The Day I Became Schizophrenic

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Schizophrenia, to me, is nothing more than a word. All it really means is that you experience psychosis on a regular enough basis that it’s a factor in your life. And that you actually do, as the word “schizophrenia” indicates, have a mind that you share with some sort of outside presence.

Psychiatrist Describes Role in Open Dialogue Model of Care

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Psychiatrist outlines varying roles in Open Dialogue model, fostering service-user and family agency through meaningful conversations with a team of providers.
voice hearers

The Voices My Daughter Hears

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The voices were extraordinary; in a way, they were like ghosts. I could not see them, but only divine them by the turmoil they stirred up in Annie. They were not polite house ghosts who knew when to leave; they were ne’er-do-wells she could not get rid of. They were tormentors and torturers, testing the limits of her sanity, blackmailing her into submission.

De-Othering “Schizophrenia” by Placing it in Socio-Historical Context

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Understanding schizophrenia as a non-enigmatic, understandable human experience goes against a history of institutional “othering” that has sustained psychiatric legitimacy and further marginalized service-users.

Fighting for the Meaning of Madness: An Interview with Dr. John Read

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Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.

Service-Users See Long-Term Antipsychotic Use as Compromising Recovery, Review Finds

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A new meta-review examines the experiences of antipsychotic drugs use among people diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.
hearing voices

Helping People to Constructively Engage with Voices

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When voices are engaged with creativity and compassion, the result can be a positive change in the relationship with voices, leading to much greater peace of mind. But how can people learn how to facilitate this? A new video series by Charlie Heriot-Maitland, Rufus May and Elisabeth Svanholmer offers some practical ideas.

Valuing Posttraumatic Growth in Psychosis

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Individuals who experience psychosis can also experience posttraumatic growth, which can be a central component of the recovery paradigm.

The Role of Context, Language, and Meaning in Hearing Voices

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Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of hearing voices

First-Person Accounts of Madness and Global Mental Health: An Interview with Dr. Gail Hornstein

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Dr. Gail Hornstein, author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, discusses the importance of personal narratives and service-user activism in the context of the global mental health movement.

Stigmatizing Effects of the Psychosis-Risk Label

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Study examines the effects on participants of being told they are at risk of developing psychosis.

Exploring Alternate Pathways to Voice-Hearing

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Authors propose various pathways to the phenomena of voice-hearing in clinical and nonclinical populations.

New Study Investigates Cannabidiol (CBD) for Psychosis

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A new study examines the effects of CBD as an adjunct therapy to antipsychotic medication for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Non-Pharmacological Interventions More Effective For Health in Schizophrenia

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Review compares the effectiveness of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for improving physical health outcomes in people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Better Outcomes Off Medication for Those Recovered from First-Episode Schizophrenia

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A new study has found that of 10 people who were fully recovered from their first episode of schizophrenia (FES), those not taking antipsychotics did better in terms of cognitive, social, and role functioning—and reached full recovery more quickly.

Study Identifies Psychiatric Patients at Greatest Risk of Coercion

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In an effort to reduce coercion, researchers isolate associated factors including age, relationship status, location, and diagnosis.

Individuals with Psychosis Symptoms More Likely to be Victimized

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Individuals diagnosed with a psychotic disorder are 4-6 times more likely than the general population to experience victimization.

What is Contributory Injustice in Psychiatry?

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An article on contributory injustice describes the clinical and ethical imperative that clinicians listen to service users experiences.
voice hearing simulations

On Voice Hearing Simulations: Why They Should Be (Mostly) Banned

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Voice hearing simulation exercises are designed to make participants feel frightened, overwhelmed, and unable to function. They don’t do anything to teach how people who hear voices work through that, the many effective strategies they use, or any of the benefits that some come to find in this way of being in the world.

Researchers Suggest Traumatic Experiences May Cause Psychotic Symptoms

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A new study in JAMA Psychiatry investigates the relationship between trauma and psychotic experiences.

Childhood Emotional Abuse Associated with Internal Eating Disorder Voice

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Many individuals diagnosed with eating disorders describe and internal ‘voice,’ which may be linked to experiences of childhood trauma and dissociation.

Gradual Tapering is Most Successful for Withdrawal from Antipsychotics

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Mixed-Methods study explores the experiences of antipsychotic discontinuation among service users.

Two-Thirds of Schizophrenia Patients Do Not Remit on Antipsychotics

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A new analysis of antipsychotic treatment of schizophrenia (published in Schizophrenia Bulletin) has found that two-thirds of patients treated this way do not experience symptom remission.

Study Examines Voice Hearing Accounts of 499 Nonclinical Individuals

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Researchers look at voice hearing experiences shared by nonclinical samples, exploring these experiences in the general population.

New Review of Antipsychotics for Schizophrenia Questions Evidence for Long Term Use

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A systematic review of the limited research available on the long-term effects of antipsychotics finds fewer symptoms in those off of the drugs.