Blogs

A variety of scenarios of social and economic collapse have gone through many of our minds since Election Day. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies want to keep people on drugs, but what if there was no government subsidy for those who can’t pay?

A group of dedicated clinicians in Vermont have developed a training program that incorporates the values and principles of need adapted approaches including Open Dialogue and reflecting therapies. They are hoping this will allow them to embed these practices into the community mental health system in their state.

“We need a new paradigm,” said Alberto Vasquez, research coordinator of the office of the special rapporteur to the United Nations on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. “People are clamoring for change. We want to see something else.”

I was recently asked to contrast my views on psychosis and recovery with those offered by NAVIGATE, a US government (NIMH) sponsored program aiming to guide early intervention programs for psychosis. This inspired me to inquire into what NAVIGATE does tell people and families about psychosis and recovery. What I found, unfortunately, was quite disturbing.

Holistic psychiatry teaches that within each and every one of us there are great and latent powers, which are beyond the ordinary life. Daily progress in self-development is not the result of accident or chance, rather it comes from a steady practice of working on yourself.

Our movement is just as racist (and sexist, and classist, and transphobic, etc.) as any other. There are many reasons why this remains so, yet all of it co-exists alongside the fact that people of color are substantially more likely to be given what are seen as the harshest psychiatric labels, subjected to force, and injured or killed.

Call your legislators to VOTE NO on H.R. 34! Among the most problematic issues this bill presents are multiple provisions for forced psychiatry. H.R. 34 also includes: SAMHSA reorganization, condoning of HIPPAA violations, and a host of other potential human rights violations.

With the political tide shifting across the United States and reports of hate crimes increasing daily, examining the systems that promote social control and act as tools of racism is paramount. Is it possible that the mental institution is just another venue for imprisoning Blacks unjustly?

If it wasn’t evident before, these newer regulations make it crystal clear that prescription drugs have a monopoly over the terms “medicine” and “therapeutic benefit,” and that it is very difficult for anything that isn’t a Big Pharma drug to make a therapeutic claim.

The issue of how women in crisis are supported after a birth is personally relevant. One day I hope to have a child. As someone whose distress sometimes takes the form of psychosis, I was eager to connect with the stories of women who had trodden this path before me.

The devices that have been left to our kids are not “child’s play,” and should not be treated as such. At any given time, our youth can run up thousands of dollars in bills, view graphic and disturbing sexual images, be awoken with frightening messages, reach anyone, anywhere, at any time, and live an otherwise distracted, detached life.

Do the effects of trauma matter more, or a person's ACE score? I think this is unusable data that harms people when you gather it. Here's why.

We need to learn to listen and respond in a caring way to the disturbed and disturbing voices within the population—to really engage with them, while also not believing any lies or distortions or letting destructive forces take over.

In this interview we will explore often-contentious topics including the non-validity of the biological model, the link between parenting problems and psychosis, and how best to help psychotic people who are fighting both emotional conflicts and a psychiatric system drugging them into silence.

Although the drug industry, our drug regulators and leading psychiatrists have done what they could to obscure these facts, it can no longer be doubted that antidepressants are dangerous and can cause suicide and homicide at any age.

I believe that an Intensive Psychotherapy can lead to healing and, often, a cure of psychotic states. By cure I mean the cessation of delusions and hallucinations, and a gradual titration off of antipsychotic medication, with the cure lasting—even without continuing psychotherapy.

Insanity is often the result of chronic oppression, trauma, and a sense of injustice and hopelessness. Is it possible we are in the midst of a collective psychosis?

Many people report having one reason to go off psychiatric drugs—feeling that they just know they need to, sensing they will die if they don’t come off, etc. It is far less common to hear of someone going on psych drugs because they know they must.

We know that all drugs have side effects. That’s just part of the deal right? But is it really possible that an antidepressant can cause a sane person to act like a cold-blooded criminal?

[M]y play, SHADES, and my film, "Is Anybody Listening?" are about people who have experienced major troubles, even trauma or other tragedies, who have dark secrets that torment them, but who use connection, love, humor, and creativity to come through, even to heal. And no one in the play or the film is pathologized.

When Carina Håkansson sent out an invitation for a symposium on "Pharmaceuticals: Risks and Alternatives," some of the world's top scientists, along with experts-by-experience, came from 13 countries to explore better ways to respond to people in crisis.

It is with great satisfaction and great hope that we are launching our Mad in Brasil website. Ours will be a collaborative effort. We look forward to being part of a global effort that will succeed in creating a new paradigm of care, one that will promote true robust recovery from psychiatric crises.

The objective of [these] bills is to combat suicide deaths by ensuring that accurate information is available on the relationship between suicides and prescription "medication". At the present time, 20 US veterans a day are dying by suicide.

Nobody is denying that inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity can be real problems. The issue at stake, however, is whether it makes any sense to conceptualize this loose cluster of vaguely-defined problems as an illness.

Psychiatrists have invented terms such as “mental illness” and “mental disorder,” the diagnosis and treatment of which is their bread and butter, their supposed area of expertise. People generally trust doctors.