Bipolar

Over one-third of young people who were treated for bipolar disorder developed schizophrenia within eight years, according to a study in Schizophrenia Research. In...

Recently I wrote an article on MIA entitled Trauma, Psychosis, and Dissociation. Several people responded privately with some very thought-provoking questions that I would like to explore and possibly answer to some extent here. Dedicated readers of the MIA website are all too familiar with the myriad problems that exist with diagnoses in general, the stereotypical (and often untrue) assumptions associated with these various categories, and their lack of scientific validity or reliability. First, though, I want to state that my area of experience and research is with trauma, psychosis, and dissociation . . .

The British Journal of Psychiatry has issued a retraction of an article purporting to have identified evidence of the epigenetic aspects of bipolar disorder,...

Noting that "childhood adversity is gaining increasing attention as a plausible etiological factor in the development of psychotic disorders," researchers from Johns Hopkins, Aarhus...

My mother was once a bright, creative, beautiful young woman, a promising artist and a poet, who was captivated by the hippie movement. She was a creative bohemian artist, defying the conventions of our middle-class Jewish Midwestern family, which had carried a tradition of holding emotions inside and acting stoic. One day, soon after my grandparents’ divorce, she left. She hitched a ride to California, and from that point on, was never the same. The police picked her up on a park bench in Arizona, and she was committed for the first time at age 18. She rotated in and out of mental hospitals, the streets, and jail until her death.

Based on my experience both as a therapist and client in the mental health field, I have learned that when therapists or psychiatrists give you the following diagnoses all too often here is what they really mean:

Greg Young, who leapt to his death from the top of Niagara Falls, "had been on numerous medications, all of which came with warnings...

My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

Research from the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at USC finds that "The standard concept of genetic testing includes at least three...

A "systematic review" of all outcome studies of patients with mood disorders, in the March issue of the Australia & New Zealand Journal of...

Subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson have agreed to pay $5.9 million to settle Montana's lawsuit over the company's fraudulent marketing of Risperdal.  According to...

Claudia M. Gold, a psychiatrist who writes for the Boston Globe, takes on The New Republic's article ADHD Does Not Exist, which, she says,...

Steven Morgan discusses his transformative journey from chronic "patient" to leading mental health advocate. Steven has been working in peer support and helping to create alternatives to traditional mental health services for the past decade...

Over one third of people with bipolar diagnoses admitted to a Rhode Island hospital were on four or more psychiatric medications, says research published...

A blog in Scientific American reviews sleep’s role in "Obesity, Schizophrenia, Diabetes... Everything".  The article notes  a tight link between depression and sleep apnea,...

A review of the literature from 2001 to 2011 on child abuse, neglect, and psychiatric disorders finds that early life stress subtypes can predict...

Research on a sample of 587 patients with DSM-IV defined bipolar disorder finds that an earlier age at onset of bipolar illness - along...

This blog was prompted by an invitation to do a guest post on the site of one of my favorite bloggers, 1 Boring Old Man. This is my response to the notion that there are certain conditions - Schizophrenia among them - that correspond more directly to biomedical conditions

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...

Noting a "striking incongruity between the wide use of and the weak evidence base for the efficacy and safety of antidepressant drugs in bipolar,"...

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.

"For drugs designed for a relatively small number of very disturbed patients, antipsychotics are now among the most profitable drugs in the world, just...

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.

In 1988, the introduction of Prozac was hailed as a breakthrough in the treatment of depression. A quarter of a century later, the prospect of a similar breakthrough in psychiatric medications seems remote. On August 19, 2013, the New York Times ran an article called, “A Dry Pipeline for Psychiatric Drugs".

This video from Bipolarwakingup.com explores why what most people think about the relationship between genetics, chemical imbalance theory and bipolar disorder is pure myth.