Hearing Voices in the USA
The World Hearing Voices Congress will be landing in Boston, Massachusetts in August. The Hearing Voices movement is up against a lot in this culture where there's so little tolerance for uncertainty and exploration. This movement, this event, and so many people's lives depend on all of us to carry this perspective forward.
Safety Analysis Weighs Harms and Benefits of Antipsychotic Drugs
The researchers find that the drug effects for reducing psychosis are small and that treatment failure and severe side effects are common.
Half of First-Episode Patients Respond to Antipsychotics
No placebo controlled trials provide evidence of antipsychotics in first-episode psychosis.
Individuals with Psychosis Symptoms More Likely to be Victimized
Individuals diagnosed with a psychotic disorder are 4-6 times more likely than the general population to experience victimization.
Confusion Over Antipsychotic Dosing Data in RAISE Study
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that schizophrenia patients in an experimental treatment program (RAISE) who experienced better outcomes had been on lower doses of antipsychotics than normal. However, the article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Tuesday did not divulge any data on the varying antipsychotic drug doses in the different study groups.
The Genetics of Schizophrenia: A Left Brain Theory about a Right Brain Deficit in...
In recent months, two teams of researchers in the UK and the US published complementary findings about the epigenetic origins of schizophrenia that have scientific communities who indulge in ‘genetic conspiracy theories’ abuzz. While these results are intriguing, and no doubt involve pathbreaking research methodologies, this line of thought represents a decontextualized understanding both of the symptoms that are typically associated with schizophrenia, and their causes.
Large German Anti-Stigma Campaign Shows Little Effect on Attitudes
“Overall, this study showed that the information and awareness campaign had almost no significant effects on the general public's attitudes toward people affected by either schizophrenia or depression,” the researchers, led by German medical sociologist Anna Makowski, wrote. “One could assume that deeply rooted convictions cannot be modified by rather time-limited and general activities targeted at the public.”
Study Examines Women’s Experiences of Hearing Voices
An international group of researchers from multiple disciplines has published a historical, qualitative, and quantitative investigation into voice-hearing in women. The interdisciplinary project, freely available from Frontiers in Psychiatry, explores how sexism, exploitation, and oppression bear on women’s’ experiences of hearing voices.
Creating Dialog on Approaches for “Psychosis” in New Jersey
What would happen if professionals opened their minds about the nature of madness? What new possibilities might be created if they questioned labels such...
Duty to Warn – 14 Lies That Our Psychiatry Professors in Medical School Taught...
Revealing the false information provided about psychiatry should cause any thinking person, patient, thought-leader or politician to wonder: “how many otherwise normal or potentially curable people over the last half century of psych drug propaganda have actually been mis-labeled as mentally ill (and then mis-treated) and sent down the convoluted path of therapeutic misadventures – heading toward oblivion?”
Study Connects Environmental Risk Factors and Psychosis
A meta-analysis of known risk factors for psychosis finds elevated risk with the presence of childhood trauma, adverse life events, and affective dysfunction.
Landmark Schizophrenia Study Recommends More Therapy
Results of a large government-funded study call into question current drug heavy approaches to treating people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study, which the New York Times called “by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States,” found that patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education had a greater reduction in symptoms as well as increases in quality of life, and participation in work and school than those receiving the current standard of care.
Learning to Speak Psychotic
One of the biggest barriers that people who are “psychotic” face is one of communication: other people often have trouble understanding what they’re talking about. The way they describe their experience and their ideas are simply foreign to most people. This lack of clear communication is what gets them labelled as “psychotic” in the first place, and thus it leads to a breakdown between the “psychotic” and the rest of society. This is a loss to both groups.
The Hearing Voices Movement: Beyond Critiquing the Status Quo
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.
My Encounter with the University of Minnesota’s Psychiatric Department
The voice came to me for three nights in a row, and changed me at my core. I believe my voice was, and is, the voice of G-d, of love. But one devoted friend, an influential physician at the University of Minnesota, felt strongly that I had “lost it” and tried to persuade me to see his psychiatry buddy at the university.
Study Identifies Psychiatric Patients at Greatest Risk of Coercion
In an effort to reduce coercion, researchers isolate associated factors including age, relationship status, location, and diagnosis.
Pilot Study Adapts Open Dialogue for US Health Care
In an article for Psychiatric Services, psychiatrist Christopher Gordon and his colleagues report on the results of a one-year feasibility study attempting to implement...
Two-Thirds of Schizophrenia Patients Do Not Remit on Antipsychotics
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.
Exercise Intervention for Youth at Risk for Psychosis Shows Promise
A new pilot study finds that an exercise intervention can lead to improvement in clinical, social, and cognitive domains for those deemed at risk for psychosis.
On Voice Hearing Simulations: Why They Should Be (Mostly) Banned
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.
Research Is Shedding New Light on Hearing Voices
From Psychology Today: Although auditory hallucinations are commonly thought of as a sign of mental illness, research shows that hearing voices is common among the general population...
Researchers Suggest Traumatic Experiences May Cause Psychotic Symptoms
A new study in JAMA Psychiatry investigates the relationship between trauma and psychotic experiences.
New Review Suggests Higher Recovery and Remission Rates for Psychosis
Meta-analysis gives updated recovery and remission rates for persons identified as having a first-episode psychosis and those diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Different Forms of Childhood Adversity Related to Specific Psychosis Symptoms
In this month’s issue of Psychological Medicine, researchers from King’s College London found evidence for associations between different types of childhood adversity and specific symptoms associated with psychosis. As current categorical approaches to psychosis and schizophrenia diagnoses come under increasing scrutiny, this study adds support to sociological and psychological theories and treatments.
Psychosis Diagnosis Linked With Lower Rates of Exercise
A new study finds that for those experiencing symptoms associated with psychosis, a low-level of physical activity is associated with receiving a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder.