Reimagining Healthcare

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The conventional Western classification systems of health conditions are based on flawed science shaped by reductionist, hierarchical, and profit-driven ideologies. THEN wants to create a new paradigm built upon principles drawn from systems science, the life course perspective, developmental neurobiology, and other evidence-informed studies.

The Need to Address Suicide in Prisons

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Rates of suicide in prison are significantly higher than in the general population.

Victim Blaming: Childhood Trauma, Mental Illness & Diagnostic Distractions?

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Why, despite the fact that the vast majority of people diagnosed with a mental illness have suffered from some form of childhood trauma, is it still so difficult to talk about? Why, despite the enormous amount of research about the impact of trauma on the brain and subsequent effect on behaviour, does there seem to be such an extraordinary refusal for the implication of this research to change attitudes towards those who are mentally ill? Why, when our program and others like it have shown people can heal from the effects of trauma, are so many people left with the self-blame and the feeling they will never get better that my colleague writes about below?
depression happy mask suicide

Suicide in a Culture of Mandated Happiness – Who’s to Blame?

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We live in a culture of mandated positivity and compulsory happiness, which somehow remains untouched by the current political, social, ecological and economic realities of the world. If you’re distressed, it must either be your bad attitude (which is a choice) or your broken brain (which is not a choice); god forbid we look anywhere outside the self.

The Real Myth of the Schizophrenogenic Mother

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Acknowledging the role of trauma inflicted by a given individual’s mother is not the same as laying all blame for “mental illness” at the feet of motherhood. Meanwhile, a mountain of evidence has accumulated linking schizophrenia to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and many other categories of adverse childhood experiences.
psychological injury model

Why the ‘Psychological Injury Model’ Will Ultimately Triumph

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The Psychological Injury model will triumph, not just because literally thousands of studies show how trauma and stressful life events result in mental health problems, but because at our core, we know it is true. People hurt people, and people heal people. This cracks the intellectual foundation of psychopharmacology.

Traditional South African Healers Use Connection in Suicide Prevention

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Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.

Trauma, Psychosis, and Dissociation

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Recent years have seen an influx of numerous studies providing an undeniable link between childhood/ chronic trauma and psychotic states. Although many researchers (i.e., Richard Bentall, Anthony Morrison, John Read) have been publishing and speaking at events around the world discussing the implications of this link, they are still largely ignored by mainstream practitioners, researchers, and even those with lived experience. While this may be partially due to an understandable (but not necessarily defensible) tendency to deny the existence of trauma, in general, there are also certainly many political, ideological, and financial reasons for this as well.

Study Confirms Higher Suicide Risk for Sexual Minority Adolescents

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Researchers report that sexual minority adolescents have considered, planned, and attempted suicide substantially more than their heterosexual peers.

Centering Lived Experience

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Lately, after a number of discussions, we have been changing our practices around the issue of labels. No longer do we give a diagnosis at presentations. We place the young person’s story, as told to us, front and center. People listening rarely ask, “What is their diagnosis?” now that lived experiences are central. We are providing a sense of their struggles. We are trying.

The Conflicts That Result From Globalizing Euro-American Psychology in India

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Researchers examine the transformation of work, life, and identity in India as a result of Western corporate and psychological culture.

Final Lecture

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On May 16, 2014, I retired from a 35-year career as a professor of clinical psychology at Miami University. As a part of my retirement celebration, I gave a Final Lecture to my Department. These Final Lectures give retiring faculty members the opportunity to talk about anything they think is important for their colleagues and the attending students to hear. I focused on the changes I have witnessed in the profession of clinical psychology over my career; changes that were not for the better.

Recovery: Compromise or Liberation?

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The 90s were labeled - rather optimistically - as the ‘decade of recovery.’ More recently, recovery has been placed slap bang central in mental health policy. Is supporting recovery pretty much good common sense? Or is the term being misused to pressure those suffering to behave in certain ways?

Hope for Everyone

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I am a very optimistic psychologist, but with reason. For 25 years I've been working with people who have had psychological problems in every conceivable area. Many psychologists have problems with burnout, especially early in their careers. For me, this has been very different. By using the treatment techniques that I do, I feel anti-burned out. It is so gratifying to see people get out of their serious problems, that I look forward to every day of clinical work.

Is an Ominous New Era of Diagnosing Psychosis by Biotype on the Horizon?

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When former NIMH chief Dr. Thomas Insel speaks, people listen. Dr. Insel famously criticized the DSM a couple of years ago for its lack of reliability. He notably broke ranks with the APA by saying there were no bio-markers, blood tests, genetic tests or imaging tests that could verify or establish a DSM diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar or schizoaffective disorder. However in a new article he announces research that claims to have found bona-fide physiological markers that identify specific "biotypes" of psychosis. This system could, purportedly, identify a person as possessing a specific biotype of psychosis, instead of a DSM-category diagnosis.

Psychologist Debunks Common Misconceptions of Maslow’s Hierarchy

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Utilizing Maslow’s published books and essays, psychologist William Compton delineates common myths and attempts to respond to them.

Snail’s Pace Race

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I live a slow paced life. I meditate every morning, refuse to get a smart phone (yet), and it takes me generous amounts of time to do things. This isn't because I am “stupid” or slow to get things. Sometimes I wonder how others get so much done each day - yet the quality and vibration of what I do is unique. It needs time. How does this relate with psychiatric drugs? Psych drugs are rooted in impatience, urgency, emergency.

Similarity of Dissociation and Voice-Hearing in DID and Schizophrenia

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A study of 40 patients with schizophrenia diagnoses and 40 patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID) found that "neither phenomenological definitions of dissociation nor...

Emotions: Keys to Our Freedom

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Living in this very complex, demanding, stratified modern society has produced an epidemic of personal alienation. There is often a tragic gulf between our emotional experience and our awareness of it. 1 in 5 Americans are now taking a psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 women are now taking a psychiatric medication. All of those medications suppress, modify, or block emotion.

Classism in Disguise

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For everyone who goes on psychiatric drugs, the reason comes back to power imbalances in their personal life. Women who's husbands “make all of the money” and have an unequal share of the power, kids who's parents have power over them—frequently people who have less money and security, therefore less platform for authority than those around them. Mental illness is not in fact an illness but an unequal division of power and sense of security in a social group.

Psychedelics and Depression

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The Sunday New York Times Magazine special edition, "Health is All in Our Minds," explores the use of psychedelic drugs to help people cope...

SSRIs Can Impair New Learning About Anxiety

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Researchers from Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute test the behavioral effects of SSRIs on Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats, and...

Trauma, First-Episode Schizophrenia, and Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor

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A team of Egyptian researchers found, in a sample of 74 outpatients, a relationship between trauma and first-episode schizophrenia, with a "mediating" role of...

Lowered Oxytocin in Schizophrenia

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Researchers from Japan found, in a study of 27 persons with a schizophrenia diagnosis, 17 with major depressive disorder, and 27 controls, that negative...

On “Schizophrenia”

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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.