Blogs

Bob-- Very interesting case today, a forty-six year-old woman, new patient, overweight, and very pleasant. She is someone who, at first glance, I never would...

Bob-- Today, I saw a bright, athletic lacrosse player who is a high school sophomore. She was seeing me to follow up on a mild...

Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, has provoked all manner of responses.  Some outraged, dismissive, but many supportive and relieved to hear the...

This post is a bit different from my typical system sausage making pieces in that I would like to reflect on the Mad in...

A new multi-centered study was released about using cognitive therapy for young people who were seen as being at high risk of psychosis. The article reporting the study is on the British Medical Journal website, available in full – http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2233. It’s curious to see how it is being reported in the press.

Bob-- I saw a thirty-four year old woman today for a follow-up visit regarding post-partum depression. She delivered her second child two months ago, and...

Senator Charles Grassley is upping the ante on the controversy surrounding the Vertex pharmaceutical executives who cashed in on overstated clinical trial data --...

I envision a world where there is no need for a mental health field/system because communities are strong and we have a holistic understanding...

Bob-- This is the twentieth letter that I'll be posting on your website. I thought I'd use the occasion to reflect on what I've observed...

So many treatment colleagues have shared that prior to finding an approach that really works to turn a child’s intensity to greatness, they felt no recourse other that to look for ways to moderate the accelerating poor choices that children they worked with were making. Most relevant here is, that in retrospect, they felt that it boiled down to simply being faithful to their training, which it turns out so often is a set up to fail with difficult children.

Bob-- Today, I saw a very friendly, highly intelligent (she has a PhD in economics) and overweight 34 year old woman for a refill of...

I was invited to give a Keynote Address at the 2012 Alternatives Conference in Portland Oregon, and I'm collecting your input on what I should...

Bob- I saw a sixteen-year old girl for a sports physical today. She plays softball for the local high school and also is on the...

Dear Bob-- I saw a very nurturing woman a few months ago, quite obese, for the symptoms of chest pain and fatigue. She had been admitted...

Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part essay. The first part described Jessica’s personal experiences with involuntary commitment, the psychiatric system, and...

This two-part piece outlines our struggle to build a mad community, Madwomen in the Attic, across locations, across differences, across challenges.

Three weeks have passed since Mad in America’s International Film Festival took place at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA. I’ve been spending a lot of time in solitude, reflecting and processing the whole thing, for in the Festival’s wake, I was taken over by a powerful, albeit interesting mix of great physical and mental fatigue and even greater emotional energy. Most importantly, what the Festival has set off in me is a resurgence of hope—hope for Mad in America’s future as an organization and an ever-growing space for people to come together in community, hope for this mission we’re on to transform the way the world makes sense of the experiences that get called “mental illness”, and hope in our collective human capacity for personal and collective transformation.

By 2002 GlaxoSmithKline had done 3 studies in children who were depressed and described all three to FDA as negative.  As an old post on Bob Fiddaman’s blog reproduced here outlines, several years later they undertook another study in children in Japan. (Editor's note: This is a re-print, by David Healy, of a post by Bob Fiddaman)