Blogs

Study 329 is probably the most famous clinical trial ever. It is one of the few to attract a Fraud action and is certainly the only one with a $3 Billion fine linked to it. The study began recruiting adolescents to Paxil, imipramine or placebo in 1994 and finished up in 1998. Later in 1998, SmithKline Beecham, the marketers of Paxil (they hadn’t discovered it), acknowledged in an internal document that the study had shown that Paxil didn’t work for Children. This lack of benefit was something they were not inclined to share with the outside world. Instead they decided then they would pick the good bits out of the study and publish these.

Where Professor Harrington's book seems to differ from books that others might call polemics is that she does not attribute nefarious motives to the psychiatric establishment. I worry that she underplays the ways in which the current model causes harm, but I support her suggestion for a retraction of psychiatry's scope.

What do I tell my patients about diagnosis? I try to explain what a diagnosis is and is not. It is a label that reflects that the person has reported certain symptoms. It is a label for the symptoms not for the person.

In times of crisis, we are required to adapt to conditions of suffering to safeguard capitalist production. We are asked to adapt our flexible brains to a hostile environment, and the possibility of transforming that environment is suppressed.

Our Film Festival’s mission is to foster the pursuit of social justice and human rights by bringing together an international collective of voices, perspectives, and artistic presentations that challenge the current mental health system and explore alternative understandings of "mental illness." We have confirmed speakers coming from across the United States, England, Iceland, Sweden, and Canada, all of whom share a commitment to rethinking psychiatry and the current mental health system, and to cultivating effective alternatives.

What would happen if a team of highly qualified psychologists joined up with a team of people who knew psychosis from the inside, from their own journey into madness and then recovery – and if they collaborated in writing a guide to understanding the difficult states that get names like “psychosis” and schizophrenia”?

For too long we have considered mental well-being to be about the five, ten, fifteen, or twenty percent of us that gets a psychiatric label each year. But really, if you look around at out world for a moment, you can easily see that to be alive, to be human, to exist, one must have support and healing. Festivals like this one give a glimpse of what the world can be like and I recommend this experience for envisioning a future mental health system or any futuristic vision of change.

Your mental wellness requires a global revolution. In fact, your physical wellness requires one, too. For many years, I have noticed that there are people doing good social change work for mild reform. That is nice, but during my work in what we affectionately call the “mad movement,” I have often called for revolution, because the change we need is so big! We have the technology, a solution is affordable, but we need to act urgently and the main question is, “Do we have the collective will?”

Why do I inwardly cringe at the approach of things like “Mental Illness Awareness Week” and “World Mental Health Day”? Because I’m mentally preparing myself for the onslaught of societally-approved messages about human suffering, messages ranging from the ill-informed to the downright dangerous.

Dear Robert, I just finished Anatomy of an Epidemic while on vacation. I am a family physician (and writer) practicing in Colorado.  For years, my practice...

I saw a patient recently, a 35 year-old woman who needed a refill of her Zoloft.  She been started on it four years prior,...

When I pick up a pen, I put down my fear. Sorry, they don't both fit into my hand at once. Meditation teachers often say the hardest part is getting to the cushion. The hardest part of writing is probably picking up the pen. So, pick up a pen, I dare you. Write even if you think no one will read it, even if you don't want anyone to read it.

A couple of years ago I had a novel called Stranger Than Kindness published in the UK. It was about  the cumulative trauma that can accompany work in the caring profession; how people can become bruised and reshaped by caring for a living, and what they might do to repair themselves. It was essentially a comic novel about hurt nurses. When promoting the book I found myself talking to two different audiences. The first, were people who like books and come along to events and chat about them. The second were occupied by people with a special interest or expertise in mental health.The questions asked and the conversations that we had were different in those two spaces.

Yes, a psychiatric diagnosis can be a dangerous thing to have. But, these days, so is having any medical diagnosis. The names and words of the diagnoses themselves are not so much to blame for the harm. Rather, the harm comes through the ways the diagnoses are created and how they are used.

Peter Gøtzsche discusses how the textbooks barely mention the role of psychotherapy and therapists, instead focusing almost entirely on pharmacotherapy.

The fundamental stance of bio-medical psychiatry remains unchanged since my grandfather’s time – “mentally ill” people managed like stock portfolios, reduced to diseased brains and bundles of genes and biochemicals that can be quantified, manipulated and cured “scientifically” by bio-tech and surgical interventions. Magic bullets as magical thinking.

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...

There has been much attention in this site to the role of psychiatry and psychiatrists for people who are experiencing mental or emotional distress. One area that I have chosen to focus on with my patients is food since it is a place where I believe I can have a positive impact on their lives.

I think it is time to reclaim the word disability. Disability needs to be appreciated. To the extent we value community over isolation, anything anyone cannot do, or needs help with, builds community. There are infinite examples in every career and walk of life of how necessary “disability” (since we're calling it that) is for connection, service and meaning in life. Without it we'd have absolutely no need for each other. And the fastest way to despair is to feel unnecessary.

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....

Yesterday I attended psychiatry grand rounds, where Andy Miller presented his latest research. Andy has been a pioneer in the field of psychoneuroimmunology and an exponent for the view that major depression reflects systemic inflammation. (I have published a review of this literature recently in Frontiers in Psychology which is available for download).

Less than six months ago I had the great fortune to start working with a small group of fellow producers who had spent a chunk of time traveling and shooting at various conferences. Interviews with notable figures in the movement. Survivor stories. A mixed bag of “Mad Media”. Immersing myself in the now 200+ hours of raw footage was like swimming in a sea of the subconscious. So I was swallowed whole by the white whale, consumed with the energy to put my still-developing abilities to the best use I could think of.

Open the Paradigm.

Mad in Brasil launches MIB TV, an innovative communication space open to public participation. Every two weeks mental health professionals, researchers, users of psychiatry, family members and leaders of popular movements will discuss articles of interest on Mad in Brasil.

In reviewing the classes I took in graduate school, nowhere was I taught that mental disorders are an illness arising from a chemical imbalance which needs to be treated with medication. If my university professors did not teach it, then where did I learn it? The answer lies in working in the field itself and hearing it from supervisors and other colleagues. But where did they learn it? Why do we to continue to blindly go along without questioning whether or not any of this makes sense or is helpful? We need to do better.

Children exposed to SSRIs during pregnancy, a recent study shows, were diagnosed with depression by age 14 at more than four times the rate of children whose mothers were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder but did not take the medication. Such reports are usually met, appropriately, with an outpouring of reassurances from clinicians who take care of pregnant women, who need to protect their emotional wellbeing in whatever way they can. From my perspective as a pediatrician specializing in early childhood mental health our attention must be on prevention.