Blogs

In June this year the BMJ published an article supposedly about how the Black Box Warning that antidepressants cause suicide had led to a drop in the use of the same antidepressants and an increase in suicides. The message was widely trumpeted in daily newspapers and other news outlets as well as the press office of Harvard University and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In fact there had been no drop in the use of antidepressants and no increase in suicide rates or suicide act rates. The letters sent to the BMJ in response to the article wondering how such a shoddy piece of work could possibly have been published are worth reading – rarely is academic contempt so scathing.

This email came to me from one of my advocacy friends. It seems to me like this would be a super good opportunity to point out that "quality care" includes doing more good than harm, using evidence-based treatments, which may or may not be medication, and various other approaches we are all working for.

Despite the hiring of peers, the mental health system still has not implemented the recovery and trauma-informed values advocated by both SAMHSA and by people with the lived experience of mental health recovery. Person-centered planning requires a system-wide shift in communication, as well as adaptation of recovery-oriented, trauma-informed values. Tomorrow, Dan Fisher, W. Reid Smithdeal and I are offering a webinar that will provide administrators, managers, providers of mental health services and others with some essential communication tools needed to transform their systems to being recovery-based, trauma-informed and empowerment focused.

We want to start an international initiative to promote the writing of recovery stories in every country, with the ultimate goal of sharing at an international level the most compelling ones from each country. Our proposal is born from an awareness that recovery stories are necessary today in order to give back to mental sufferance its meaning and transparency, to fight the biographical opacity of biological theories (the broken brain) and to guarantee decisional power to those who are offered (or imposed) mono-dimensional or dehumanizing treatments.

Dear Bob: Saw a young man recently, early 30s, who wanted help withdrawing from benzodiazepines. He had been on escalating doses of Xanax for two years.  The...

In our experience, using anger or name-calling isn’t usually very effective when trying to fight the “establishment” or status quo. Something we teach all...

While some will frame Eleanor Longden’s story, told in her awesome TED video (which has now been viewed about 1/2 million times!), as the triumph of an individual struggling against “mental illness,” I believe the story might better be seen as a refutation of the whole “illness of the mind” metaphor, and as an indication of a desperate need for a new paradigm.

In my last blog, invited readers to consider sharing their families’ recovery stories and to open to the possibility of the healing that is available when we connect with each other through this sharing. I would like to share one of these stories with all of you.

Patient advocates and bioethicists have launched a call-in campaign demanding action on psychiatric research abuse at the University of Minnesota.

For all who suffer, meaning must first come through survival.  But at some point, a question emerges about whether distress and misery mean more than the pain one feels.  An inquiry of transcendence appears.  In one study of those affected by severe childhood trauma, those who survive are able to find a way through each day that comes, but past trauma still exerts significant control over their life.  But with those who transcend, there is a sense of rising above the ordinary physical and psychological state.  Although traumatic experiences themselves may remain as definitive and directive circumstances in a person’s life, transcendence provides an escape to a more meaningful, and often joyful existence.

As I've told Bob Whitaker and many others, it's taken me 45 years in my career to get to the point where I feel completely free to "do the right thing." By that I don't mean to downplay the work I've done in the public mental health and addictions systems. But now, the Mad in America Continuing Education project moves me in a more recovery-oriented direction than ever, and has a specific focus on the ways in which most programs have over-used psychiatric medications to the detriment of the people we are serving.

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...

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?

For Mother’s Day this blog will not address the pressing issues of psychiatry today. Suffice it to say that the harm done by the twin traumas of deprivation and abuse generate all the psychiatric struggles we are all subject to. This is the other side of the story - in appreciation for what I have learned about love from my wife.

I’ve had some criticism of the recent Doctor Munchausen posts. They’re not fair on doctors. Many people have told me of lives saved by good doctors. It’s not fair to tar these good doctors with the brush of a few Dr Munchausens here and there. So there’s bad doctoring and good doctoring and great doctoring. What would great doctoring mean?

I do not claim to know how to heal the wounds from the tragedy that occurred in Newtown on December 14th, 2012. Nor do I claim to know how to prevent future tragedies of this sort. The intent of this post is to oppose ineffective and inhumane practices, prompted by reactions to the events in Newtown and other communities, that are falsely thought to be effective.

The norm in science is that there is free access to the data underpinning experiments. If free access is denied; it’s not science. In the case of branded pharmaceuticals, we do not even know what trials have been done. What is put in the public domain is not data. The selected highlights of a football game and the comments of the pundits afterwards don't change the score. The selected highlights of pharma studies and the comments of pundits routinely change the score.

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 have some trepidation as a social worker venturing into the world of ecology and biodiversity but during my recent visit to Hawaii, I began to realize there are some parallels in that world and ours. Could psychiatric medications be considered an invasive species in the world of mental health?

Do you think youth prevention programs, sports, arts programs, or spiritual approaches can help people through emotional distress? We've been calling for this dialogue for years and now it's time to get out in your city and participate in it. In four days in Kansas City we'll have the first ever large scale public forum that includes information about medical harm and the full range of entrepreneurial solutions.

For years, MindFreedom has been working to create more choice for persons who want help with emotional distress, life crises, overwhelm, spiritual emergencies, extreme states and difficult dilemmas. When co-founder David Oaks was asked if MindFreedom approved of the use of psychotropic drugs, his stock answer was something like: “We are all about choice and information. If people have good information and choose to use drugs, we are supportive. But forced treatment of all kinds is a violation of human rights. And we are opposed to the hegemony and bullying of mainstream psychiatry and it’s drug-based approach which squeezes out more safe, humane and life-enhancing approaches.”

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....

So many kind and thoughtful parents are trying so hard to simply have a lovingly positive impact on their child, only to see the child slip further and further into the realm of being “challenging.” This is so prevalent, even among the best and brightest parents. Diagnosis: difficult child behavior comprises a quiet epidemic - the kind that brings so many to their knees. Let this article bring you hope and be the medicine that cures your family.

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.

If we are going to really make a difference in the world of mental health stigma, we must get to the heart of the matter. All people deserve compassionate, honest care. All people, stigmatized and stigmatizers, deserve to be heard, understood, and valued, no matter what worth that society may place on them. I am my brother’s keeper. You are mine.