Discussing Nutrient Formulas Without Naming Them: Who Benefits?
Do we not want our public to pay attention to the quality of science behind a treatment? By constantly dancing around the product names of nutrient formulas, we are doing a disservice to those who need accurate information.
Optimizing Mental Wellness Through Nutrient Therapy: A Gastroenterologist’s Perspective
It was hard to believe, initially, that nutrient therapy could have that profound an impact. My son’s remarkable recovery with “just nutrients” has made me question the entire medical model behind ADHD and other neurobehavioral disorders.
Patients More Likely to Refuse Drug-Only Treatment, Study Finds
The American Psychological Association (APA) recently published a study finding that patients assigned to drug-only treatments were more likely to refuse treatment, and more likely to drop out before treatment completion, than patients assigned to psychotherapy only.
Introducing the ‘Parent Resources’ Page
I know how difficult it is for the average parent to get educated about alternatives to the “diagnose a mental disorder and provide a chemical fix” paradigm. I hope that this new MIA parent resource section that I’ll be curating will help to educate you and point you in the direction of valuable resources.
Burn Baby Burn (Psychopharmacology Part 3)
In the 16 years from 1952 to 1968, the world changed in astonishing ways. In the 16 years since I first gave this talk, it has changed almost as much again. When some future historian looks back at this period, will they say it was a time when the field’s significant figures tweeted while psychiatry burned?
Where Do We Go From Here?
We need to spread the word to a much wider group. We need to connect with that silent skeptical majority, and deliver the message: your skepticism is well-founded; psychiatry is a destructive, disempowering, self-serving, drug-pushing hoax; your instincts are correct.
An Alternative Perspective on Psychotherapy: It is Not a ‘Cure’
Kev Harding argues against conceptualizations of therapy as a ‘cure’ to an ‘illness’ and instead offers alternative approaches.
Into the Woods: A Path Through Anxiety
As individuals, psychiatrists are undoubtedly well-intentioned. But the Prozac paradigm undermines the path of acceptance by its very agenda to “get rid of” or “fix” anxiety. It is by its nature a resistance — and what you resist, tends to persist.
Spirituality and ‘Mental Illness’
Is the suppression of spirituality in the West the reason for our struggle and suffering labeled as mental illness? Are we medicated to numb the pain and psychospiritual protest related to the felt wrongness in our modern lives? Here’s what I learned from my trip to India.
Collaborative Care Effective for Older Adults with Depressive Symptoms
A new study suggests that depressive symptoms in older adults can be improved with non-invasive behavioral activation techniques. These approaches appear to have a preventative effect, serving to prevent further depressive symptoms from developing.
Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness
In Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness, Bruce Cohen explains the expanding power and influence of psychiatry in terms of its usefulness to the capitalist system — the more useful it is, the more power it is given, and the greater its power, the more useful it becomes.
Aliveness and Social Justice: Teaching the Principles and Practices of Open Dialogue
Over the past seven years, I have been teaching open dialogue principles and practices in a variety of settings. This blog will focus on the development of a training program, now based in Manhattan, and what I’ve learned from running this program and teaching this approach in the US.
SSRIs: Minimal Effectiveness and High Risk
If psychiatry were a bona fide medical field, a meta-analysis of this quality yielding these results would send Richter 9 shock waves through the profession. But the publication of this study on February 8 generated no discernible concern within the profession.
Take a Flyer Off a Wall: Six Hours in the Hole
Once your body enters a police car or an ambulance, it doesn’t matter what labels you carry or what the apparent “symptoms” are. It doesn’t matter if you even have any label at all. The moment you acquire a mental illness is when someone who doesn’t like you decides that you have one.
Tweeting while Medicine Burns (Psychopharmacology Part 2)
This is the world that lies in store for us. It is not the world of traditional medicine, where drugs treat diseases to restore the social order. It is a world in which medical interventions will potentially change that order.
Victims of Success: An Update from Mad in America Continuing Education
Within days of announcing the webinar and providing the link to register, we were deluged with enrollments. It turns out that a great many professionals, advocates and clinical managers are interested in learning about Open Dialogue and its application to an American community.
Despite Increase in Treatments, Prevalence of Mental Health Issues Climbs
Findings show that despite increases in treatment availability, the prevalence of mental health issues has not decreased.
Letter to my Classmates on our 40th Reunion
It is hard for me to feel celebratory on the occasion of our 40th reunion. As my career winds down, I feel more disappointment and dismay than the glow of lifelong achievement.
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany (A Book Review)
In a work of quite remarkable scholarship, Ohler has traced how an enterprising drug manufacturer realised the potential of methamphetamine and managed to sell it to the High Command as a very valuable but entirely harmless drug that would allow soldiers to do without sleep for days.
Lyme is ‘All in Your Head’ – A Wake-up Call to Mental Health Professionals
Sufferers are desperate for mental health professionals to understand Lyme so that they will know to consider it as a potential differential diagnosis before plying a patient with psychotropic meds that may make matters worse.
Tweeting While Psychiatry Burns
Part one of a lecture given at a British Neuropsychiatric Association meeting on February 22 under the heading of Psychopharmacology: 1952–2017. In slide 2, you see Tokyo University on fire. The students have occupied the Department of Psychiatry and stay for ten years.
Experts Concerned That Depression Screening Will Lead to Overdiagnosis
Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.
A Curse for a Cursed Profession
In “polite society,” cursing is largely verboten. Let me suggest, however, that if done in the correct spirit and adroitly, cursing can be a highly useful type of anti-oppression work. On top of which, it can be personally liberating.
Transition into Poverty May Worsen Child and Maternal Mental Health
Transitioning into poverty linked to behavioral issues in children, but may be mitigated by mother’s mental health.
Our Coming to Mad in Aotearoa
Madness cannot be separated from our cultural contexts. Our dream is that there are spaces for people of all cultures and countries who experience living with, through and beyond madness to tell their unique stories. We have created Mad in Aotearoa for all the people in our country.
