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.
Transformations to Liberation
My goal was to change my relationship with my voices from one that was adversarial to one in which I experienced them as allies. I was successful in that I now look at my voices, visions and other experiences as teachers, as gifts. It has not been an easy journey.
A New Paradigm for Psychiatry: Answering the Call from the UN
Once biochemical psychiatry is discarded, which will inevitably happen, what will replace it? The approach I will describe here is consistent with the nature of consciousness itself, with the neuroscience of the brain, with child development and attachment.
Psychosis for Mental Health?
What if we took individuals who are experiencing emotional crises called 'psychosis' and offered them safe spaces of respite? Similar to the psychedelic trip, environment, supportive relationships, and interpretation of experience appear key to whether the experience of psychosis is transformative or destructive.
How Big Pharma and the Medical Doctors Killed my Father
When the nurses tried to give him other medications, my father refused. They accused him of being “combative” and “uncooperative,” and they injected him with the highly toxic, incredibly dangerous, mind-bending antipsychotic HALDOL.
The Sedated Society: the Real Story of our Prescribing Epidemic
BBC 5 live ran a recent piece that aimed to explore why antidepressant prescriptions have doubled in the last ten years. Unfortunately, it failed to address the drivers of this epidemic – industry-backed diagnostic inflation and the lax regulation of medicines.
Editorial Misconduct: Finnish Medical Journal Rejects Paper on Suicide Risk
Editorial misconduct is as serious as scientific misconduct, and doctors should know how dangerous antidepressants are, at all ages. I have therefore uploaded my correspondence with the Finnish Medical Journal regarding my paper they rescinded their offer to publish.
Farewell Mickey Nardo, 1 (not very) Boring Old Man
Mickey studied how the intimacy between leading academic psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies had impacted our profession. His blog was a treasure trove of analysis and information. Mickey did some heavy lifting, and for that we are all indebted.
Mickey Nardo: Tangled up in Life
Mickey Nardo died yesterday. Here is a brief account of his career, chiseled out of him for the Restoring Study 329 site. What strikes me most is his interest in the tangles people end up in. This certainly is a theme that ran through his blog.
Committed: The Battle Over Involuntary Psychiatric Care
Dinah Miller and Annette Hanson are psychiatrists who blog at Shrink Rap. On one topic we agree — the subject of involuntary care is the most contentious and troubling topic for psychiatry. To their credit, they have directed an enormous amount of attention to this subject in their latest book.
Disobedience: What Can We Risk?
It is possible to heal, and at the same time healing also means restoring the part of oneself that can face violence and disobey to protect what is most sacred. I am that sacred, and so are you.
SMILES Study: Depression and Nutrition
The question this study asked was: In adults with depression who eat a poor diet, does teaching them about nutrition have an impact on their mental health? At the end of the 12-week intervention, the answer was: Yes.
Patient Race Associated with Varied Psychiatric Treatment Experiences
Findings point to association between race and the mental health care experiences of African-American and White veterans.
Why I Resigned From The Mighty
The apprehensions I'd initially had about joining the team returned to my mind. I'd allowed my original cautious disposition to be overtaken by optimism when I had accepted a position of contributing editor with The Mighty, but my hopes were about to be dashed.
Trials Comparing Treatments for Depression Favor Pharmacotherapy when Statisticians Involved
A meta-analysis looks at the effects of researcher background on study findings for trials comparing pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for depression.
“Active Minds” — What Conversation Are We Changing?
Active Minds allows college students to start conversations on some of the most difficult struggles we face in life, but I urge the organization to lead the conversation away from bad science and towards the common struggles that we endure as human beings.
New Medications Fail to Show Efficacy for Alzheimer’s Disease
Three phase III clinical trials assessing the efficacy of Lundbeck’s investigational drug idalopirdine for Alzheimer’s disease have failed
7 Years Off Psych Drugs: A Message to Those Labeled by Psychiatry (video)
Seven years ago, I completed a six-year process of withdrawing from six psychiatric drugs. That process was the impetus to start speaking up about what is happening in psychiatry with far too many of us being gravely harmed.
Trump and the Diagnosis Free-for-All
It would seem that who is 'mentally ill' is a movable target (much more so than, say, the cancer or diabetes to which it is often compared), sometimes based on convenience and strategy. If you hold enough power, you can decide who's sick, provided they don't have enough leverage to outdo you at your own game.
Southern Vapors: A Comeback Story Not Born of Chemistry
Imagine my excitement, the hope that relief from the sucking tar of misery that dogged too many of my days was within my reach. From that moment and for thirty years to follow, I was the willing guinea pig for any number of drugs. Nothing helped for long.
Vital Minds: Four Stories of Recovery
My patients have trashed themselves for decades, and after one month of dietary change, daily meditation, detox, and psychospiritual support, they are reborn. At a time when people are being euthanized for depression because they believe it to be a life sentence, it has never been more critical to spread the truth that healing is possible.
Intentional Peer Support: Creating Relationships, Creating Change
IPS is about creating a power-balanced, relational context in which we can begin to explore and even challenge the stories we have been taught. We can name our experiences, and challenge the meaning that we have constructed around those experiences. This fundamentally alters what we think of as “help,” but also challenges social and political constructs of disability.
Integrative Mental Health: 27 Non-drug Options that Work
Four years ago I dove into a deep and murky pond: the bottomless depths of medical databases that hold mental health research. After examining over 4000 studies, and hundreds of meta-analyses, I surfaced from my research and was hit with a startling “Aha” moment: non-drug approaches really work.
Sir Robin Murray and Our Collective Mea Culpa
Sir Robin Murray, a distinguished British professor of psychiatry, recently published a paper in Schizophrenia Bulletin titled, “Mistakes I Have Made in My Research Career.” I wonder what leads Robin Murray to acknowledge his mistakes when others seem to hunker down. I also wonder how I can know when I am misled in my assumptions.
