Mental Health Concerns Not “Brain Disorders,” Say Researchers

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The latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences features several prominent researchers arguing that mental health concerns are not “brain disorders.”

What Does Social Justice Really Mean for Psychologists?

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Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.
student counseling

Student Counseling Services: Do They Really Help the ‘Mentally Ill’?

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I used to think that the counseling center would help me to resolve my inner conflicts. That visiting the center would do some good for me. I have since realized that most mainstream “mental health” is more damaging than helpful. These days if student counselors see any problem with a student visiting the center, they send him or her to see a psychiatrist.
sales rep bribes doctor

Kick Big Pharma Out of the Classroom

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School-based strategies such as the “talk to your doctor” campaign about any childhood problem have been extremely effective in helping the pharmaceutical industry to marginalize traditional child-rearing practices and replace them with advice from mental health “experts” and the use of dangerous drugs. These campaigns are reminiscent of now-illegal vintage tobacco ads in which doctors endorsed cigarette smoking.

Developing Alternatives to the DSM for Psychotherapists

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A new article suggests counselors and psychotherapists are dissatisfied with current diagnostic systems and outlines some potential alternatives.

BPS Releases Review of Alternatives to Antipsychotics

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BPS releases report encouraging behavioral interventions for people with dementia, rather than antipsychotics

The Role of Racial Bias in the Overdiagnosis of Schizophrenia

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Researchers detect disparity between white and African American patients diagnosed with schizophrenia when symptoms of a mood disorder are present.

United Nations Report Calls for Revolution in Mental Health Care

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In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

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.
Kelli as a child

The Forced Psychiatric Treatment of a Child

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This is my story of forced psychiatric treatment as an eight-year-old girl, from my perspective as an adult mental health professional. Being held down kicking and screaming to be injected with a benzodiazepine is a human rights violation no child should endure for saying no to a pharmaceutical. In hindsight, when I reflect on that day, it feels like a form of child abuse.
unhappy child root cause

The Unsung Psychiatric Impact of Strep Throat

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A sea change is needed in the evaluation of children with perceived psychological disturbances. Parents are told that their child has a fictitious biochemical imbalance in the brain while real medical disorders are overlooked. In our family's case, it was Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Strep (PANDAS).

Antidepressants Often Prescribed to Enforce Heteronormativity, Study Concludes

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A new study investigating fifteen years of patient records at a Midwestern hospital found that psychiatrists almost always responded to patient complaints about their relationships by prescribing antidepressants, despite the fact that these complaints had little to do with the DSM criteria for depression. The study’s lead author, Jonathan Metzl, a professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt, suggests that after the decision in 1974 to remove homosexuality from the DSM, psychiatry continued to enforce socially accepted forms of relationships through the prescription of antidepressants.
dissident psychiatrist going against doctrine

Memoirs of a Dissident Psychiatrist

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For years I had hoped that psychiatry would free itself from the psychoanalytic doctrine, and when my wish finally came true, my profession went from the frying pan to the fire. My main goal, currently, is to convince professionals as well as the public that most child psychiatric problems can be handled effectively without medication.

How Western Psychiatry Harms Alternative Understandings of Mental Health

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An anthropological look at the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement suggests several ethical problems and contradictions in its mission.

Researchers Search for Subgroups Where Antidepressants Are More Effective

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The researchers theorized that this increased effectiveness was due not to “antidepressant” properties, but rather to the drug’s side effects, which include insomnia, drowsiness, and nausea.

After the Black-Box: Majority of Children Starting SSRIs Still Receiving Too High of Dose

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In 2004, the FDA added a black-box warning to SSRI antidepressants on the increased risk of suicide among children taking these drugs. A new study suggests that this warning has increased the proportion of children who begin an antidepressant on a low dose, but the majority are still receiving higher than recommended doses.

The ADHD Drug Abuse Crisis on College Campuses

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The abuse of ADHD drugs on college campuses has reached epidemic proportions, according to the authors of a recent review in the journal of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. ADHD drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall, have become so commonplace on college campuses that students abusing these drugs for studying, weight loss and partying have underestimated their risks. As a result, we have seen exponential increases in emergency room visits, overdoses, and suicides by students taking these drugs.

Lancet Psychiatry’s Controversial ADHD Study: Errors, Criticism, and Responses

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Amid calls for a retraction, Lancet Psychiatry publishes articles criticizing the original finding and a response from the authors.

The Conflicts That Result From Globalizing Euro-American Psychology in India

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Researchers examine the transformation of work, life, and identity in India as a result of Western corporate and psychological culture.

How Race and Class Impact Schizophrenia and Substance-Use Diagnoses

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A new article explores how psychiatric diagnoses are differentially applied to people of different racial and class backgrounds.

The Power Threat Meaning Framework One Year On

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The team that developed the Power Threat Meaning framework as a diagnostic alternative reflects on the response to the framework after one year.

Epilepsy Drugs Can Induce Psychosis in Some Patients, Study Finds

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In this month’s issue of the journal Brain a new study investigates whether the drugs prescribed to control seizures can increase the risk of...

Study Examines Overdiagnosis of Mental Health Disorders in Childhood

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Are diagnoses of mental disorders among children and adolescents in developed countries disproportionate to disease prevalence trends?

Despite Official Recommendations, Depression Screening in Children is Not Supported by Research

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Earlier this year, the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) came out with the controversial recommendation that all adolescent and adult patients undergo depression...

New Data Show Lack of Efficacy for Antidepressants

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An article published this month in the journal BMC Psychiatry suggests that there is a lack of efficacy for SSRIs and that they significantly increase the risk of serious side effects.