Causation Theories

Researchers at Tufts University exposed rats and their children to early life stress, resulting in depressed maternal care, aggression, increased restlessness and anxiety-related...

Israeli researchers find that maternal skin-to-skin contact with pre-term infants are related to "dynamic cascades of child physiological regulation and parental provisions in shaping...

It has been twenty years since my last suicide attempt. I was barely eighteen years old, and had already spent the last four years, my entire adolescence, really, in and out of the mental health system. On that day, twenty years ago, I left the hospital with nothing but a prescription for yet another drug in my hand, sent back to the decrepit group home where I began my adult life.

Singer Sinead O'Connor announced on her website that after several "second opinions" she has learned "I do not in fact suffer from Bi Polar...

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

ACES Too High, the trauma blog, analogizes the rise of medication to the concept of manifest destiny. Issues of personal responsibility, depletion of resources,...

ACES Too High, the blog about Adverse Childhood Experiences, recalls the excruciating experiment and films concerning the impact of childhood neglect.  A one-year-old baby...

Psychiatric Times chronicles the peripatetic progress of "schizophrenia" research, from schizophrenogenic mothers to unspecified genetic lesions and back again via second-trimester embryonic insults, to...

Nature writes, of behavioral genetics, "Although the ability to investigate the genetic factors that underlie the heritability of traits such as intelligence, violent behaviour,...

Martin Teicher, noted researcher of the neurobiology of child abuse, finds in an MRI study of 265 maltreated 18-25 year-olds that "Maltreatment was associated...

I think it is time to reclaim the word disability. Disability needs to be appreciated. To the extent we value community over isolation, anything anyone cannot do, or needs help with, builds community. There are infinite examples in every career and walk of life of how necessary “disability” (since we're calling it that) is for connection, service and meaning in life. Without it we'd have absolutely no need for each other. And the fastest way to despair is to feel unnecessary.

What does the new DSM-5 have in common with an Alfred Hitchcock mystery?  They both use a plot device, a “MacGuffin,” to drive the story. Hitchcock explained a MacGuffin as on the one hand “ridiculous”, “non-existent”, “empty” and inherently without meaning, and at the same time the central point around which the entire story turns.  Which narratives, and whose, are served by the "diagnosis MacGuffin”? Are there more socially desirable alternatives to replace this particular plot vehicle? 

The National Council on Trauma Informed Care asserts that “knowledge about the prevalence and impact of trauma has grown to the point that it is now universally understood that almost all of those seeking services in public mental health have trauma histories.” A central tenet of trauma informed care is flipping the paradigm, from asking “what’s wrong with you?” to asking “what’s happened to you?”

The idea of spending more time as a bureaucrat in the US Embassy in Iceland did not appeal to me. I longed for the freedom that academics have. While pursuing that dream I stumbled into the world of international media, “chemical imbalance”, book publishing and a greedy professor of psychiatry which was a prelude to my second annus horribilis.

What would happen if professionals opened their minds about the nature of madness?  What new possibilities might be created if they questioned labels such...

When I teach workshops or lead discussions on coming off psychiatric drugs and alternatives, there are invariably parents present who are at loose ends. They want to know what to do for their children, how to help them best, and how it can be possible for their child to live without medication given all they have been through.

I have facilitated support groups and worked one-on-one with those who hear voices for nearly 10 years.. The insights I've come to from my own experience have often facilitated understanding for others. Here is what I have learned from my experience of hearing voices.

While some will frame Eleanor Longden’s story, told in her awesome TED video (which has now been viewed about 1/2 million times!), as the triumph of an individual struggling against “mental illness,” I believe the story might better be seen as a refutation of the whole “illness of the mind” metaphor, and as an indication of a desperate need for a new paradigm.

MIA blogger and mental health advocate Leah Harris discusses growing up with parents diagnosed with schizophrenia, her personal experience with the psychiatric system, and psychiatric drugs.

Amid concern about side effects as well as the growing off-label use of antipsychotics to treat violent and aggressive behavior, the inspector general's office...

I envision a world where there is no need for a mental health field/system because communities are strong and we have a holistic understanding...

MintPress reports that over half of America's foster children are on some form of psychiatric medication, and tells the story of some for whom...

Can withdrawal from psychiatric drugging be so terrible as to leave you with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — to somehow rearrange your psyche for the worse even once time and hard work have undone the damage caused by the chemicals? To so profoundly alter your core self that you acquire a new diagnosis meriting special considerations or further treatment in order to resume a normal life again? If the real definition of insanity is “repeating the same mistake over and over and expecting a different result,” then embracing a psychiatric diagnosis of PTSD as a result of psychiatric damage would surely make you “insane”.

The first time I heard someone labeled schizophrenic I was about 10 years old. A man was talking to himself and appeared to be house-less and perhaps on drugs. My mom, a very good teacher and explainer of things to me, said, “That man is schizophrenic. That means he can't tell the difference between what's inside of himself and what's outside.” In retrospect this seems like a relatively sophisticated and sensitive explanation; Falling in love, hearing music that enters our heart, having children/giving birth, connecting powerfully with another person in a meeting of the minds, feeling empathy, deeply caring about something, experiencing oneness with nature, are all examples of times when the line between inner and outer reality is blurred.

In just two decades, pointing out the pseudoscience of the DSM has gone from being an “extremist slur of radical anti-psychiatrists” to a mainstream proposition from the former chairs of both the DSM-3 and DSM-4 taskforces and the director of NIMH. In addition to the pathologizing of normal behaviors, another explanation for the epidemic — the adverse effects of psychiatric medications — is also evolving from radical to mainstream, thanks primarily to the efforts of Robert Whitaker and his book Anatomy of an Epidemic. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large share of the blame for this epidemic, there is another reason.