Psychiatry Defends Its Antipsychotics: A Case Study of Institutional Corruption

153
Jeffrey LIeberman and colleagues have published a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry stating that there is no evidence that psychiatric drugs cause long-term harm, and that the evidence shows that these drugs provide a great benefit to patients. A close examination of their review reveals that it is a classic example of institutional corruption, which was meant to protect guild interests.

Researcher Acknowledges His Mistakes in Understanding Schizophrenia

128
Sir Robin Murray, a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience in London, states that he ignored social factors that contribute to ‘schizophrenia’ for too long. He also reports that he neglected the negative effects antipsychotic medication has on the brain.

Trauma, Psychosis, and Dissociation

57
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.
babydoll quadruplets

Hereditary Madness? The Genain Sisters’ Tragic Story

14
The story of the Genain quadruplets has long been cited as evidence proving something about the supposed hereditary nature of schizophrenia. But who wouldn’t fall apart after surviving a childhood like theirs? The doctors attributed their problems to menstrual difficulties or excessive masturbation — anything except abuse.

Schizophrenia Deconstructed

140
After a few weeks it became clear to me the complete lack of comprehension that I faced as a person claiming to have been cured of psychosis. Being a schizophrenic claiming to no longer suffer from schizophrenia only made me seem more schizophrenic due to the current culture of psychiatry.

Soteria Israel: A Vision from the Past is a Blueprint for the Future

130
In Israel, there is a budding Soteria movement that foretells of a possible paradigm shift in care. The thought is that such care may become a first-line treatment for newly psychotic patients.

Not So Rare But Rarely Diagnosed: From Demonic Possession to Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis

26
Throughout the ages, convulsions, contortions of the body and face, including the tongue, super-human strength, catatonic periods, long periods of wakefulness or sleep, insensitivity to pain, speaking in tongues, and a predilection for self-injurious behaviours have all been offered as physical evidence of possession. The modern day interpretation, however, comes with a plot twist befitting a media spectacle. There is growing consensus in the medical community that many prior accounts of “demonic possession” may have represented original accounts of what is now broadly known as autoimmune encephalitis.

The Real Myth of the Schizophrenogenic Mother

53
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.

Duty to Warn – 14 Lies That Our Psychiatry Professors in Medical School Taught...

79
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?”

Danish Study Finds Better 10-year Outcomes in Patients Off Antipsychotics

12
Study finds that 74% of patients with a psychotic disorder off antipsychotics at end of 10 years are in remission.

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

92
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?

New Research Suggests Brain Abnormalities in ‘Schizophrenia’ May Result From Antipsychotics

36
Study finds that reduced cortical thickness and brain surface area associated with 'schizophrenia' may result from antipsychotic drug use.
Zol Dolinsky death with dignity

Zel Dolinsky: I Have a Right to “Death With Dignity”

97
Researcher Zel Dolinsky once taught at medical school and worked as a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry. In his last emails, he told of how the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs led him to choose to end his life.
schizophrenia 1960s hospital

Against the Odds: ‘Unimproved Schizophrenic’ to Yale PhD

59
Forty years after I had first been admitted to the hospital, I was ready to confront my past. So, I sent for my hospital records, and I read them. As an experienced clinician, I recognized immediately what the doctors hadn’t been able to see in 1960: my problem wasn’t ‘schizophrenia’ but PTSD, connected with incest.

Antipsychotic Medications Are Causing Obsessive Compulsive Disorders

20
Common second-generation antipsychotic medications are causing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder to emerge in many people who previously only had schizophrenia symptoms, according to a...

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

17
Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.

I Want Change

35
Only two hours after we got home, Dan fearlessly told me of the suicide plan that he'd devised while in the hospital. He had all that time to think about it while nobody was listening. He'd lost his dignity, his identity and his place in society. He had lost the will to live.

Children with ‘ADHD’ Commonly Prescribed Antipsychotics

37
Despite little evidence for benefit, and substantial risk of harm, antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to children diagnosed with ADHD

Researchers Make the Case to Rename Schizophrenia

31
The authors outline reasons for renaming schizophrenia and the way a change can reform practice.

Brain Imaging Shows Trauma-Related Differences in DID

8
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) has a complicated and controversial history. In this study, published in PLoS 1, researchers from London and the Netherlands explore...

Researchers Warn of “Brain Atrophy” in Children Prescribed Antipsychotics

20
Researchers discuss the evidence that antipsychotic medications may cause brain atrophy in children, whose brains are still developing.
schizophrenia test used car salesman

A Faux Test for a Faux Disease Promoted by Real Psychiatrists

33
Influential psychiatrists recently called on the NHS to make a faux schizophrenia test available to patients and their families. What is most astounding about this is the complete lack of pretense. "We are so certain of our power and righteousness that we are going to tell you to your face that we are lying, and yet, we will still get our way."

Safety Analysis Weighs Harms and Benefits of Antipsychotic Drugs

15
The researchers find that the drug effects for reducing psychosis are small and that treatment failure and severe side effects are common.

Hallucinations Reported as Side Effect of ADHD Medication

10
Hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms have been reported after methylphenidate (Ritalin) treatment for ADHD.

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

10
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.