Psychiatry’s Failure to Acknowledge Who I Really Am
This is not how the mental health system should treat "psychotic" people. Mental health providers should treat them with compassion, empathy, respect, love and understanding. With a circle of loving and understanding people surrounding a person in crisis, I have no doubt that most "psychosis" would normalize in time.
Confirmed: Las Vegas Shooter on Benzos
A Las Vegas newspaper has released the autopsy blood toxicology report for Stephen Paddock. Three metabolites (breakdown products) of Valium were found in his blood: nordiazepam, oxazepam, and temazepam. Paddock’s autopsy report confirms he was a regular user of Valium, at least in the days leading up to the shootings.
Researchers Challenge Industry-Friendly Depression Guideline
Review of a new mixed depression guideline reveals financial bias of guideline developers and lack of evidence supporting recommendations for prescribing of antipsychotics.
Spending on Social Services Improves Health Outcomes
Canadian study finds that social service spending is associated with a decrease in mortality and increase in life expectancy.
Who Gets to Define “Peer Support?”
The definition of “peer support” should be straightforward. But over the years, “peer support” seems to have morphed into “peer specialist” — or, to put it more bluntly, psychiatric survivors’ experiential knowledge has been co-opted by the system. How does peer-developed peer support differ from the peer staff model? And what can we do about this?
Seeking Justice
My life flashed before my eyes as my entire medical history over the last decade was rewritten from having a genetic brain disease to being a victim of a medical scam. It was bittersweet, for I realized that I was not sick and dying, but I had been robbed of so many years of my life due to the psychiatrist’s lies. Now I am suing my former psychiatrist for damages.
Multisystemic Therapy No More Effective than Standard Care for Antisocial Behavior
Study counters previous evidence supporting multisystemic therapy, finding adolescents are just as likely to have out-of-home placements when receiving multisystemic therapy versus management as usual.
Reflections on the Torture Parents and the Pedophile Olympic Doctor
Parents should be very cautious about entrusting their children to any institution — private boarding schools, ballet schools, training facilities away from home. We are all best off raising our adolescents subject to our oversight, rather than entrusting them to others. Those who should protect us from trauma are harming our children.
Study Finds Heavy Metal Music Beneficial to Mental Health
A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.
What Would a Truly Integrated System of Care Look Like?
Imagine that you were the director of a health insurance company and you had just agreed to provide health coverage to several hundred thousand people and you will have to fund health care including mental health and alcohol/drug care too. The purpose of this blog is to show the kind of system you would have to design.
CDC Reports Increased Psychostimulant Prescriptions in Women of Reproductive Age
Psychostimulant prescriptions have increased by 344% (from 2003 to 2015) for women of reproductive age (15-44 years old).
Problem Behaviors are Medicalized in White Children and Criminalized in Black Children
Race often determines whether school punishment or therapy and drugs will be used to address children’s problem behaviors.
Shock Class Action – Case Update
In September of 2017, DK Law Group, LLP filed a Class Action Complaint against the manufacturers of ECT shock devices, alleging that they caused injury to patients by withholding from the FDA data relating to serious iatrogenic brain injuries resulting from ECT. The following developments have taken place since then.
Beyond the Medicalization of Insomnia
There is hope that the truth about sleeping pills will become more commonplace. As it does, however, we are faced with an even greater challenge: to move beyond the medicalization of insomnia in order to help people sleep better naturally. The alternative paradigm I suggest is that nutrition is a primary cure for insomnia.
Is Binge Eating Disorder Just Another Made-Up Disease?
If a person binges habitually, upon sensing certain stimuli the pancreas prepares the body with insulin, and simultaneously, the stomach prepares by getting more acidic. This means that for many of us, the drive to binge is a physical need. Therapy blames the patient for “bad coping” when all she is doing is responding to her body's signals.
Estimates of Depression Prevalence are Exaggerated, Study Finds
New research demonstrates that common methods for estimating depression prevalence lead to overestimation and exaggerated statistics.
Targeting Hypocrisy Reduces Islamophobia and Collective Blame of Muslims
Interventions calling attention to participants’ hypocrisy proved effective in reducing Islamophobia and collective blame of Muslims for individual acts of violence.
Antidepressants Save People From Suicide, Right?
If depression leads to suicide and antidepressants like SSRIs resolve depression, we could decrease suicide rates by increasing the number of antidepressant prescriptions, right? Yet researchers found the opposite in a new study from Sweden that examined antidepressants in the context of suicide.
New Study Challenges Impartiality of Peer Review
New research shows that more connected and well-known researchers are more likely to be published, even when they receive negative reviews.
So What is Mental Disorder? Part 1: Reasoning and Meaning
If mental disorders are not bodily diseases, what are they and how should we understand them? If madness involves a loss or failure of shared reasoning that places the individual outside of the community of immediate and implicit human understanding, does this mean it is without interest or meaning?
Cognitive Impairment from Long-Term Benzodiazepine Use Remains Even After Drug Withdrawal
Long-term benzodiazepine use shown to effect cognitive function during current use and for years after drug discontinuation.
Researchers Expose Pharmaceutical Industry Misconduct and Corruption
Corruption of pharmaceutical industry sponsored clinical trials identified as a “major obstacle” facing evidence-based medicine.
Abolish Psychiatry and the Mental Health System: Really?
I am going to pose the question: What would it take to go about abolishing psychiatry and the mental health system? My goal is to try to shed light on whether psychiatric nihilism can actually lead anywhere. Or is it mostly something that makes people who have been so terribly harmed feel better?
Johann Hari: Lost Connections
An interview with journalist and author Johann Hari about his latest book: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions, in which he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong.
I Almost Got Hit by a Lightning Bolt
I am so thankful that my brain healed from the damage caused by psychiatric medications. Most importantly, finding my purpose in life and living an authentic life helped to ground me and prevent further psychosis. Psychosis is the psyche’s cry for transformation and healing. When one listens to the call, one is brought from darkness to light.
