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Standing up for what I believe in with a determined voice is a new experience for me, and I sometimes find myself riddled with self-doubt and insecurity. But the beauty in this is that I know with firm resolve that my feelings, my thoughts, and my unique experience of reality will never again be violated by psychiatry, and that my purpose here is to help others gain the same freedom.

A few years ago I had the intuition that meditation was the most important survival skill for these shifting times. It came after reading...

This anecdote is offered as a story in praise of families and a recognition of their importance to the process of recovery.

There used to be a wonderful cartoon series called 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, which led me 25 years ago to give a talk at a British Association for Psychopharmacology meeting entitled 101 Uses for a Dead Psychiatrist. That was back in the days when Psychopharmacology meetings were places of debate and the British Journal of Psychiatry was guaranteed to have something of real interest in every issue.

Hi, I'm Corinna West, a psychiatric survivor.  I was very ill one time and now I'm not. That's the short story. The slightly longer...

I want to learn how to control my anger. But to get rid of it would be to get rid of a part of myself. It would also feel like swallowing down injustice. Such a drug probably doesn't exist, but what if there were an antidepressant that could make me stop disliking mental health professionals? The idea feels scary to me, like some kind of mind control pill.

For many clinicians like myself, families come to us with insurance that they seek to use in addressing psychological issues. As most know, in order to utilize the insurance benefits, a diagnostic code has to be billed that is specifically assigned to the identified patient, who in my case is a child or adolescent. As has been widely documented on MIA and other venues, this presents many challenges/controversies, both of an ethical and etiological origin. But this article is about a very specific concern, one that is inherent in the categorical, disease-based model, but also one that continues to depict the human person as a set of parts, not a dynamic, holistic being constantly interfacing with his or her environment.

Years ago, a psychiatrist by the name of Theodore Lidz published a book entitled Schizophrenia and the Family.  Unlike many others of his time, he believed that schizophrenic symptoms were not necessarily the result of an underlying disease, but could be caused by dysfunctional parental behavior.  He noted that significant conflict and high levels of tension were not necessarily the cause of symptoms; in certain families, a pattern of “skewed” communication existed in which odd, often unhealthy patterns of interaction and behaviors were allowed and even supported by one spouse, which resulted in a confusing, distorted environment for the children.

This short blog is inspired by the always entertaining and witty Thank You Notes ritual Jimmy Fallon does on the Tonight Show every week. It’s intended to be funny, but of course not as funny as Jimmy Fallon; he’s the best. People say I am funny, and have a great face for radio, but come on… how funny can you be when you talk about mental health and drugging kids?

I don't normally post items so close together but today NAMI Ohio has successfully convinced a State Senator to sponsor a bill that I...

In the 40 years since I was wrongly - and catastrophically - "diagnosed" and "treated," I've seen one after another announcement of supposed "progress" in the "science" of understanding and treating "mental illness" come and go — first trumpeted, then with nary a mention, failing to hold their ground and falling away to the mists of time along with the people and the lives they'd ruined. People will continue to suffer and die if the public do not wake up and have the courage to act as a caring community, and stop regarding human problems as "diseases" to be "cured," rather than as challenges that we share.

What's needed at this time are not glib, inane rejoinders, but an honest scrutiny by psychiatrists of their fundamental assumptions and methods.

The Hearing Voices movement is a beautiful thing, and last year it was 25 years old. What has happened in 25 years? A confidence has grown in a different approach to hearing voices, listening and embracing rather than trying to control and silence voices. Key to this has been Hearing Voices groups and conferences, where people who hear voices are listened to with openness and curiosity. It’s not about telling people who hear voices to throw away their pills if they are taking them, its about creating spaces to listen deeply to what is happening.

What can we say about the DSM that hasn’t already been said? Quite a lot, actually. The manual (full title: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), produced by the American Psychiatric Association, is incredibly powerful. It shapes research agendas, clinical practices, social care, economic decision-making and individual experiences internationally. As Rachel Cooper notes in her excellent new book, Diagnosing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, changes to it impact ‘the lives of as many people as changes in the policies of most countries’ (p. 2). The DSM needs to be talked about.

This week, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, touting the bipartisan mental health measure as "bringing to reality the possibility of new breakthroughs to some of the greatest health-care challenges of our time." However, the reality behind this legislation is not quite what it appears to be.

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...

Sandra Steingard writes in Community Psychiatrist about Lex Wunderink's study, published in the August JAMA Psychiatry, which found that people who discontinued medication have...

If you log onto the website of the New York State Office of Mental Health at www.omh.ny.gov, you’ll find out that less than three...

One of the largest public mental health service agencies in my local area asks the question, "What is mental illness?" on their website. In answer they state, "Mental illness is a biologically based disease, much like diabetes or cancer," and "most researchers agree it involves a chemical imbalance in certain parts of the brain." Frequently when we encounter a declarative statement made by a perceived authority, we accept it and integrate that information into our way of thinking about things. But is this statement accurate? What is its basis, and what is the evidence behind the statement? We are told that "most researchers" agree - is that true?