Trauma/Distress

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.

British researchers find that a 10% increase in pain medication resulted in a dramatic reduction in the use of antipsychotic and other medications. “When...

Military.com reports that doctors from the Department of Veterans' Affairs are continuing to prescribe tranquilizers such as Valium and Xanax despite the VA's guidelines...

I hope this will be of help to people who hear voices and their friends and supporters. I also hope it will be helpful to the voices which are parts of many people's lives. Many voices I have come across and the people that hear them are convinced that their voices are spiritual in nature. I take an agnostic position on this, and therefore endeavour to respect different spiritual understandings. My intention is not to explain all voices psychologically but to help people make peace with their voices so they can get on with their lives.

A few months ago I had the great honor of speaking with Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, after a talk he had given locally here in Washington, DC. We spoke about eCPR and there was a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. He looked deep into my eyes and said, “We are in the same line of work. We are peacemakers.” It was a profound statement that inspired me to think more about eCPR as a tool of peacemaking.

The label of schizophrenia has a chilling ring. It carries with it the suggestion of a wrecked and wretched life. It is also a diagnosis that is notoriously difficult to shed. For this reason, the diagnosis of schizophrenia should not be applied lightly and not without a thorough understanding of the patient’s family and wider circumstances.

I attended Milt Greek’s educational opportunity at Cooper Riis’ The Farm last February 25, 2013 and it was especially fortuitous for me. What I was able to glean from the presentation, in short, was that it shook me up.

Japanese engineers have devised a robotic rat that bullies laboratory rats into a state of depression, creating a model of human depression they deem...

Many of us are taught to fear the expression of strong emotions, and to hide or suppress big feelings. We have also erroneously been taught that only specially trained people or “professionals” are equipped to handle these experiences. But people knowledgeable in conventional treatment often aren’t exposed to community-based, holistic, common sense, person-to-person approaches. Many people have gained wisdom and resiliency by working through emotional distress, and it is helpful to do this with someone who understands the growth potential in these experiences.

A prospective study of 2,422 children from 2004 to 2012 found that children whose parents reported Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and depressive symptoms were...

Family therapists view violent young people in the context of the wider social systems of which they are a part. This typically means the youth’s parents, but it can also include grandparents, teachers, or even friends. Framing youth violence in terms of the social context or family system--rather than as a psychological problem of the individual-- is the most effective way of putting an end to the violent behavior.

“The voices, they tell me they gonna kill me, and it’s my fault.” “Sometimes, when we hear voices, they just reflect our own anxieties, sometimes they can echo things we’ve been told in the past. When the voices tell you that they’re going to kill you, does that echo anything you may have been told in the past?” I ask.

We have just celebrated the anniversary of the rapidly expanding global Hearing Voices Movement which was founded more than twenty-five years ago following the ground-breaking research of Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher. Romme and Escher have advocated for a radical shift in the way we understand the phenomenon of Hearing Voices; in contrast to traditional, biomedical psychiatry which views voices as an aberrant by-product of genetic, brain and cognitive faults, their research has firmly established that voices make sense when taking into account the traumatic circumstances that frequently provoke them.

The drumbeat for more "Risk Management" just gets louder. And nowhere is this so alarmingly evident as a new policy proposed by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) in November 2012.

Beyond Meds, continuing its legacy of bringing attention to the causes and cures of what is often called "mental illness", presents an article, video,...

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...

A team from Ireland, Finland and Sweden found, in a study of all those born in Helsinki in a 30-year period (1960 to 1990)...

I do not understand how we can continue to avoid the conversation about psychiatric medications and their role in the violence that is affecting far too many of our children, whether Seung-Hui Cho, Eric Harris, Kip Kinkel, or Jeff Weise (all of whom were either taking or withdrawing from psychotropic medications) or the scores of children and adults they have killed and harmed. It is not clear what role medications played in the Newtown tragedy, though news reports are now suggesting there is one.

Hope heals. Thousand of years of experience and, more recently, numerous hope studies, prove this to be true. Yet hope is still a 4-letter word in many mental health settings. How can we build a bridge to hope from hope-stealing physical and emotional pain, hopeless diagnoses and prognoses, and hope-numbing side effects?

Psychology Today offers a psychoanalytic perspective on childhood bipolar disorder that finds trauma at the root, a view that sees Beyond Meds as extending beyond the diagnoses...

The fundamental importance of connection to a child helps us to understand the use of "Time-Outs" which, used improperly, can be like pouring gas on a fire in a situation that is already not working; causing a distressed child to go further awry and potentially contributing to symptomatology that puts them at risk of being identified as ADHD, anxious, or bipolar.

Using data from the National Comorbidity Survey, researchers found that individuals with a psychotic disorder who had lost a child had a significantly later...

Researchers from Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands find, in a study of 226 monozygotic twins, that where there is a correlation between childhood adversity...

Gianna Kali reviews the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, "one of the largest investigations ever conducted to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life...

This morning Kayla Harrison won the first ever Olympic gold medal in the history of USA Judo. Kayla has overcome many, many obstacles on...