Disorders

Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has reinforced its warning to health professionals about the risk of suicidality associated with Straterra, after receiving reports of...

We now have 40 plus years of diagnosing and medicating children for ADHD in the US, and at a population level there’s no evidence that US kids are mentally or cognitively ‘healthier’ than kids in other societies.

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.

Brainblogger considers the possibility that the primary characteristics of schizophrenia - deficits in affective, social, physical and intellectual functioning - may actually reflect the...

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

First episode psychosis (FEP) and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) remain the foci of great numbers of early intervention programs in Western countries. “Untreated” in DUP-anese is synonymous with unmedicated, which often creates a sense of urgency and a myopic fixation on getting these youth started on anti-psychotics and keeping them on. What is the impact of this medical model and its accompanying chemical imbalance narrative on these emerging adults? How often does it set them on a course of regained functioning and restored hope, or does it serve as a gateway into a lifetime of disability and discouragement?

The core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is the idea of simply accepting, rather than trying to get rid of, disturbing or unwanted inner experiences like anxiety or voices, and then refocusing on a commitment to take action toward personally chosen values regardless of whether that seems to make the unwanted experiences increase or decrease. This idea is consistent with the emphasis in the recovery movement of finding a way to live a valued life despite any ongoing problems, but ACT has value because of the unique and effective strategies it offers to help people make this shift.

A review of all the relevant research comparing benzodiazepines (BDZ) to antidepressants (AD) for the treatment of anxiety was published Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics this Friday....

In a recent interview, Nancy Andreasen, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, reaffirmed her earlier findings that antipsychotics shrink brain tissue. "We spent a couple...

As we approach world hearing voices day 2013 Karen and I are in Canada. We have just enjoyed running a preconference workshop for about 100 people in Winnipeg. I am sitting in my room before breakfast writing this piece and as I sit I am thinking back twenty-three years ago; I am in a psych unit in Manchester and I have a new support worker called Lindsay. By then I had been a psych patient for almost ten years and was fast approaching spending the rest of my life in the system. My support worker had convinced me to go to a new group that was starting in Manchester called a hearing voices group.

It took over twenty years for the state medical board to sanction a Minnesota psychiatrist who was responsible for the deaths and injuries of 46 patients. Today, in the Markingson case, it looks as if history is repeating itself. How many patients die while bureaucrats delay?

What does the new DSM-5 have in common with an Alfred Hitchcock mystery?  They both use a plot device, a “MacGuffin,” to drive the story. Hitchcock explained a MacGuffin as on the one hand “ridiculous”, “non-existent”, “empty” and inherently without meaning, and at the same time the central point around which the entire story turns.  Which narratives, and whose, are served by the "diagnosis MacGuffin”? Are there more socially desirable alternatives to replace this particular plot vehicle? 

A 28-week randomized controlled study by researchers in Japan, Canada and the United States finds that a 50% reduction of risperidone or olanzapine significantly...

For too many years I was taught and believed that children diagnosed with autism were incapable of learning through the normal channels of relationship. I accepted that they must be taught differently and could easily dismiss their frequent displays of emotional distress as simply a symptom of their autism. This all changed when I attempted to reconcile what the autism intervention and child development fields had to say about what children need for optimal social and emotional development.

The Wunderink study has been discussed here in other blogs. In brief, using a randomized control design, Wunderink found that in adults diagnosed with a psychotic disorder continuous use of neuroleptics was associated with worse functional outcomes. Is this study relevant to those who do not experience psychosis?

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.

What would happen if professionals opened their minds about the nature of madness?  What new possibilities might be created if they questioned labels such...

While increasing numbers of Americans are being prescribed antidepressants, the Centers for Disease Control reports that suicide rates increased 28% from 1999 to 2010. Trained professionals remain unable to predict who is at risk. Their guess is as good as chance.

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".

Finding that Shire's study of its successor to Adderall XR, Vyvanse, (lisdexamfetamine; known in Germany as Elvanse) was too short and did not look at the drug...

Jenna Fogle discusses her experience struggling with depression as a teenager, and the consequent harm done by psychiatric drug treatment.

A study comparing the effects on cognition of major depression (MDD) vs. SSRIs finds that healthy subjects learn significantly better from positive feedback than...

Researchers find that parents who are focused on their child's academic achievement are twice as likely to start the child on ADHD medications as...

When I teach workshops or lead discussions on coming off psychiatric drugs and alternatives, there are invariably parents present who are at loose ends. They want to know what to do for their children, how to help them best, and how it can be possible for their child to live without medication given all they have been through.

In 1995 I had a very frightening experience that I have never discussed publicly before. At that time the main symptoms I was experiencing...