Blogs

We need to burn through some darkness before we collectively see the light. The light is a palpable shift toward reaching for human connection; toward opening our hearts and our minds and intentionally focusing on the positive future that wants to emerge.

Professor Sharna Olfman has researched and written extensively about children in society, including education and sexuality, and her perspective on so-called bipolar disorder is...

We would be much better served if we were told by mental health professionals from the very beginning to trust ourselves. Instead, the entire system is fraught with the infantilization of the client. This is (in general) true of both psychology and psychiatry as currently practiced.

In my previous blog, “Back in the Dark House Again: The Recurrent Nature of Clinical Depression,” I reported on my recent relapse into depression that began this summer. As I have comtemplated the seriousness of my episode, the question has arisen, “Am I having a nervous breakdown?” Although I couldn't see it, there was a reason for hope — for a breakdown can be a precursor to a breakthrough.

An ever-growing number of people are aware that something’s horrendously wrong with psychiatry — survivors, families, professionals, psychiatrists themselves. Of these a subsection has become actively involved in trying to bring about change. All of which is good. This notwithstanding, sincere and dedicated though almost everyone is — and it is clear that people are — only a tiny percentage of these are pressing for anything truly transformative.

As I wrote in Let’s All Support Stephen Sheller’s FDA Petition to Revoke the Pediatric Approval of Risperdal, Stephen Sheller's law firm, which represents hundreds of boys who were prescribed Risperdal and then grew breasts (gynecomastia) as a result, filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the label and revoke its approval for use on children. During the course of discovery for litigation in its Risperdal cases, Sheller became privy to documents not provided to the FDA that showed Johnson & Johnson hid the problem. This is a very important case. If it is successful, it will give hope of forcing the FDA to follow its mandate to protect the public from harmful drugs.

It is appropriate to hold a company or doctors who may be aiming to make money out of vulnerable people to a high standard when it comes to efficacy, but for those interested to advance the treatment of patients with any medical condition it is not appropriate to deny the likely existence of harms on the basis of a failure to reach a significance threshold that the very process of conducting an RCT will mean cannot be met, as investigators' attention is systematically diverted elsewhere.

The controversy over “Study 329” on the effects of Paxil in teen depression has raised questions about the state of ALL medical research. I decided to look at the research for the most recent psychiatric drug approved by the FDA, a new antipsychotic called cariprazine or Vraylar.  I located twenty studies of Vraylar on www.ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. government-sponsored registry for clinical trials.  Three were still in process, and seventeen were completed.  Not one had shared its results on the government website, a supposedly mandatory step.

If you want solutions for emotional distress, vote NOW! Vote for the distress model and vote for Aunt Bertha. 1) Vote now for the distress...

I’ve been thinking a lot about George Saslow since I came south to take a timeout and think. I miss him. A lot. Dr....

The FDA approved Biogen's failed drug aducanumab, overriding the 10-0 recommendation of its own advisory committee. Three panel members resigned in protest.

As MIA readers may have noted, we recently opened a store on this site. You’ll find videos for sale there, as well as MIA merchandise. In the near future, we intend to begin selling ebooks as well.

The problems that we face in America today are many and they are grave. Mass gun violence grips our communities on a regular basis. A wave of protest against unfair policing policies and police violence directed against people of color and people with mental health and other disabilities. “Zero tolerance” policies in schools that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline. We incarcerate more people than any country in the world, generally for nonviolent offenses. Suicide rates are on the rise in America for the 10th year in a row. These pressing social issues are deeply interconnected and are rooted in trauma, the breakdown of community support, and socioeconomic inequality. We need reform that sees the intersections and addresses the public’s health and well-being across the lifespan.

“We need a new paradigm,” said Alberto Vasquez, research coordinator of the office of the special rapporteur to the United Nations on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. “People are clamoring for change. We want to see something else.”

In today’s Boston Globe (April 14), Dr. Dennis Rosen, a pediatric lung and sleep specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, reviews my new book,...

The Low Histamine Chef published a post yesterday: The vagus nerve inflammation connection. I was tickled to get a list of various self-hacks on how to stimulate the vagus nerve. Once the vagus nerve is stimulated we calm down! It’s like magic. The vagus nerve is implicated in all sorts of stress.

I am a board certified psychiatrist and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. I mention these things only to indicate that I...

If I were in charge of distributing NIH grant money, I’d be sending a lot of it to researchers like Erick Turner, a psychiatrist...

It's too bad, of course, that our state and federal regulators can't seem to muster the political will to require the marketing and prescribing of safer opiate painkillers. Indeed, the federal Department of Health and Human Services could ensure that Medicare and Medicaid include agonist-antagonist drugs in their drug formularies and save many lives in one bold sweep. But until the feds get their act together -- are you listening, President Obama? -- it's up to the families who have lost loves ones to prescription drug overdoses to sue the drug makers and force change.

Between 1999-2010, the suicide rate among Americans aged 35-64 years increased 28.4 percent. Major U.S. mental health institutions emphasize mental health treatment as a solution. However, suicide, depression, and many other serious emotional difficulties can be most easily prevented by political courage and different public policies, not by medical treatments.

America’s answer to questions, demonstrations, and other countries is - increasingly - to don riot gear and show up with big guns no matter the issue. Today, April 3, 2014 the Murphy Bill will be debated by a House subcommittee. It appears to ask for dollars to help those diagnosed with mental illness, but it is Orwellian doublespeak for taking rights away, forcing treatment, and placing blame on the people who are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Why not address violence as the cause of violence?

Locomún, a collective group in Spain, has launched MIA-Hispanohablante, an affiliated web magazine for the 400 million people who share Spanish as their first language.

What an amazing ride I’ve had in the past few days on the tsunami of commentary from my previous post. While it’s been fun (dare...

So many of us young women believed the people who told us we needed them to make us healthy, who told us that without them, we’d be at the mercy of untameable "disease."

This is a study of psychiatry. It is a study of an area officially a branch of medicine and overwhelmingly seen as legitimate, benign, progressive, and effective. But what if society had it wrong? What if this were not legitimate medicine? Dare we imagine a world where helping is not professionalized, where caring is not commodified. Where, in the spirit of community, we go about the business of life together?