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What if I told you that, in 6 decades of research, the serotonin (or norepinephrine, or dopamine) theory of depression and anxiety - the claim that “Depression is a serious medical condition that may be due to a chemical imbalance, and Zoloft works to correct this imbalance” - has not achieved scientific credibility? You’d want some supporting arguments for this shocking claim. So, here you go:

The psychiatric genetics literature contains few references to specific environmental factors that cause psychiatric disorders, and while researchers acknowledge a role for these factors, they usually claim that environmental causes are mysterious or unknown. As a leading group of psychiatric genetic researchers recently put it, while claiming that schizophrenia “has a substantial genetic contribution,” the “underlying causes and pathogenesis of the disorder remains unknown.” But research suggests otherwise.

Given my experience as a state level administrator several years ago, I have continued an interest in the way which public expenditures for mental health reflect a variety of interests — usually in an attempt to limit expenditures from the state coffers. One of the areas of greatest concern to state legislators each session is the cost of participating in the Medicaid program. A significant portion of state mental health budgets, especially for community mental health programs, is in this pot of money. And psychiatric drugs are a major expense in state Medicaid program. As I will point out, however, there are major advocacy groups who want to expand, not limit access to these drugs.

This week, MIA featured a news item regarding a recent “proof of concept” study conducted at Washington University of St. Louis to investigate whether nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, was effective in reducing symptoms of depression. Why is this a problem?

Happiness is the absence of suffering… I’ve since come to realize this aphorism applies also to the suffering I endured while on and coming off psychiatric drugs: When that particular suffering — physical, emotional, neurological, psychological, sociological — had ended or mostly so, I was happy again. It was as simple as that. I was so relieved to no longer be in a state of terror, agony, and agitation, and to not have my life controlled by others (i.e., the “doctors”), that I felt happy — not just by comparison against being miserable, but because it was so enlivening, liberating, and hope-instilling to not be miserable.

In the autumn of 1996, my son was seventeen when he told me one day on the way home from school: “I don’t know what’s happening, I can’t find my old self again.” He’d had a seemingly marvelous summer staying with family in Mexico, fishing and learning to surf. He’d achieved nearly a full scholarship for his junior year at a Boston private school. However, one teacher had observed that, in class, he “sometimes seems to be out of touch and unable to focus his mind.”

NEWS FLASH (North Pole, Somewherereallycold)-- According to sources at the North Pole, Santa is not happy about the growing use of ADHD drugs. As you know, long ago, he had made his list and checked it twice. But with more than 4.5 million kids in the USA alone doing ADHD drugs every day, he has had to redo his list infinitum.

In the post on the debate between Allen Frances and Bob Whitaker, Frances argues that we should all advocate better treatment for those with psychosis. I think that we all might embrace the goal of better, more empathic treatment. However, we will differ on what “better treatment” might entail. I would argue that a return to the state hospital systems of the 1960s would not constitute better treatment.

The mental health industry has a lot to answer. The psychologization of everyday life has eroded the range of human experience seen as normal, disempowered people to manage their own life challenges, professionalized helping relationships and undermined the already decaying support structures through which people found meaning and connection, stigmatized people through psychiatric labeling, led to iatrogenic misery from harmful treatments and traumatized already vulnerable individuals through excessively coercive practices.

Every day for most people, something mysterious begins to take shape that still defies scientists in these times. Although the primary reasons for most basic bodily functions, such as eating and moving, have been known for centuries — sleep, or also known as slumbering or snoozing or napping or crashing — still remains an enigma in many ways

The Finnish Psychological Association held a meeting in Helsinki on 1 Sept 2014 titled “Mental Health and Medicalization.” I spoke at the meeting and four days later I sent a letter to another speaker, psychiatrist Erkki Isometsä. Professor Isometsä replied: “I will respond to it in detail within a few days..." As "Open Dialogue" is essential in science, I have published my letter to Isometsä here as well as on my own website, although I didn’t succeed in starting a dialogue.

The article “Special K, a Hallucinogen, Raises Hopes and Concerns as a Treatment for Depression,” by Andrew Pollack in the New York Times, December 9, 2014, tells how far afield my field, psychiatry, has really gone - that it is even a consideration to use an hallucinogen for the treatment of depression.

ProPublica is well known for creating interesting data bases that allow anyone hooked up to a computer to see by name whether a physician is accepting Big Pharma payments — from dinners to speaking engagements to consulting services. What may be lesser known is that occasionally ProPublica will publish other data that when carefully mined can reveal even more about the use of psychiatric drugs especially when there is a public funding source available.

Earlier this year, I was invited to speak at TEDMED 2014 and John Kazanjian and I worked hard to come up with a 13-ish minute version of my play Sick. The video of the talk/performance got released today on TEDMED.com and YouTube. It’s been a wild ride sharing the big play with small audiences around the country these last couple of years, and I am excited and humbled by the potential audience this abbreviated version can have online. I hope you have a chance to watch it.

I have spent a lot of time talking to politicians, media members and those working in the mental health system about the failings of the current method of viewing and treating emotional distress. I have come to the conversations armed with stats and outcomes about the bio-medical paradigm. I have found that the people I speak with do not doubt the facts conveyed. They seem to agree that the current state of affairs is not good. The difference is that I think the tragic outcomes demonstrate the failure of the current system. The folks I talk to tend to think things are so bad because “mental illness is just that serious.”

On December 1, Mad in America published an article titled When Homosexuality Came Out (of the DSM). The author is Vivek Datta, MD, MPH, a British physician. The article was also published the same day on Dr. Datta's blog site, Medicine and Society. The article focuses on the removal of homosexuality from the DSM, which occurred in 1973. Dr. Datta discusses this issue and various related themes, and he draws some conclusions that, in my opinion, are unwarranted and misleading.

Through the ISPS listserve, I read a blog this morning written by Thomas Insel, director of the NIMH. The way he described people I daily meet in work and in my own life created a rising pulse, so I decided to find out some more about his thoughts and practice. I am not saying that what I read on his blog is unknown to me, but still it made me wonder how on earth is it possible to invest so much money - and resources - in research which is so distant from practice, and so far away from humanistic and holistic ideas and theories.

Twin studies supply the most frequently cited evidence in favor of important genetic influences on human behavioral differences. In an extremely small yet influential handful of studies, twin pairs were said to have been reared apart in different families. Twin researchers and others view this occurrence as the ultimate test of the relative influences of nature (genes) and nurture (environment). According to this view all behavioral resemblance between reared-apart MZ twin pairs (known as “MZA” pairs) must be the result of their 100% genetic similarity, because such pairs share no environmental similarity. But, far from being separated at birth and reared apart in randomly selected homes representing the full range of potential behavior-influencing environments, and meeting each other for the first time when studied, most MZA pairs were only partially reared apart, and grew up in similar cultural and socioeconomic environments at the same time.

To this day I do not know how I found my way back. I think it might’ve had something to do with willpower, as I was NOT going to lose myself. I was NOT going to end up like those people who were living indefinitely in the hospital—those “chronic schizophrenics”, as they say. I was going to find my way back, back to myself.

Although psychiatric researchers have speculated that the rate of people within the (politically-derived, biologically-fictional) racial category of ‘American Indian’ who simultaneously fit into the DSM category of schizophrenia is no greater than the ‘general population,’ we should remember that there’s no word at all for being mentally ill or psychotic or schizophrenic in any traditional language among Native Americans. I feel confident in asserting that’s likely also true for traditional indigenous languages worldwide. This is likely so because visionary, dream-time experiences are not viewed as sickness.

How do we genuinely heal from the damage of racism and internalized racism, as well as mental health oppression, adultism and all form of oppression? We can change all the laws in the land – and we have changed many laws (civil rights laws, employment laws via the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Americans with Disability Act laws) but that doesn’t change attitudes.

Bonnie remembers seeing an issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter dated October 2008 entitled “Herbal and dietary supplements for depression” [www.health.harvard.edu) and thinking ‘at last, people are beginning to accept that nutrient treatment of psychiatric symptoms is possible.’ But the excitement turned to disappointment when the article revealed itself to be evaluating nutrients that could be used to “boost” the impact of psychiatric medications.

On November 28, Psychiatric Times published an article titled Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment of Somatizing Neuropsychiatric Disorders. It addresses the phenomenology, epidemiology, and developmental course of the so-called somatization disorders. Under the heading "Postulated pathogenic influences," the authors present working hypotheses from psychoanalytic theory, learning theory, behavior analysis, social-affective neuroscience, autoimmune sensitization, and theories of dissociation. But they advocate a discussion of the role of medications in "normalizing brain neurotransmitter function."

Depression during pregnancy is an important issue. Depression should not be ignored and depressed pregnant women deserve good treatment and care. Part of that good care, though, is providing them with full and correct information. I care for pregnant women taking antidepressants on a daily basis and too often they tell me that the only counseling they received about the medication was, “my doctor told me it’s safe in pregnancy.” This post will review the evidence in this area and address the counterarguments.

Editor's Note: After Allen Frances and Robert Whitaker spoke recently at the Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry conference in Los Angeles, where they had a brief debate, Frances wrote to Whitaker suggesting that they should continue this debate in print. They do so here. Whitaker’s response follows Frances' post.