Blogs

In the final blog in Peter Gøtzsche's series, he presents his concluding thoughts and suggestions for the future of psychiatry.

The book presents a thoughtful, comprehensive plan for replacing the current coercive medical model of crisis “support” with something that actually helps.

Researchers have again and again demonstrated that depression pills double suicides both in children and adults.

“I’ve spent 58 years in the public mental health system—10 years surviving it and 48 trying to change it.” That’s how Jay Mahler—psychiatric survivor, activist, leader—described his experiences.

In the early hours of September 19 – about 3 AM, someone estimated – Gloria X. was awoken from her sleep at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, the New Jersey State hospital. Her new (about 3 weeks) roommate, Florence, whom she had trusted, was on top of her punching her in the eyes. Florence pounded her eyes over and over and over – taking out 50 years of rage on Gloria. Why Gloria? No one knows. Or those who know ain’t talking.

When I first heard of the proposed “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013” (H.R. 3717)”, I felt relieved and thought “maybe somebody has finally got it!” However, as I read and processed the words I realized just how much Tim Murphy didn’t get it. Is this mental health system broke? Yes it is. Can it be fixed? Yes it can. But we must do it collectively and with the experience and voices of those with true lived experiences including their families and allies. I stand with millions of others who have shown through our resiliency that our movement is real, has saved lives and most of all we have people that can give voice to what really needs to be changed within the system. If only people will listen.

With a loud piercing cry, the bare chested Native American warrior hurled his tomahawk at John Weir Perry with full force. John told me...

Many families trying to support someone in psychosis fall into the same trap professionals find themselves caught in: power struggles: "How can I make my relative change? What should I do to get them to see they are sick?" While it's hard to argue with wanting someone to get better, control and conformity are at the heart of everything wrong with the standard psychiatric approach. The deeper families dig themselves into forcing change on their relative, the more they flounder.

I believe that today’s heroin addicts are a new breed — the seeds of their creation were sown back in 1990, when doctors’ lies about normal childhood immaturity being a genetic “brain illness” became accepted. Here are some statistics that support my argument that psychiatry is the root cause of our heroin epidemic.

Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman's attempt, in his New York Times opinion piece (“Teenagers, Medication and Suicide,” August 3, 2015), to minimize the dangers of antidepressant drugs in causing suicidal thoughts and behavior is wrong on the facts. Friedman is wrong - even according to Friedman - when his argument and numbers are examined. 

Our main reason for beginning an awareness month is the need for recognition-- a yearning to make the word “iatrogenic” and its corresponding language available to our community, and to the greater public as a household name. We don’t have the luxury of raising money for research, racing for the cure, or ribbons. For that we would have to be on the map. Why is it that something this pervasive gets so little traction?

I have given up on psychiatry as a system capable of “being there” for people who are dealing with life and death issues. Psychiatry as a system of care lacks validity. Every day — unfortunately — we learn of new examples proving this statement. But here's the good news: every day we meet people who show us that the predictions of psychiatry are not true; that there are “cures,” that it is possible to reduce or withdraw psychiatric drugs.

What follows is my attempt to report on the Pre-Seminar program from the 17th International Conference on the Treatment of Psychosis.

As many of the readers of this website know, David Oaks, the long-time leader of MindFreedom, was badly injured when he fell from a ladder on December 1. He broke a bone in his neck, his injury so severe he had to be on a ventilator. The latest news is encouraging: he had a tracheotomy and is off the ventilator, able now to speak in a whisper. Personally, I owe David a great deal, as it was an interview I did with him in 1998 that propelled me to write more in-depth about psychiatry.

Massachusetts Bill HD 4554 needs to gain sufficient state representative support by Tuesday, March 1, 2016. This bill will put restrictions on the prescribing of benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine sleep aids, and will require that all patients be informed of the potential dangers of these drugs, specifically the dangers of long-term use.

It’s time to change how we think about and relate to people whose makeup is or appears to be different from the norm. Currently, the dominant way in research, practice and the general public is to think of what’s different—let’s say a biological or neurological difference—as the source of disability and difficulty, and to relate to and treat (in various ways) that biological or neurological difference. But there’s another way to go, and more and more researchers and practitioners are taking it.

Bob-- Had two very interesting cases this morning: First, I saw new patient, a very thoughtful, intelligent retired pastor who is on Citalopram. We were visiting...

In 1993, the World Health Bank estimated that domestic violence, or intimate partner violence (IPV), was a greater cause of poor health than traffic accidents and malaria combined. It was believed that 5-20% of healthy years lost for women were attributed to IPV. By definition, violence is considered to be any physical, verbal, or sexual assault that significantly comprises a person’s body, trust, and sense of self. But it is not solely a female issue even as women are disproportionately perpetrated against in this way. Results from a study conducted in the United States found that 22.1 percent of women and 7.4 percent of men reported acts of IPV in their lifetime.

In these days of sequestrations, budget cliffs, and congressional gridlock, everyone is feeling pressured to cut back, cut corners and find the most inexpensive way to accomplish anything and everything. For those of us who have been working so hard over the past decades, this leads to the obvious question, "can we afford recovery?" I mean, after all, it is usually cheaper to just give someone a drug than to invest in the time and effort needed to bring human spirits back alive to strive and thrive. So I decided to look at this question, from the vantage point of my own singular life.

Even as you are being shown amazing and mystical things and having all sorts of mysteries clarified in your mind, you are also being placed in a position where no one will pay any attention to what you have to say, or if they do, the results of that attention will be negative (such as being locked up). The mysterious and powerful journey you are on is almost invisible to other people.

A speech given at the annual Danish Psychiatry Top Summit conference on the theme "New winds are blowing."

Millions of people believe that psychiatric medications have saved their lives, while millions of others report that their psychiatric medications were unhelpful or made...

Two weeks ago there was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that basically eviscerated the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) while at the same time calling for support of HR 3717 – The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. HR 3717 has elements that we agree with as well as elements we don’t. In addition, there are elements that are just plain confusing to us. In this post I want to address three of the most popular sound bites (two of which found their way into the WSJ editorial) that continue to come up again and again.

Preying on the privatisation of distress comes the medical-industrial complex perverting the mental health landscape.

If we call someone mentally ill, in some ways we may be recognising their predicament as a powerful one, and their need for support. However, we may also be judging their state of mind as faulty. But what if what seems a faulty mind is much more than that? We can go deeper than trying to say what is wrong with someone, how ill they are, or what category they fit into. We can instead ask: How do parts of them feel? What might different parts of them need? And what are the contexts in which these experiences have emerged?