Blogs

The most spectacular part of Rep. Murphy’s hypocrisy has nothing to do with abortion or reproductive rights. Allegations of his dangerous behavior and his lack of insight into his own actions would be enough to commit him, involuntarily, to psychiatric treatment under the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act that he championed.

Influential psychiatrists recently called on the NHS to make a faux schizophrenia test available to patients and their families. What is most astounding about this is the complete lack of pretense. "We are so certain of our power and righteousness that we are going to tell you to your face that we are lying, and yet, we will still get our way."

I had the good fortune to be working at a dynamic Recovery program for adults beginning in 1990. I passionately believed that not only does recovery happen – but that we would be able to demonstrate it by reporting significant improvements in quality of life outcomes such as employment, housing and social supports. The program's commitment to Supported Employment, for instance, was emphatic and we took pride in doing “whatever it takes” to support our members’ integration into the community. The Recovery movement was just taking root in California and throughout the U.S. When I look back on the following 19 years, I can’t help but feel some sense of disappointment about the overall outcomes.

In July of 2014, I published an article explaining my concerns about the push to allow prescription privileges for psychologists across the country, after news of the recent legislation in Illinois sanctioning this practice.  I cited four main areas of concern, which I will revisit below.  More discussion is necessary regarding these issues if we as psychologists, and the general public, are going to be fully informed.

The new NICE depression guideline is a reflection of the field: you don’t really know what you’re doing, and you lack confidence that it’s doing any good.

I want to keep urging people to move toward the entrepreneurial approaches, because I think they are very powerful and not well understood or trusted in our community. I have chosen to build a business because I think it's one of the best ways I can impact on our world. After looking at the results of different types of advocacy work, this is the pressure point I've found most likely to make a difference.

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.

My experience began when I heard two people talking about me when I was home alone. I needed a reasonable explanation, and concluded that it had to be my upstairs neighbors. Then I began to hear the voices outside of my apartment — this new presentation meant that my explanation no longer made sense.

Stephen Boren, who posted here under the name Stephen Gilbert, passed away November 12 after a battle with cancer. Stephen offered a unique perspective, working as peer support staff at the same hospital where he had once been held as a patient. We will miss his daily presence on MIA.

So who is James Holmes and why did he do what he did? Is he a lone wolf psycho or a lone psychopath who...

It is generally recognized in antipsychiatry circles that antidepressant drugs induce manic or hypomanic episodes in some of the individuals who take them. Psychiatry's usual response to this is to assert that the individual must have had an underlying latent bipolar disorder that has "emerged" in response to the improvement in mood. The problem with such a notion is that it is fundamentally unverifiable.

A little more than 10 years ago, when I was 29 and 2 weeks away from turning 30, I was a patient in the psychiatric system here in Copenhagen. I am a pharmacist and I specialized in neurochemistry and psychotropics throughout my studies. While I was working in the labs at The Royal Danish School of Pharmacy I was intent on getting a job as a medicinal chemist at Lundbeck – the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Celexa and Lexapro and in their own words the only company specializing solely in developing drugs for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. We were taught that psychiatric disorders were diseases just like diabetes and hypotension.

Hello and welcome to my inaugural blog! It's an honor to join the insightful and talented team of writers at Mad in America. This exciting opportunity is the perfect complement to my efforts to help kids worldwide live childhood drug-free.

In this blog, Gøtzsche discusses the ways in which drug trials are biased, including breaking of the double-blind and industry manipulation.

How is it that we allow the agendas of others to occupy our childrens’ minds? Is it possible that a stranger can know our child better than we do? Is there anything a baby needs to learn that can’t be taught by being held in a parent’s arms? Because my children’s eyes and ears and thoughts are on me every day, they are key players in my ongoing efforts to live a right life. I count on their eyes and ears and thoughts to shore me up during times of temptation. They always lead me home.

Americans appear to be increasingly terrified by the possibility of ostracism, including for failing to conform to psychiatry dogma. This prevents critical thinking.

‘I’m severely depressed.’ These were the words that Donesha*, a 35 year-old African American woman repeatedly uttered to me.

A growing appreciation of the importance of involving people in their own health care has seen the development of initiatives such as “patient-centred care.” Patient-centred care has been defined as “providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” While this definition seems reasonable enough, it appears to be very difficult to translate into practice; particularly in the area of mental health.

The primary lesson of the mental health civil rights community is that we have to learn to lean on each other to get though adversity, which means opening up and admitting when things aren't moving in a direction we want or expected or try to typically project publicly. We have to ask for help. Here's what I'm chewing on or what's chewing on me.

A meta-analysis published last month showed that psychotherapy has an enduring effect on depression—in contrast to depression pills.

When people are “mad,” they are often insisting that certain things are so, and frequently seem unwilling or incapable of appreciating or learning from other perspectives. Yet when the supposedly “sane” mental health system approaches those who are mad, it typically does the same thing – it insists that its own view of what’s going on is correct, and seems incapable of appreciating or learning from others, whether they be the patient, the family, former users of services, or anyone who understands madness in a different way.

Some of you might know me from co-founding The Icarus Project, an online community, real-life support network, and alternative media project by and for people living with the complex gifts that are too often labeled as “mental illness.” Some of you might not know that I'm also a poet. I've been asked to share my work here on Mad in America. This first poem I'm going to offer you is about trauma and resilience; the ways that the world breaks our hearts, and the ways we survive to find our voices again.

Tension mounts across the ideological divide as D-Day (DSM-5 Day) approaches. The APA has powerful allies on its side. President Obama has just launched Decade of the Brain 2 with the announcement two weeks ago that heralds the arrival of BRAIN ( Brain Research through Advances in Innovative Neurotechnologies). If that’s not enough, those who believe that science will ultimately explain madness can always rely on the media to fawn at their feet.

I’ll never forget standing beside my sister Lucy as she was strapped to a gurney during a midnight admission to an E.R. in Cambridge, Mass.

When we try to understand why we emotionally suffer, we can look to the ever-growing, reliable knowledge that traumatic, overt emotional wounds of commission can surely cause our emotional suffering via depression, anxiety and even extreme states.