What Can We Learn from Alcohol? A Paradigm Shift in How We View Distress
The effects of alcohol—both positive and negative—have a lot to teach us about the biomedical view of psychiatric diagnoses and the drugs prescribed to treat them.
Review: “(Mis)Diagnosed: How Bias Distorts Our Perception of Mental Health”
Psychiatric diagnoses can be shaped by prejudice, reflecting biases that ignore trauma, diminish populations, and invalidate humanity and experience.
Remembering Don Weitz, 1930-2021
My hero, mentor, and very dear friend Don Weitz died comfortably, in his home, on the afternoon of September 1, attended by his loving twin children, Lisa and Mark.
Psychedelics—The New Psychiatric Craze
Psychedelics have become popular through the potent mixture of financial interests and desperation. Evidence for their beneficial effects is lacking.
Interview: Moving Toward a Human Rights Approach to Student Mental Health
Psychologist Jim Probert of the University of Florida's student counseling center explains why "Our goal is not to take the steering wheel out of the person's hands."
The Sins of Conservatorship: Why Britney Spears Compared It to Slavery
For the last three years of my mother’s life, she was under absolute control of her conservator. If we dared to object to the neglect or abuse, retaliation was certain.
The Great Triumph of Roxanne Stewart-Johnson: Psychiatric Refugee
Roxanne fled to Canada, and received formal refugee status, as a psychiatric refugee after being threatened with psychiatric imprisonment and forced drugging in Jamaica.
The Case of Joshua Spriestersbach: If This Is a Horror Story, What Does it...
Spriestersbach was imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for almost three years. The more he told the doctors that he was not Thomas Castleberry, the more they believed that he was psychotic.
Garbage in, Garbage out: The Newest Cochrane Meta-Analysis of Depression Pills in Children
In May 2021, Cochrane published a network meta-analysis of depression pills for children. The abstract is misleading and reads like drug company marketing.
ISEPP to American Psychological Association: Condemn Forced Treatment
The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry petitions the American Psychological Association to condemn forced treatment as a human rights violation
Psychiatry Is the Cause, Not the Solution
I have found that trauma is frequently at the root of many eventual psychological and medical issues. Medications often only worsen the disconnection caused by trauma.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5 (Part 6): Patient Stories and Conclusion
In an evidence-based healthcare system, we should not use interventions that do more harm than good, but that's just what psychiatry does.
An American History of Addiction, Part 8: A Turning Point, But Where Do We...
Practitioners and researchers have increasingly started to feel that the maintenance of the status quo has left the addiction field in a state of conflict and fluctuation.
How I Learned the Social and Environmental Causes of Madness
My first encounter with mental illness was when I was 17. My friend was hospitalised in the psychiatric unit of the local general hospital and diagnosed with hypomania.
Speak Out! Britney’s Fight Is Our Fight
With all eyes on Britney, we must unmask the role of psychiatrists in court hearings like hers, where basically what the shrink says, goes— and the person’s freedom and human rights are stripped away.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5: Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick...
Peter Gøtzsche describes trying to join the psychiatric establishment to bring attention to critical issues from the inside.
Psychiatric Drugs “Help” By Causing Brain Dysfunction
There are currently ten classes of prescription medications that impair brain function, including both psychiatric and non-psychiatric drugs. A number of non-drug “treatments” do the same.
In Memoriam: Paula Joan Caplan
Paula Caplan, known for her fierce criticism of psychiatry and its diagnostic manual, died Wednesday at age 74.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5: Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick...
Peter Gøtzsche explains how psychiatry has reacted when confronted with evidence and stories of lived experience, and how this has corrupted journalism.
Psychiatric Drugs Increase Suicide. CAMPP’s Film “Prescripticide” Exposes the Harms
“Prescripticide”: The purpose of this informational video is to raise public awareness of this association between psychiatric drugs and violence/suicide.
Discomfort Is the New Comfort Zone
The adage that one must step outside their comfort zone if one wants to achieve success is troubling, and it’s time to stop letting it go unquestioned.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5: Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick...
Peter Gøtzsche explains how newspapers and film festivals censor the work of journalists and filmmakers in order to appease the pharmaceutical industry.
How Do We Know When a Treatment Works? A Primer on the Scientific Method
Discussing informed consent, risk/benefit ratios, and the many sources of bias in clinical trials for drugs, in order to help the layperson better understand the research.
Britney: In the Name of Health
So many of us young women believed the people who told us we needed them to make us healthy, who told us that without them, we’d be at the mercy of untameable "disease."
Flying Over Australia’s Cuckoo’s Nest: A Review of “Overprescribing Madness”
"Overprescribing Madness" explains how our sane social, political-economic distress responses have become medicalized into a mental illness epidemic.
