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Long-term opioid prescribing has not only been shown to not be helpful for chronic pain; it in fact worsens pain by repeatedly causing tolerance and withdrawals (the main symptom of which is pain). This is analogous to how psychiatric drug use, though often helpful initially, ultimately can cause people to become chronically “mentally ill.”

I am being asked by a number of grassroots communities to facilitate a dialogue about how they can better welcome and support individuals who experience emotional distress. This is a challenge for many aspiring peers and allies in a culture where responsibility for our individual well-being has been increasingly transferred to psychiatrists, doctors, and other health professionals.

The International DSM-5 Response Committee, sponsored by Division 32 of the American Psychological Association — the Society for Humanistic Psychology — now has an online petition against the DSM-5.  This is a truly international effort. Please support the petition by signing it at http://dsm5response.com

I know that this might sound odd coming from a critical psychiatrist, but I believe that psychiatry has a future. Furthermore, I maintain that a good deal of psychiatry as practised now is helpful and that many psychiatrists manage to play a positive and therapeutic role in the lives of their patients. However, I also believe that we are at our most helpful when we depart from the current biomedical ideology that has come to dominate in our profession. As a first step, we need to get beyond the reductionism that currently guides most psychiatric research and education.

Sometimes I happen upon folks talking about the work on Beyond Meds when I’m out and about on the internets. The other day for example I found a google group full of people who were largely inspired by the work on this blog. It was a lovely and surreal moment as I accidentally eaves dropped on their comments of gratitude about having found Beyond Meds. Today instead I stumbled upon a comment in which the person mused the opposite. She was not at all comfortable with my message . . .

I have devoted more than 40 years to the study of extreme mental states – my own and others. I have witnessed the extraordinary ability of people to survive and thrive after living through horrendous experiences. Remarkable feats of resilience attest to our untapped potential. I am acutely aware of an immense responsibility to communicate and use what I have learned so that others may have a somewhat easier task navigating the difficult and diverse states we call madness.

This means that what ADHD proponents present as validation of a diagnosis of a real and treatable disorder is in fact a placebo effect caused by an ostensibly scientific label, which exists in synergy with an efficient, legal drug. The ADHD label produces this placebo effect because its diagnosis is based on behavior that in reality could be observed by anyone. What is observed sounds "scientific"; it is easily understandable and highly obvious. When the diagnosis is turned into an action plan, we forget that there is nothing scientific about it and that its evaluation is purely subjective and clinical; that it creates a great many false positives, and that a drug prescribed in half of the cases indeed does have serious side effects.

May 8^th in the USA Today:   “WASHINGTON (AP) — Wrigley says it is taking a new caffeinated gum off the market temporarily as the Food and Drug Administration investigates the safety of added caffeine.”  Really?  Major Tranquilizers, Amphetamines, Benzodiazepines, and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors have all been approved by the FDA for the treatment of “mental illness.” These drugs are being prescribed to youth, some as young as 3 and 4 years of age. My Big League Chew is more dangerous than Uncle Jim’s Seroquel or my big brother’s Adderall?

The medicalisation of our emotional lives has led to a horrific cultural shift in which we, and our children, have become alienated from and suspicious of our emotions, chipping away at our natural resilience.

Based on the studies cited, it seems hard to support the assertion that “early initiation of antipsychotics may improve long-term course of the illness.” This raises an urgent question about initial treatment. Doesn’t it make sense to try to capture all of those individuals who might get through a psychosis without drugs?

My law review article entitled "Rethinking criminal responsibility from a critical disability perspective: The abolition of insanity/incapacity acquittals and unfitness to plead, and beyond" has been published in Griffith Law Review. The article attempts to find a way to deal with concerns for a degree of toleration towards socially disruptive behavior that may be criminalized, without making some people categorically and legally irresponsible as happens with the insanity defense.

We have at least some solid, incontrovertible evidence available to all that the claims about antidepressants in the press do not directly match the text of the source article in the Lancet. Nowhere in the original article did the authors make the extreme or even controversial claims appearing in the mainstream media.

The roots of modern psychiatry go back to the Age of Enlightenment when madness was reduced by scientists to an ‘object’ of mind — an object which could be studied, analysed, and as some of them claim, even understood. Not only does psychiatry deprive madness of its mystery, it also makes it extremely boring. But madness is never boring, and shouldn't be.

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...

If alien species wanted to intervene in human society without fully revealing themselves, how would they do it? Choose a select number of individuals who are easily discredited by others in the group. In other words: Turn people into schizophrenics.

Through the act of deep listening to personal stories of distress and healing, I have become convinced that even the most well-meaning mental health professionals are persistently asking the wrong questions. We are operating within a system that prizes the stability, conformity, and sedation of persons with experiences too unusual or too "disruptive" to social norms. It is a system that asks the question, "What is wrong with you?" and it is a system that defines "fixing" the problem as managing symptoms so that people aren't a bother (financially, logistically, and socially) to other people.

As Frederick Douglass said 150 years ago, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never did and it never will.” As we look at our situation now and try to figure out how to respond to it, we should keep those words in mind. People with psychiatric labels, like me, are now being systematically attacked as less than human, as “walking time bombs” who might kill someone at any moment, as not-quite-human creatures who should not be allowed the rights of all other citizens.

In the political struggle between First-Order Psychiatry and the Rehumanizing Resistance, the Resistance continues to win scientific victories (including the First-Order’s retreat from its “chemical imbalance theory of mental illness”); however, the Resistance is losing the larger struggle against the First-Order’s expansion of influence. Winning scientific battles but losing the war will continue until the Resistance: (1) fully recognizes the political nature of this struggle; (2) accepts the reality that it has an adversary aimed at its destruction; and (3) creates and implements effective political strategies and tactics.

If you're on psychiatric drugs or you're a psychiatric survivor, chances are others told your story for you in their words. Like it or not (I hope you like it), you're going to have to retell your story in your own words, in your own way. If you choose to do this through blogging, social media, video or any other digital approaches, having your story read, seen and/or viewed by many could be very satisfying. You may not be ready to share it so publicly yet, but once you are, there are some tools to get your story out there to the masses.