red ink is not enough either. What is it going to take?

More on New York’s Kendra’s Law: Opponents Lining Up for Decisive Battle in 2015

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This article is about coercion in its various forms – that which is direct, unequivocal, almost thuggish, and that which is more subtle, usually masked as well-meaning, referred to by David Oaks as “velvet gloved.” The Tolstoy quote above, which was sent to me by a friend and colleague, Diana Gonzalez, aptly sums this up. This article is also about the upcoming struggle over New York’s involuntary outpatient commitment law, Kendra’s Law, and which of the principal stakeholders of New York’s public mental health system -- professionals, providers, family members, bureaucrats and politicians, peer/survivors and their advocates – will line up for, and which against.

Neuroleptic Taper in a Clinical Practice

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Although I have always been conservative in my use of these drugs, I now include in my discussion with patients my concerns about brain atrophy and long term outcome. This is added to an ongoing conversation I have had regarding the risks of tardive dyskinesia and metabolic effects of these medications. In my opinion, informed consent is a process, so these are conversations that I have been having repeatedly with my patients.

Fighting for Our Most Basic of Human Rights– The Right to be Human

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Standing up for what I believe in with a determined voice is a new experience for me, and I sometimes find myself riddled with self-doubt and insecurity. But the beauty in this is that I know with firm resolve that my feelings, my thoughts, and my unique experience of reality will never again be violated by psychiatry, and that my purpose here is to help others gain the same freedom.

Healing Voices Film

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Many of you may be aware that I am co-producing a film with PJ Moynihan entitled "Healing Voices." You may not be aware of all that has led up to this and why I think this type of film is so important for our movement, which is the purpose of this post. When I first encountered the mental health system 13 years ago after attempting to fly my car, I was shocked to see how people were treated. I basically felt I was thrown out of the human race. I had just been through an amazing, spiritual experience, an emergence really, yet nobody wanted to talk about what led up that moment.

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.

Our Task Is to Take Away the Power of Psychiatry

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Taking away the power of psychiatry? How naive, some of you say. It can never happen. Anyway, some others say, why would we even want to do that? This comes especially from those who have been appointed by the psychiatric establishment to be our leaders, some of whom imagine themselves as becoming the leaders of psychiatry themselves.. And some people who I greatly respect say we should just focus on creating alternatives to the present system.

Five Things I Learned at the Partnership with Patients Conference

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1) We need to unite with other health care improvement advocates. 2) We can make money doing this. 3) Time to get more mental health folks on Twitter. 4)Have a good conference networking system. 5) Allow serendipity to happen.

How Psychologists Meet the Needs of the “Power Structure”: A Talk at the Psychologists...

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All power structures throughout history have sought to use groups of people, especially among so-called professionals, who will control the population from rebelling against injustices. Power structures have used clergy—that’s why clergy who cared about social justice and who were embarrassed by their profession created “liberation theology.” Power structures have certainly used police and armies, as has been done throughout American history to try to break the U.S. labor movement. And the U.S. power structure now uses mental health professionals to manipulate and medicate people to adapt and adjust and thereby maintain the status quo, regardless of how insane the status quo has become.

2 Reasons Why Time-Outs Do Not Work

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The fundamental importance of connection to a child helps us to understand the use of "Time-Outs" which, used improperly, can be like pouring gas on a fire in a situation that is already not working; causing a distressed child to go further awry and potentially contributing to symptomatology that puts them at risk of being identified as ADHD, anxious, or bipolar.

Some Observations of Soteria-Alaska

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If people who work in mainstream biological psychiatry are willing to consider referring people in severe psychiatric crises to a program that operates under both a completely alternative philosophy and model to their own, then I see hope for our world’s mental health system. If our local psychiatric emergency room is willing to refer to a program like ours, then other psychiatric emergency rooms elsewhere in the United States and the world must be willing at least to consider doing the same. For this reason, I do not feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. I feel the system can change.