Monday, March 27, 2023

Blogs

Essays by a diverse group of writers, in the United States and abroad, engaged in rethinking psychiatry. (The directory of personal stories can be found here, and initiatives here).

teen boy playing video game intensely

What Video Games Can Teach Us About Effective Parenting

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There is a secret to the programming of these games that seems to stir children to a level of greatness. Fortunately, that magic is completely transposable to our interactions with them.

What is a Warm Line and What Should I Expect When I Call One?

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A warm line is an alternative to a crisis line that is run by “peers,” generally those who have had their own experiences of trauma that they are willing to speak of and acknowledge. Unlike a crisis line, a warm line operator is unlikely to call the police or have someone locked up if they talk about suicidal or self-harming thoughts or behaviors. Most warm line operators have been through extreme challenges themselves and are there primarily to listen.

A Peek Inside the Modern Asylum

The psychiatric hospital of today is a panopticon, a modern prison for the daring mind and for weird behavior. I was once inside and thus, am inviting you to have a look. I will take your hand, and encourage you to join me, on an exploration of the inside of the psychiatric institution. We'll have a small peek, but in reality, it is much more distressing for the one who is being observed.

Black Movement Leaders: Lost & Found

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As some of us get caught up in lamenting the whiteness of our movement, we are actively losing the stories of Black leaders.
Illustration depicting dna strands and molecule chains

“Hidden Valley Road” and Schizophrenia: Do Genes Tell the Story?

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The “genetics of mental disorders” story told in Kolker's "Hidden Valley Road" involves omission and misrepresentation of genetic research.
Photo of a sculpture of a woman on a bench looking wistfully out to sea

We’re Obsessed with Labelling Suffering, But Our Power to Think about it Matters More

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I needed Kierkegaard and Freud; my psychiatrist prescribed cereal bars. My despair was an imbalance to be corrected, rather than a relationship with the world.
OCD worry monster

Helping Children to Overcome OCD: 6 Creative Strategies for Parents

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Here, Dr. Ben Furman offers a creative approach to helping children who struggle with OCD. Explaining why behaviors like reasoning, reassuring, and superstitious rituals don’t work, he suggests engaging alternatives that teach kids how to manage their “worry monster” and make sense of their distressing experience.
psychiatric drugs and violence

Prescripticide: A Proposal for Action and a Request for Your Help

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The primary factor protecting psychiatry’s unwarranted power and authority is that it is perceived as shielding society from folks who are believed to be dangerous. It would seem, then, that one logical step toward reducing society’s trust in biological psychiatry would be to reveal the evidence of a significant correlation between the use of prescribed psychoactive drugs and the commission of violent acts against oneself or others.

Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness

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In Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness, Bruce Cohen explains the expanding power and influence of psychiatry in terms of its usefulness to the capitalist system — the more useful it is, the more power it is given, and the greater its power, the more useful it becomes.

The Functions of the Mental Health System Under Capitalism

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The mental health system is a system of care and control, legitimated by the concept of mental illness, and playing an important role in capitalist and Neoliberal societies.
Perplexed, confused scientists looking at lab results. White background.

The Spravato Controversy: A Row Over the Drug’s Efficacy Compels a Reassessment of...

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The UK's drug regulator rejected Janssen's esketamine nasal spray. Why did the US FDA approve it?
psychiatrist caution tape

The Most Dangerous Thing You Will Ever Do

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I am a psychiatrist and I have been watching my profession deteriorate for many decades. This is my most direct written statement about the dangers of stepping inside a modern psychiatrist’s office. My conclusions are the culmination of mountains of research authored by me and by an increasing number of other psychiatrists, scientists and journalists.
An illustration of a doctor falling headfirst into a door in a giant brain, his feet kicking outside

Response to Criticism of Our Serotonin Paper

Criticisms of the paper were contradictory. Some psychiatrists said that no one ever really believed the serotonin theory. Yet the public does believe it, and are very surprised to learn that it is a myth.

Problem-Solving Through Skills-Building: Motivating Kids to Change

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Children can overcome all sorts of difficulties by learning specific behavioural or emotional skills with the help and support of their social network.
Man with glasses and scarf looks at a small red pill. Behind him is a pattern of money symbols.

The Culture Is the Poison: Why Psychedelics Are Dangerous Medicine in a Neoliberal Society

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Extraction of psychedelics from the ritual process has dissociated them from community, connectedness, and responsibility, which used to define psychedelic drug use.

The Mad in the World Network: A Global Voice for Change

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Mad in Ireland is the newest Mad in America affiliate. The network of affiliate sites is becoming a global voice for change.
Illustration of wires wrapped around a brain

We Must Not Remove Legal Protections for People at Risk of Forced ECT

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Written testimony submitted to the Connecticut State Legislature in opposition to a bill removing legal protections for those at risk of receiving ECT against their will.
holistic medicine

Holistic Approaches: A Proven Treatment for Psychotropic Drug Withdrawal

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Published in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Mind Body Medicine, this case series is the first of its kind to document the methodology employed in the successful discontinuation of a range of psychotropic medications, with holistic support interventions providing long-term mood support.

Three Suicides: Honoring Lives Lost to Benzodiazepines

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I am still trying to reconcile what these chemicals are capable of, how the urge can morph into an action, how we maybe just don’t understand suicide all that well. For me, the suffering was so intense it was too painful to stay alive. I understand how my friends felt in their last moments.
Illustration depicting one yellow paper ship breaking away from a fleet of monochromatic ones

The Alternative to Psychiatry Has Been Discovered—We’re Just Not Using It

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The psychiatric solution and the psychological solution to psychopathology are fundamentally incompatible with each other.

E. Fuller Torrey’s Review of Anatomy of an Epidemic: What Does It Reveal About...

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E. Fuller Torrey, through his Treatment Advocacy Center, is the country’s most prominent advocate for outpatient commitment laws, which typically force people with a...

Psychiatric Diagnosis is a Fraud: The Destructive and Damaging Fiction of Biological ‘Diseases’

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Everywhere you turn, you see “OCD, ASD, MDD, ADD, ADHD, BPD, GAD, PD, SAD, PTSD, NPD," etc. The problem is not limited to this acronym soup, but the pseudo diagnoses they represent. Patients today get stained by the specious medical diagnoses of biological psychiatry. And furthermore they are brainwashed to believe that these fictitious brain ‘diseases’ are genetic. Biological psychiatry treats people like they are mechanical objects, renaming them almost as they are re-branding products. The one I like the best is the renaming of ‘manic-depressive’ to ‘bipolar.’ Instead of a name which accurately describes the states of suffering, it was turned into something mechanical — a battery with two poles. We’ve gone from something human to something Frankensteinian.

The Real Myth of the Schizophrenogenic Mother

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Acknowledging the role of trauma inflicted by a given individual’s mother is not the same as laying all blame for “mental illness” at the feet of motherhood. Meanwhile, a mountain of evidence has accumulated linking schizophrenia to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and many other categories of adverse childhood experiences.
An illustration of dots that represent people forming the shape of the country Denmark, in the colors of its flag.

Denmark Is the Only European Country Where the Usage of Depression Pills Has Dropped

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Between 2010 and 2020, the consumption of depression pills increased by 37% in 24 European countries. Denmark was the only country where usage dropped (a 4% drop).
Illustration of a man in a suit with a weight chained to his leg. He is reaching for graphs and dartboards against a blue background.

The Mental Health Industry Speaks Volumes About Our Society’s Priorities

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An educated public has a much better chance of advocating from the grassroots for safe and effective treatments in the face of a pharmaceutical industry more interested in profits than people.