World Mental Health Day 2017: Challenging the Messages â A Call to Action
If we can have a presence and visibility, this could be life-changing for individuals with no current access to the bigger truths about psychiatric theory and practice. So let's infiltrate and disrupt the hashtags #WMHD2017 #worldmentalhealthday and share messages of hope, healing, validation and solidarity!
Knowledge of Mental States and Behaviour: Insights From Heidegger and Others
Applying the methods of natural science to human activity is sometimes necessary, but it cannot enlighten us about the nature of that activity or the reasons that motivate and sustain it. Instead, insights must come from our own and othersâ experiences.
Your Childâs Mind Space
Your child has a room or a shared room where he sleeps, reads, plays video games, and all the rest. But what about that other room where he really resides, the room that is his mind? He takes that room with him everywhere.
Elimination of the Bereavement Exclusion:Â History and Implications
The bereavement exclusion was formally eliminated in the spring of 2013, with the publication of DSM-5. The history of its elimination provides an interesting example of psychiatry's relentless expansion of its net.
Dogs and Serotonin
Lillyâs SSRI fluoxetine (more widely known as Prozac) was approved for canine use by the FDA and repackaged as âReconcileâ for separation anxiety. The pharmaceutical industry has clear motives in targeting the lucrative pet market, with sales of pet meds expected to grow to $10.2 billion by 2018.
And They Said it Wouldnât Last â Rethinking Psychiatry Celebrates its 7th Year
Rethinking Psychiatry is proud to continue the work that began in 2010 in Portland, and we look forward to many more years of challenging the dominant paradigm in mental health and providing new perspectives and solutions.
Stimulants: The Long View
When the ADHD literature speaks of scattered attention, it uses terms with historical resonance. Ever since the Puritans, reformers have attached high importance to the regulation of attention. But the standard treatment of ADHD is designed for immediate, not eventual, benefits. It conflicts with its own rationale.
Electroconvulsive Therapy Class Action Filed
DK Law Group LLP has just filed a class action in federal court in the Central District of California against the manufacturers of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) devices on behalf of every person who has been injured by electroconvulsive therapy in California since May of 1982.
How Should We Think About Mental States? The Contribution of Wittgenstein
The important point that Wittgenstein makes is that mental states, including mental disorders like depression or psychosis, are not just private events â we understand them through the public expressions by which they are manifested.
72 Hour Hold for Inalienable Personhood
Poof! Medical science and brain specialists have just alienated your rights. Far be it from me to question expert judgment, but have any of these people ever considered how dangerous it is to abrogate someone's personhood? It's time to recognize inalienable personhood. Social 'othering' is deadly.
Rise of Involuntary Mental Health: What is Your Resistance Strategy?
Even after working for decades for human rights in mental health, I have been surprised about how involuntary outpatient ideology is taking over. SAMHSA plans to spend as much as $54 million of US taxpayer money for 17 programs across the country to spread this coercive approach.
Dear Mental Health Professionals: Please Stop Defending Yourselves and Listen
Most people who enter the mental health field do so with good intentions. But when it comes to opening up to ideas or information that challenge your worldview or how you conduct your business, on the whole, youâre doing a pretty poor job.
In Memoriam: Matt Stevenson
MIA blogger Matt Stevenson, who was best known to the MIA community for his frequentâand insightfulâcomments on MIA posts, died last Thursday. He took his own life, at age 32. His last message was this: Don't let a psychiatric diagnosis rob you of your hope.
Does a Psychiatric Diagnosis Have the Impact of a Medical Curse?
Over and over I've seen the aftermath of that ritual of receiving and internalizing a lifelong, pathologizing diagnosis. I don't think we can underestimate the uncanny power of receiving such proclamations about our personhood by people sanctioned by our culture to serve as arbiters of truth.
Why Philosophy Matters?
Whole social systems depend on the assumption that what we call âmental illnessâ or âmental disorderâ (a piggy-back term) originates in the body. In particular, this notion is fundamental to the current social response to certain forms of behaviour, and to processes for allocating resources for assistance or welfare.
Thou Shall Not Criticize Our Drugs
A medical journal is expected to promote an open-minded discussion of treatments, even if findingsâor criticismsâthreaten conventional beliefs. But the American Journal of Psychiatry will not find space for criticism even if it comes from one of the best-known psychiatrists in the world.
Psychiatry Ignores an Elephant in the Room
Large cohort studies of people with a first-episode psychosis provide a unique opportunity for finding out why so many young people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders die at a young age. However, it seems that those psychiatrists who have access to the mortality data generally do not want the facts to come out.
Part VI: How Adult Society Betrayed Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy
The story of Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy is not only a tragedy within itself and for all those involved with them, it is emblematic of the situation faced by millions of young people in the western world and increasingly around the entire planet. Final installment in the series.
Language of Mental Illness âOthersâ People: Itâs a Human Rights Violation
When separation and microaggressions are legitimized and put into public policy and discourse, we become second class citizens and subhumans. This is oppression and bigotry systemically supported and then denied by almost everyone, including those most seriously affected. We come to believe these lies.
Health Disparity Project Cuts Out the Recovery Movement
Lots of funders are now doing initiatives to address health disparities. But once again we have found that a project designated to help our community has gone astray without even bothering to ask our community what we need. Here's why that matters and what grassroots advocates can do about it.
The Salvation of Psychiatry
Hope lies in psychotherapy. It is a purely human practice, based on the development of real trust and genuine responsiveness. It is not an analytic process, but a feeling one. We need to return to a psychiatry that respects the complexity of human nature. We need to go beyond âdo no harmâ and promote genuine healing.
Trauma-Ignored Care? Going to the MAT on Opioids
Our current, reductionistic approach to mental health issues doesnât offer any insights or explanations on the etiology of most mental disturbances. Similarly, medication assisted treatment (MAT) focuses on the surface symptoms of opiate abuse without addressing the underlying causes of overwhelming distress and pain.
If Psychiatrists Took Truth Serum, What Would They Say?
Psychiatrists donât use the same language that others do â the meaning of what they say isnât always so clear. I can translate âpsychiatrist speak,â since practicing within the field for over 30 years enabled me to gain easier insight into understanding what their words really mean. Here are 13 examples.
Part V: The Michelle Carter Texting Trial Becomes a Witch Hunt
In Parts I-IV, I discuss how the DA succeeded in gaining the conviction by means of highly emotional and at times misleading and untruthful manipulations in public and in the courtroom. Here I want to look more closely at the DAâs motivation and other activities. Was it a personal vendetta?
Introducing “Ten Tips for Parents”
As I settle into my role as the editor for parent resources here at Mad in America, Iâm reaching out to folks who have something to contribute to the conversation and asking them if they would be willing to condense what they know into a Ten Tips format for easy digestion and comprehension. The first four are now available.
