Study of Online Antidepressant Forums Reveals Long Lasting Withdrawal Effects
Effects of discontinuing SSRIs and SNRIs reported on an online forum indicate significant and long-lasting withdrawal symptoms.
The Forced Psychiatric Treatment of a Child
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.
So What’s This About Another Webinar Series on Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal?
With this second course we are focusing on the challenges that drug withdrawal presents to prescribers as more and more people seek to come off medications. As many have noted, prescribers may have extensive experience getting patients on psychiatric medications and then managing their drug use, but little or no experience helping patients taper off the drugs.
Review of Pediatric Antidepressant Studies Finds Evidence of Benefit Lacking
Review of pediatric antidepressant studies finds the vast majority are negative on primary outcomes and an increased risk for suicidality.
Experts Question the Benefits of Brain Imaging Research for OCD
Two experts—a leading neuroscientist studying OCD, and a psychiatrist specializing in OCD treatment—question whether expensive brain imaging research has added anything to the treatment of OCD.
Dear Roseanne, The Blood is At Your Doorstep
Chatter about Roseanne Barr's racist tweet is taking up far more space in our collective culture than, say, the murder of any one black or brown person by police in our country. If we want to shine light on the relationship between psychiatry and racism, let’s turn our attention to the people getting overlooked. People like Dontre Hamilton, whose death was the focus of the documentary ‘The Blood is at The Doorstep.’
Prominent Researcher and Psychotherapist Questions “Evidence-Based Therapy”
Dr. Johnathan Shedler recently published a paper critiquing how the term “evidence-based” is being used in the field of psychotherapy.
Perspectives on “Reality” from an Alternative Epistemology
Contemplating human existence with a different paradigm of thinking will open our minds to perceiving the profound human diversities rooted in race and culture, developmental experiences, gender identities, sexual orientations, trauma, hunger, or immigration status, to name but a few ways we are or become profoundly diverse as humans.
The Secret to Psychiatry’s “Success,” as Revealed by a Psychiatrist
Pills can’t be the main source of psychiatry’s sustained success, since they’re mostly placebos and people who take them usually worsen over time. Could psychiatry’s newly invented diseases themselves be the hot items that people are being manipulated into buying? Yes — I saw from within my field how it happened.
High Job Strain Increases Risk of Mental Health Challenges
High job demands, low job control, and high job strain are associated with the development of a mental health issue at age 50.
My Ativan Affair and the Aftermath
My sincere message to those whose vitality and lives have been sapped and zapped by this iatrogenic dis-order: most of us DO recover! And even if it is not without some benzo remnants lodged in our cellular memory, what we learn about our own resilience will guide us to places in our lives we didn't expect to reach. HOPE was my key through the arduous path of withdrawal and recovery.
New Clinical Guidelines on Deprescribing Benzodiazepines
New guidelines recommend deprescribing benzodiazepine receptor agonists for adults.
Time for a Paradigm Shift in School Psychology Interventions
Why do ineffective classification and intervention processes linger in school psychology, and what’s the alternative?
This Is Your Personality Test Result On Capitalism
Personality tests function for an employer, intentionally or otherwise, much like diagnostic criteria function for the mental-health system: these labels determine who gets resources that capitalism itself makes scarce — not only basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter, which require money to obtain, but empathy, understanding and support, which are kept in short supply.
Review Finds Lack of Evidence for Antidepressants in Treatment of Insomnia
Results from a Cochrane meta-analysis find that the common practice of prescribing antidepressants to treat insomnia is not supported by current evidence.
More Evidence That Physical Activity Prevents Depression
Higher levels of physical activity serve as a protective factor for the future development of depression.
ISPS Australia’s Response to Schizophrenia Awareness Week: Drop the Label!
It really is time to drop the label of schizophrenia, and ISPS Australia invites us to consider just that, in favour of understanding human experience and removing the impediments to a person making sense of their experience — impediments that exist due to the primarily biomedical perspectives that continue to dominate the mental health systems.
Towards the Re-politicization of “Mental Illness”
In the models of other social movements, I implore us to advance a multifaceted, structural, cultural, and political analysis of mental illness in America, to illuminate the reality and mechanisms of sanism, and to then envision and implement ways of organizing American life around it that do not limit our potential for flourishing so drastically.
Neurofeedback is Not For Everyone: The Dangers of Neurology
One thing I noticed, from the moment that I stepped out of my psychiatrist’s office, was how strangely blank and yet clear my mind was. I felt surprisingly calm and relaxed, and I decided to go back for another treatment the next week. What I couldn’t have known then was that after that next “treatment,” life would be completely destroyed for me.
Intimate Partner Violence Doubles Risk for Postnatal Depression in Malaysian Women
Women in Malaysia exposed to intimate partner violence are twice as likely to experience postnatal depression.
Tapering Strips Help People Discontinue Antidepressants
A new study by Peter Groot and Jim van Os has found that tapering strips help people successfully discontinue antidepressant medications.
Questioning the Integrity of Psychiatry
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists claimed that “the prescription of antidepressant or antipsychotic medications is something that a psychiatrist only ever does in partnership with the patient and after due consideration of the risks and benefits.” How could a responsible professional body make an assertion so patently wrong?
Increasing Antidepressant Dose Does Not Improve Outcomes
A systematic review of literature and meta-analysis indicates that there is no clinically or statistically significant effect of antidepressant dose increase after nonresponse to initial treatment.
The Next Deadly Epidemic: Adult ADHD and Stimulants?
I refuse to be one of the doctors that contribute to the next deadly epidemic. I see too many similarities between stimulants and opiates — they’re both strongly addictive, stimulate our pleasure centers, and have long-term dangerous mental and physical effects. And they both “work” in the short term without actually fixing anything.
UN Meeting on Human Rights in Mental Health: A Response
On May 14 and 15, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights held a meeting on human rights in mental health. The event represented tensions in the United Nations between the promotion of mental health and the promotion of the human rights of people with psychosocial disabilities under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
