Blogs

While making money from the publication of pharmaceutical company trials, and in the face of a complete failure by industry to adhere to basic scientific norms and make data available, BMJ and other journals — although BMJ in particular — have run a series of articles on supposed Academic Fraud. These articles feature instances of fraud sometimes as bizarre as researcher claiming he cannot show the data as it was eaten by termites. The universal feature is that these are academic studies, and academic fraud is an issue in academia.

One of the primary clinical teachings found in the pursuit of prescription drug withdrawal: we need stepping stones and a great many of them to navigate the perilous terrain.

Creeping from the shadows, emerging from the glen, is a cry for an existence much better than the one we’re living in. It is clear that drugs are becoming our crutch, an excuse to avoid experiencing the trials and tribulations as such. So below is an entreaty to return to simplicity, one in which much of what we need is available so readily.

Every day we read, on the one hand, another compelling headline touting "news" of a “scientific breakthrough” that claims to have discovered the “cause” of “mental illness,” while another headline tells of researchers uncovering egregious falsification in the clinical trials of the pharmaceutical industry. The list goes on and on. Though many people report that they find medications helpful when they are in an extreme state (mostly to help them sleep ), given that there is as yet no scientific evidence confirming a specific disease/illness process underlying "mental illness,” and evidence that most if not all of the perceived effect is comparable to placebo, the fact remains that any positive effect of these meds are based on theory, while their harms are well-established.

Bob-- I would guess that as I am typing this, you are in the midst of a spirited defense of your book at the conference....

Thanks to Ginger Breggin for posting about Stephen Sheller's FDA Petition to Revoke the Pediatric Approval of Risperdal on her Facebook Page. Many of you know that Mr. Sheller recently settled a case against Johnson & Johnson over Risperdal causing breasts to grow in a young boy. What is not yet well-known is that on July 27, 2012, Mr. Sheller filed what is known as a "citizen's petition" to revoke the approval of Risperdal (risperidone), and its cousin Invega, for use on children and youth.

Just as the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) long-delayed DSM5 was about to launch, the director of NIMH, Dr Thomas Insel, provoked a flurry of acrimony when he mentioned in his blog that his organisation intended to move away from the ideas behind DSM: “Patients with mental disorders deserve better... NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories... we will be supporting research projects that look across current categories – or sub-divide current categories – to begin to develop a better system”. It now seems Insel's comments had more to do with NIMH funding needs than points of principle.

In his book, Prayer is Good Medicine, physician and researcher Larry Dossey maintains that praying for one's self or others can make a scientifically measurable difference in recovering from illness or trauma. It is one thing to understand such a healing intellectually; it is another to know it from experience. Such an experience came to me in the fall of 1996.

Dutch peer support education has changed dramatically over time since its inception. Peer support education has evolved over time from empowered and independent peer support education to institutionalized peer support education. In effect the (future) peer support workers in the Netherlands could become clinician-friendly peer support workers who merely represent peer support work in name but not in practice.

We are among an increasing number of people around the world who know the importance of holding on to a humanistic idea, and of keeping in mind that people need—first and foremost—other people. People who are willing to take part, to share with us the horror and confusion, to invite the telling of a narrative, and to keep the hope alive.

Depression and anxiety can be symptoms that are like a throbbing toe. Did you just drop a hammer on it? Is there a string wrapped tightly around it? Is the toenail infected? There’s pain, but what from? What might it mean? If you ask why, psychiatry has a well-rehearsed answer for you: it’s your broken brain and your misfiring chemistry! Despite efforts to focus on the danger of our emotional experiences, the finger is now being pointed back at psychiatry to explain why violence and self-harm are documented effects of treatment.

Bob-- Since we've started posting these letters, I've had a number of readers responding to me and asking about my strategies for withdrawal. As you...

The NIMH's CATIE trial of antipsychotics for adult schizophrenia is regularly understood to have shown that atypical antipsychotics are "no better" than the old...

On August 13, Mad in America and three partner organizations will present four international experts to discuss the problem of the widespread psychiatric drugging of children—and seek solutions.

All the media hubbub surrounding the recent publication of the RAISE study has been somewhat confusing. A sampler of headlines includes; Game Changer? (HuffPo); New Approach Advised to Treat Schizophrenia (New York Times); New York Times Issues Correction on RAISE Study Report; Landmark Study Recommends More Therapy, etc… What is one to make of all the fanfare and conflicting commentary?

As an activist, you work for a long, long time seeing no signs of change, and perhaps you are tempted to throw your hands up in despair. However, very, very often something utterly profound is shifting beneath the surface.

In Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker posits that long-term exposure to neuroleptics does more harm than good. I will discuss how I have wrestled with this in my practice.

A major research group mentions in a paper published in an academically rigorous psychiatric journal (and I get it that some readers consider that an oxymoron) the possible influence of super-sensitivity on increasing the risk of relapse when neuroleptic drugs are stopped. Yet those of us who raise this as a reason to moderate our use of these drugs are considered biased or scientifically naive.

David Romprey walked up to me one day when I was in the middle of planning the next new 16-bed facility in a community setting for people who were in our state hospitals in Oregon. Progress was in the making. He asked why I called these places 16-“bed” facilities. Answering matter-of-factly what seemed obvious, I replied that these residences, nicely furnished in pleasant neighborhoods, had 16 beds. Looking me straight in the eye, as he always did, David asked me, “Do you think we’re lying around prostrate all the time?”

Modern “civilized” cultures do not have a good relationship with the wild. It seems we are always doing everything possible to shut it out of our lives, or to kill or tame it to the point where it is unrecognizable. Yet that which is wild is always still lurking, somewhere over the edge of our boundaries and frontiers, and also inside people, both inside the “others” we might approach warily on the street, and even inside our family members and ourselves.

In the United States the standard model of psychotropic treatment can be summarized as "first, frequent and forever" (FFF). In other words, the general institutional consensus within the public mental health system is that people labeled with a mental illness diagnosis will (1) require medication as the first and primary treatment, and (2) will require consistent and frequent medication, and often a cocktail of mood stabilizers, benzodiazapines, anti-depressants and/or anti-psychotics and, (3) will need to remain on these medications forever.

While I was in charge of the public systems for both mental health and addictions in Oregon, I found it a challenge to maintain an equal focus on alcohol/drug problems compared to mental health. One big reason for the emphasis on mental health was that the mental health budget was big, about 6 times greater than that for addictions. And that doesn’t even count the hidden funding for psychiatric drugs which probably added another 30 or 40% to mental health —atypical antipsychotics are a lot more expensive than Antabuse.

As individuals, psychiatrists are undoubtedly well-intentioned. But the Prozac paradigm undermines the path of acceptance by its very agenda to “get rid of” or “fix” anxiety. It is by its nature a resistance — and what you resist, tends to persist.

Evolutionary psychiatry and breakthroughs in neuroscience are rapidly blurring the lines between adaptive and maladaptive changes. What would be possible if we put our attention on, gave money and resources to mental wellness instead of mental illness? The re-election of President Obama provides another opportunity for us to create a future for ourselves and our children that we could be proud to leave as a legacy, especially as it relates to how mental health is defined and considered in the body politic and media. Imagine mental wellness. Together, we can!

When people are seeing the world really different than we do, it’s often reassuring to think that there must be something wrong with them – because if they are completely wrong, or ill, then we don’t have to rethink our own sense of reality, we can instead be confident about that own understandings encompass all that we need to know. But it can be disorienting and damaging to others to have their experiences defined as “completely wrong” or “ill.” And we ourselves become more ignorant when we are too sure that there is no value in other ways of looking or experiencing.