Blogs

The psychiatrists have fought really hard to hide the terrible truth that depression pills double the risk of suicide, not only in children but also in adults.

Slick salesmanship, dishonest and incompetent medical practice (overlooked by timid regulators) and cultural, commercial, and political drivers now see Australians hooked on a cycle of over-diagnosis and over-medication.

Contrary to the traditional view, Psycho-Bizarreness Theory sees madness as a rational coping mechanism which individuals adopt out of expediency.

It requires extraordinary mental gymnastics by psychiatrists to conclude that neuroleptics, which cause obesity, metabolic dysfunction, diabetes, tardive dyskinesia, lethal cardiac arrhythmias, and so on, protect against death.

Kevin Gallagher addresses the Reagan era and the "crack" epidemic of the 1980s in this continuing series about the USA and addiction.

I am thankful "Beyond Order" exists; if only because it serves as a cautionary tale for anyone looking to modify their mood using psychiatry’s plethora of pills.

Could it be helpful to view mental distress by exploring Rollo May's concept of "being" rather than reducing humans to mere dysfunctional cogs in the machine of productivity?

Virtually every single placebo-controlled drug trial in psychiatry is flawed, systematic reviews of trials are also flawed, and guidelines are flawed. Even the drug approval process is flawed.

The online exhibition "Creativity and COVID: Art-Making During the Pandemic" features nearly 100 artists with lived experience with mental distress who shared with us their art-making process and how it helped them survive the global pandemic.

Ivory McCuen needed warmth and a home the night she died. Court-ordered psychiatric drugs deliver neither warmth nor a home. Federal agencies need to consider people with lived experience.

Though many psychiatrists have abandoned the "chemical imbalance" concept, they now promote the use of a pre-scientific notion that the only criteria for defining disease is the presence of distress or impairment.

“Psychiatry’s Starter Kit”: Many people start their psychiatric "careers" by consulting their family doctor with some problem many of us have from time to time and leave with a prescription for a depression pill.

This article is written for the loving supporter or social worker. My hope is that it will help you gain strategies for how to handle the relationship with someone experiencing psychosis.

Online withdrawal forums document an assortment of risks associated with discontinuation of psychiatric drugs. Such information is readily available and must be disclosed during informed consent.

Psychiatric diagnoses are not built on science but are consensus-type exercises where it is decided by a show of hands which symptoms should be included in a diagnostic test.

Emotions are viewed as dangerous liars in this culture, and those who express them in a way that makes people in power uncomfortable are diagnosed as "mentally ill."

Hugh Polk and Ann Green discuss social medicine with Jessie Fields, a medical doctor working in Harlem, a community leader, and an advocate for transforming our health and mental health care system.

The term “psychiatric survivor” says it all in just two words. In no other medical specialty do the patients call themselves survivors because they survived despite being exposed to that specialty.

Jennifer Kinzie was a licensed mental health counselor who used her lived experience to guide her work—not only as a counselor and therapist, but also as a volunteer with psychiatric survivor groups.

The recent report by the BBC on medication-free treatment in Norway, when viewed in conjunction with the media silence on Martin Harrow's latest publication, reveals why the public remains misinformed about the long-term effects of antipsychotics.

There are quite a few books published about the lack of benefit and harm caused by so-called "antidepressants." Prescription for Sorrow, by Patrick Hahn, is simply the best one I have read.

On February 19, 2021, the world lost Birgitta Alakare, the former chief psychiatrist at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio, Finland and a pioneer in the development of Open Dialogue.

Online communities are stepping in to help people facing withdrawal effects amass information and receive support for their withdrawal experiences.

Who is really more ill? A person who responds in a natural way to trauma? Or the indifferent society that locates so-called ‘disorders’ within the people that it harms, rather than itself? 

The one core ingredient on which any recovery from emotional distress depends is the one that never makes an appearance in any medical handbook or psychiatric diagnostic manual—that is, love.