Featured

In the Washington Post last week, a new treatment was being advanced as a breakthrough for opioid addiction. What was this miraculous new intervention? Implanting electrodes deep in the brain, and using a battery implanted elsewhere in the body to zap the addict and keep him from relapsing.

Researchers interviewed people who were given medical advice to discontinue antidepressants.

Refugees and first-generation immigrants of African descent are at greater risk of experiencing medical coercion when compared to immigrants of other visible minority communities in Canada.

A Nigerian study finds that more than three-quarters of patients improved, even when only 13% were prescribed medication.

Rethinking Psychiatry put out a survey on people’s experiences of psychiatric hospitalization in the Pacific Northwest. The results showed tremendous dissatisfaction, with the overwhelming majority of respondents reporting that they did not feel safe, secure or respected in the hospital.

Psychiatry’s role, Rebel Minds makes clear, is to prepare the population for capitalism’s purposes, and to cull the humans who it fails to prepare. The relationship is symbiotic: psychiatry trades in medicalizing and biologicizing human suffering, which capitalism produces an endless supply of; it’s a match made in heaven.

New qualitative research finds a shift in the meaning of gender as it enters the local lexicon of people in rural Malawi, in turn having negative ramifications for those it is meant to help.

Transgender individuals who underwent gender-affirming surgeries demonstrated significant reductions in mental health concerns.

The focus of Bonnie Burstow’s new book, The Revolt Against Psychiatry, “is not the problems that psychiatry presents but the attempt to counter them.” Burstow asks, “What pressures might we bring to bear to loosen the grip of psychiatry? We habitually seem to be losing the battle; so how do we turn the situation around?”

Researchers explore how culturally responsive services can create greater equity in mental health care.

Among the latest examples of profiteering from the gene fad, there is now an app to determine your personal level of gayness, and researchers claim to have finally found real biomarkers to diagnose schizophrenia through a simple hair sample! Make no mistake: this is about the religion of scientism, not about science.

Prominent researchers in psychiatry urge the field to move away from a rigid biological focus toward social and psychological perspectives to meet the needs of today’s world.

When it comes to ADHD, some researchers suggest that medical textbooks provide inaccurate and misleading information.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Mind Body Medicine, this case series is the first of its kind to document the methodology employed in the successful discontinuation of a range of psychotropic medications, with holistic support interventions providing long-term mood support.

Individuals who participate in efforts of collective action report changes in personality, behavior, and worldview.

When people have "paranoia" or "persecutory voices," often with a bit of curiosity I discover people in their lives who actually are out to get them. Real bullies, real persecutors. And then the work becomes work that all survivors — diagnosed with psychosis or not — have to do to regain safety, trust, and empowerment.

A clinical trial finds Prozac no better than placebo for improving repetitive behaviors.

How are psychiatry and religion similar? Both systems utilize parent-like caretakers who alluringly promise easy solutions to life’s difficult realities. Both involve firm belief in a force that’s powerful and fate-controlling, yet completely undetectable (God or an inborn ‘chemical imbalance’).

There is a lack of consensus in the definition of ‘relapse’ across randomized controlled trials of antipsychotic maintenance treatment for schizophrenia and psychosis.

Researchers shed light on the precarious nature of evidence from efficacy trials of antidepressant medication to treat symptoms of major depressive disorder in children and adolescents.

Researchers call for action to address social challenges and inequalities that obstruct mental health and well-being globally.

How are we to differentiate the sort of healthy pride that accompanies hard-won, noble pursuits and is emotional sustenance for a person's self-esteem, and toxic pride, aimed at winning admiration from others as proof of one's superiority, possibly evoking the desire to use aggression and exploitation to attain power and dominance?

An interview with activist Dorothy Dundas about her connection to the psychiatric survivor movement from the 1970s to today.

Research finds patients of first-episode psychosis report benefits from social relationships where their personhood is respected.

Changing the mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany requires public debate about the ways our society should help and support people in mental crisis and with chronic mental health problems. We believe the driving force behind all help and support should be humanitarianism and respect for inalienable human rights.