Do Depression Pills Improve Quality of Life?
In the upside-down world of psychiatry, the pills that destroy your sex life are called happy pills. I call them unhappy pills or anti-sex pills.
A Letter to the American Psychiatrist Who Labeled Me
The bipolar label and the drugs you prescribed after talking with me for half an hour robbed me of my humanity. What did they not do? Prevent any of the psychotic episodes I had after the first one.
Madness to Miracles
I lost 20 years of my life and everyone and everything I held dear, including myself, due to psychiatric medicine. Why did doctors not see how drastically I changed and how rapid and brutal my descent was?
Some Principles of Human Design for a Post-COVID World
This essay contributes a biologist’s perspective to identifying humanity’s fundamental needs in our necessary transition to a new world order.
What Is Climate Distress—And What Can Therapists Do About It?
Therapists who encounter climate distress should reject the false burden borne by individuals and embrace a spirit of shared vulnerability, solidarity, collective action, and demands for justice.
What is Contributory Injustice in Psychiatry?
An article on contributory injustice describes the clinical and ethical imperative that clinicians listen to service users experiences.
When Does it Help to Have Background Information in Child-Centered Play Therapy?
Knowing the client’s history can help foster genuine empathic responding, a key component to child-centered play therapy.
Researchers Explore Sexuality and Gender in the Context of Psychosis
Nev Jones and a team of researchers examine how sex, sexuality, and gender-related content are underexplored in contemporary research on psychosis.
William James’s Letter to His Depressed Daughter
If you discover that your child has been experiencing a bout with depression, what wise words might you share? Brilliant psychologist William James was forced to address this issue himself when his 13-year-old daughter, Peg, began to struggle with melancholy. I present his long, thoughtful reply for your consideration.
Prescribing Benzodiazepines As-Needed Leads to Abuse
A new study reported on in Medscape, examined risk factors for misuse of benzodiazepines (drugs such as Xanax, Ativan, and Klonopin). The researchers found that patients who had been prescribed the medication on an as-needed basis were more likely to end up abusing it than those who had been prescribed a standing dose.
Researchers Discuss the Strengths of Children who Face Adversity
Experiencing adversity may result in the development of unique strengths and abilities that are often overlooked.
Psychosocially Oriented Psychologists Struggle Against the Medical Model
Interviews with psychosocially oriented psychologists demonstrate their experiences of discomfort with the hegemony of the medical model in their place of work and the conflicts that arise when they attempt to provide alternatives.
Reimagining Crisis Support: A Conversation with Tina Minkowitz
The mental health system is always trying to get more resources for itself, insinuate itself into every aspect of life, subsuming every aspect of the fulfillment of human rights.
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.
Collateral Damage: The Negative Impact of Antidepressants on New Zealand Youth
Health and wellbeing in young people are trending down in New Zealand. Are antidepressants to blame?
Dying to Stay Alive: A Ketamine Disaster
Ketamine treatment, which was being hailed as a ‘miracle cure’, backfired so spectacularly that it very nearly cost me my life.
Hereditary Madness? The Genain Sisters’ Tragic Story
The story of the Genain quadruplets has long been cited as evidence proving something about the supposed hereditary nature of schizophrenia. But who wouldn’t fall apart after surviving a childhood like theirs? The doctors attributed their problems to menstrual difficulties or excessive masturbation — anything except abuse.
‘Do Antidepressants Work?’ is the Wrong Question
“This research points to the inadequacy of asking the simple question: ‘Do antidepressants work?’ Instead, the value or otherwise of antidepressants needs to be understood in the context of the diversity of experience and the particular meaning they hold in people’s lives.”
Insane Medicine, Chapter 2: The Scientism of Psychiatry (Part 1)
Wherever you find mental health services to have expanded, you find a parallel increase in the numbers who have been classed as disabled due to a mental health disorder.
In Defense of Open Dialogue Research
One of the original Open Dialogue researchers responds to a paper presenting a prejudiced and selective review of the scientific literature.
Dear “Psychology Today”: Believe Incest Survivors
Incest survivors are the neglected heroes of the #MeToo movement. Yet when it comes to entrenched narratives that silence incest survivors, mainstream media continues to propagate these harmful myths unchecked.
New Tools to Support New Moms: An Interview with Jennifer Barkin, PhD
A maternal mental health expert shares how perinatal stress and the climate crisis are affecting women’s everyday lives.
Understanding Extreme States: An Interview with Paris Williams
In this interview we will explore often-contentious topics including the non-validity of the biological model, the link between parenting problems and psychosis, and how best to help psychotic people who are fighting both emotional conflicts and a psychiatric system drugging them into silence.
Researchers Document Protracted Withdrawal from Antidepressants
Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome characterized by long-term adverse experiences after coming off of antidepressants.
Researchers Can’t Predict Whether Childhood ADHD Will Impact Adult Functioning
New research has found that a childhood ADHD diagnosis is not predictive of adult functioning in boys.
