Responding to Claims that the Benefits of Antipsychotics Outweigh the Risks
For my doctorate research, I talked with 144 people who take or have taken antipsychotics and a third reported overall positive experiences. Another third said quite the opposite, and I can hear them yelling at me to share their side of the story.
Unusual Beliefs and Behaviors vs. Objective Realities and Truths
As a parent, and a child psychologist, and just as a person, I believe that acquiescing to the idea that we should simply help people “cope more effectively with things as they perceive them” falls short of the most effective and even most loving response.
Wendy Dolin Takes on GlaxoSmithKline And Wins — For Now at Least
In July of 2010, Stewart Dolin, a partner at the mega law firm Reed Smith, jumped in front of a subway train in Chicago, apparently suffering from akathisia caused by paroxetine. His widow sued, and the jury found GSK negligent in not informing doctors of the suicide risk
“Let’s Talk Withdrawal” Podcast
Being in antidepressant withdrawal, I had come to feel very isolated and alone. What I needed was to hear real experiences of people who, like me, have struggled with the very drugs that they believed were going to help them. It was time to create a podcast.
Public Petition: Support for People Affected by Prescribed Drug Dependence
People from any country can sign our petition until May 10th, then it will be lodged for consideration and further action by the Scottish Parliament Petitions Committee. This promises to be an interesting process — one which we hope will have a much wider impact.
Trump Appoints Leader who Campaigned for Involuntary Outpatient Drugging
This appointee criticizes our social change movement, especially our dedication to empowering peer support and our concerns about psychiatric drugs and labeling. It is important for everyone who supports human rights to speak up and oppose this approach. Please phone your Senators to block this confirmation.
Our Letter to Lancet Psychiatry
This is the cover letter that Mad in America Foundation sent to Niall Boyce, editor of Lancet Psychiatry, requesting that the journal retract Martine Hoogman's study of "subcortical brain volumes" in those diagnosed with ADHD.
The Unforeseen Relationship: Psychiatric Medication and Spirituality
In 2015 I completed a qualitative research study exploring the interrelationship between psychiatric medication and spirituality. The key finding was that people were engaging spiritually with their prescriptions in ways that significantly impacted the course and outcome of recovery.
‘Enough is Enough’ Series: LSD Reconsidered
Biochemical psychiatry is now moving in an unfortunate, potentially dangerous, yet predictable direction. It has run out of new drugs to try, so it's turning to psychedelic drugs, suggesting that they hold promise in the treatment of substance use 'disorders.'
Opening a Dialogue about Early Psychosis Programs in the US
It is very encouraging to observe the spread of early psychosis programs to many states and communities throughout the United States. I hope that someday there are programs in all 50 states, not just 34, and that there are literally thousands of these programs not a hundred.
What if the Folly is in Us, Too?
Faced with behavior different from our own or from our expectations, all of us feel that urge to “do something”—an act that is one of the beginnings of prejudice, a malignant virus that all of us have trouble shaking free of. We doctors, especially, want to do something: It’s what we’ve been trained to do.
Anti-Authoritarian Options for Suicidal Anti-Authoritarians
Many teenagers and young adults (the group for whom suicide is the second leading cause of death) are anti-authoritarians. For them, the idea that they're experiencing a crisis of self rather than a mental illness can reduce their pain, increase their hope and open them up for dialogue.
The Downfall of Peer Support: MHA & National Certification
Mental Health America (MHA) has finally unveiled its new National Peer Specialist Certification over much protest. It is dangerous to what we call ‘peer support’ for MHA to have done this. Even if they did it well. Which, as best as I can tell, they did not.
Would You Want Your Therapist to be Honest?
If a therapist is honest about their triggers, they risk equalizing the power imbalance. They risk being on the same plane as their client. If the therapist has triggers too, they may end up being as “bad” as the client’s, and then what? Then who is the healer?
Dear Boston Globe, Part VI: Congratulations. Bad Things Happen.
Yes, people are dying, but not typically in the manner you so salaciously describe in every blood-lusting Globe article you write. They're entering the system when they’re younger, getting stuck in that service, and then dying early (or transferring to nursing homes), unseen by the public eye.
From One Parent to Another
In the couple of years since my daughter Rebecka and I published our book, I have received many emails, Facebook messages and phone calls from despairing parents. They want to know, how did you get through it? What do you suggest? What else can we try?
When Modern Medicine Made Me More Autistic
I think future research will reveal that autism is more complicated than neurodiversity advocates would like to admit. Environmental factors affecting our microbiomes can very clearly influence the extent to which people’s behaviors correspond with the current diagnostic criteria for autism.
Celebrating Dorothea Buck’s 100th Birthday
Mainstream psychiatrists celebrated the 100th birthday of their hero Kraepelin. Let us celebrate the 100th birthday of our Dorothea Buck, remember the many victims of psychiatric treatment, and stay together against violent psychiatric behavior and for humanistic support for people in distress.
Finding the Way to Mental Health
I love counseling, and helping people deal with their emotional and relational problems. But in addition, I encourage anyone suffering from mental issues to consider that nutritional issues are also involved in their distress.
The Third Director: Interrogating the Mental Health Discourse in Marat/Sade
Written at a time when advocates for mental health reform were pushing for deinstitutionalization, the play forces the audience to confront the ways that society constructs the definition of insanity and its treatment, and the systems of power involved in that construction.
The Torture in Treatment
In psychiatric hospitals we have set up the same environment as the Stanford Prison Experiment, but without a professor watching who has the authority to shut it down when things go horribly wrong. As a patient, there wasn’t any protection from the inescapable abuse of limitless power.
Why I Don’t Like the Idea that Mental Disorder is a Disease
What we need to try and understand extreme and unusual states of being are not the specialised methods of natural science. In contrast, it is the ways in which we understand ordinary, everyday behaviour that can help to reveal the nature and meaning of madness.
‘CRAZY’: New Documentary about Forced Psychiatric Treatment
Lise Zumwalt’s new documentary “CRAZY” follows Eric, a young adult diagnosed with serious mental illness, and his father, who together want to change Eric’s treatment. However, the county does not want to give them a say.
Mainstream Western Psychiatry: Science or Non-science?
Because it is such an important question, because people's lives depend on this and psychiatry has a record of getting it seriously wrong, we need to be sure we can trust their claim. In practice, is it true that biological psychiatry has the science?
What Role Does Talk Therapy Have in Recovery from Psychosis?
In my graduate education, we were taught how to deal with a wide variety of human troubles — but one big exception was psychosis! For that, we were told to send our clients to the psychiatrist.
