Part II: Michelle Starts Prozac and Sees the Devil

35
By 2011, anyone who read the scientific literature would have known that children cannot tolerate SSRIs and should not be given them. Neither Conrad nor Michelle seemed to have been warned about the common adverse effects (such as nightmares and compulsive suicidality) of the SSRI antidepressants they were on.

May Cause Side Effects–Radical Acceptance and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: An Interview with Brooke Siem

11
Brooke Siem discusses her experiences of being medicated with antidepressants as a teenager, her withdrawal from a cocktail of psychiatric drugs and her debut memoir, May Cause Side Effects.

Pills That Steal Generations of Lives

59
Suddenly I had an insight into why my dad decided to end his life in 1976. I learned that, like me, he was on antidepressant medication. It seems highly likely that his illness could have been entirely caused by side effects of medication, just like it was with me.
geriatric depression

The Year I Lost Everything, Psychiatry Offered Nothing

89
After a failed suicide attempt following my son's death, New York State incarcerated me in a mental institution for 21 days. The environment was degrading, stultifying, and downright depressing.
neurotoxins

What Should We Really Call Psychiatric Drugs?

87
There is no rational way to argue against putting psychiatric chemicals into the category of neurotoxins. All psychiatric substances alter “the structure or functions of the nervous system,” disrupt “the normal function of nerve cells” and act “specifically on nervous tissue.” It is time to clean up the misleading mess of words in psychiatry.

Why I Resigned From The Mighty

44
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.

Makers of Risperdal Sued for Breast Development in Boys

18
Thousands of boys and young men are lined up in courthouses around the country to sue J&J for gynecomastia caused by taking Risperdal as young children. The condition is irreversible except by surgical removal. Collectively, they have become known as the Risperdal Boys.
Photo depicting a close-up of hands handcuffed behind someone's back, holding a cell phone

Psychiatric Detentions Rise 120% in First Year of 988

61
As contacts to the new 988 suicide hotline number have risen, so have call tracing and police interventions.
55 steps to informed consent

55 Steps to Informed Consent

116
55 Steps is a new film based on a true story that centers around two women: Collette, a lawyer with a tendency to work long hours, and Eleanor, who has spent far too much time incarcerated in hospitals. Over the course of five years, Collette fights for Eleanor’s right to choose whether or not she takes psychiatric drugs. This film is imperfect, but its importance can’t be ignored.
alternatives to suicide

Alternatives to Suicide: Strategies for Staying Alive

26
For more than 7,300 days of my life, waking up the next morning required me to make a conscious choice to diligently pursue something — anything — other than my impulse to die. Maybe the best teachers of how to avoid suicide will not be the people who are afraid someone else will die, but those of us who can explain how and why we regularly choose to live.
neurodiversity

Neurodiversity is Dead. Now What?

93
The neurodiversity movement is a public relations campaign that emphasizes the positive qualities associated with some presentations of autism—creativity, increased tolerance for repetition, enhanced empathy, and exceptional memory—while erasing or minimizing the experiences of autistics who are severely disabled.

ADHD Diagnosis Based on “Illogical Rhetoric,” Analysis Claims

11
In a philosophically rigorous article, Spanish researcher Marino Pérez-Álvarez examines the logic of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
A white brain surrounded by a pile of red and white pills

Depression: Psychiatry’s Discredited Theories and Drugs Versus a Sane Model and Approach

80
Psychiatry’s depression outcomes are poor because its bio-chemical-electrical treatments are based on a depression model that science has flushed down the toilet.

The False Memory Syndrome at 30: How Flawed Science Turned into Conventional Wisdom ...

171
Soon after states finally began providing adults who remembered childhood abuse with the legal standing to sue, the FMSF began waging a PR campaign to discredit their memories—in both courtrooms and in the public mind.
babydoll quadruplets

Hereditary Madness? The Genain Sisters’ Tragic Story

14
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.
three identical strangers

“Three Identical Strangers” and the Nature-Nurture Debate

14
Three Identical Strangers is a riveting film describing the story of identical triplets separated at six months of age and reunited in early adulthood. Their story provides no evidence in support of the genetic side of the nature-nurture debate, but it does supply some evidence in favor of the environment.

Why I’m Not Celebrating Being PMDD-Free

35
I’m not celebrating because so many of my sisters are still stricken by this disease. They're remanded to the care of mental health professionals who ply them with therapy and scripts for SSRIs, SNRIs, and benzodiazepines, none of which offer long term relief from the horrors of PMDD.

Dying to Stay Alive: A Ketamine Disaster

32
Ketamine treatment, which was being hailed as a ‘miracle cure’, backfired so spectacularly that it very nearly cost me my life.

Peer-Support Groups Were Right, Guidelines Were Wrong: Dr. Mark Horowitz on Tapering Off Antidepressants

57
In an interview with MIA, Dr. Horowitz discusses his recent article on why tapering off antidepressants can take months or even years.
psychiatrist caution tape

The Most Dangerous Thing You Will Ever Do

76
I am a psychiatrist and I have been watching my profession deteriorate for many decades. This is my most direct written statement about the dangers of stepping inside a modern psychiatrist’s office. My conclusions are the culmination of mountains of research authored by me and by an increasing number of other psychiatrists, scientists and journalists.

Antidepressant Use Leads to Worse Long Term Outcomes, Study Finds

32
Results from a 30-year prospective study demonstrated worse outcomes for people who took antidepressants, even after controlling for gender, education level, marriage, baseline severity, other affective disorders, suicidality, and family history of depression.

Jordan B. Peterson’s Support of Corporal Punishment for Children: A Critique

62
In his book 12 Rules for Life, supposedly based on "cutting-edge research," Jordan Peterson attempts to justify the hitting of children as a form of discipline. But Peterson does so without citing a single study to support his view. In fact, this entire section of the book is bereft of any reference to any research supporting the effectiveness of corporal punishment.

New Book Deconstructs Ideology of Cognitive Therapy

76
CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.

The Prescription that Changed My Life

21
What I have learned is that benzos don’t discriminate. They don’t care that you have a master’s degree or that you are a good person in the community or that you were just doing what the doctors told you to do and you were woefully ignorant and misinformed of their dangers.
An illustration of a doctor falling headfirst into a door in a giant brain, his feet kicking outside

Response to Criticism of Our Serotonin Paper

Criticisms of the paper were contradictory. Some psychiatrists said that no one ever really believed the serotonin theory. Yet the public does believe it, and are very surprised to learn that it is a myth.