US Considering Policies That Will Lead to Mass Death Of Psychiatric Patients
Being a psychiatric patient likely puts you at much greater risk for illness or dying from COVID-19. While most of the talk about "mental health in the time of the pandemic" focuses on mindfulness, ways to relieve your stress, and the accessibility to psychiatrists during social distancing, this reality of COVID-19 and mental health is being overlooked.
The Persistent, Misdirected Search for Causes of Trauma-based Suffering
In the United States and other countries that have a military, there is often a great deal of talk about supporting veterans, but way too often, research aimed at learning what will be helpful is misguided and can even be harmful. The same applies to nonveterans who have been through traumatic experiences. Two new studies exemplify such wrongheaded approaches.
Joint Statement on COVID-19 and Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities
During this global pandemic, organizations have come together to issue a joint statement making recommendations to governments on how to respect and ensure the human rights of people with psychosocial disabilities, who are among the groups more vulnerable to human rights violations as well as infection with and severity of the illness.
The Perils of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising
The job of educating the public on common medical conditions and the range, efficacy, benefits, and risks of potential treatment options should be undertaken by an independent and objective government health agency, not a for-profit, multi-billion dollar industry with a conflict of interest.
The Cost of Being Psychotic in America
People living with psychosisâpeople like meâare dying because we are being discriminated against by people whoâd rather see us hurt than attempt to work with us and give us the decency and respect that should be accorded us as a human right. And nobody deserves to be assaulted or shot after theyâve reached out for help.
Paula J. Caplan – Listen to a Veteran
This week on MIA Radio, we chat with Paula J. Caplan, clinical and research psychologist, author of books and plays, playwright, actor, director, and activist. Paula is also a passionate and steadfast advocate for service members, veterans and their families.
My Hospital Discharge Summary: An Intriguing Work of Fiction
I recalled a brief intercourse with a lady two months earlier that went something like this: âWhy donât you want to take medication?â to which I replied, âBecause I think psychiatry is a sham.â Needless to say, my response hastily resulted in a temporary though adequately lengthy loss of my autonomy.
Tending Hearts and Minds: Changing the Mental Health Paradigm in Our Schools
Our school professionals are under constant pressure to help funnel children into the mental health system and ultimatelyâand tragically for manyâtoward psychotropic drugs. So we designed a professional development symposium to address alternatives.
Psychiatry and the Stupidification of America
There are three steps to modern psychiatryâs successful business formula: 1. Get people to think that theyâre stupid even though theyâre smart. 2. Train them to actually think stupidly. 3. Directly stupidify them with chemicals.
Iatrogenic Domino: I Was Poisoned by Polypharmacy
I did not suddenly develop some perverse form of mental illness out of thin air. IÂ was a victim of repeated misdiagnoses, unrecognized adverse drug reactions/drug toxicity, and profound polypharmacy.
From FACT to POD: How a FACT Team Integrated Open Dialogue
Work with open dialogue always starts with a "network meeting" in which the person of concern is invited to talk with members of their social network (i.e., family, friends, co-workers) and at least two professionals from the care team. The main guideline was "nothing about you, without you."
National Boards of Health Are Unresponsive to Children Driven to Suicide by Depression Pills
Peter C. GĂžtzsche reports what happened, or rather did not happen, when he contacted National Boards of Health in eight countries with his serious concern that the use of depression pills in children is increasing and leads to more suicides. The continued official denial that these drugs cause suicide and that something substantial needs to be done is appalling.
The Psychiatric Narrative & The Boston Globe: Violence, Force, & Derogatory Labels Â
The Boston Globe recently published an atrocious opinion piece, âMassachusetts law meant to protect people with mental illness may make them sicker.â Though framed as an attempt to shed light on a need for better mental health laws, the piece insults those of us of who have been labeled with mental health diagnoses.
A Book Review of “Acceptance: The Defining Voice of Validation”
This is no goody-goody book but one that compellingly draws our attention to what in our hurried, overburdened lives too easily gets lost, that is, the essential human need for acceptance and validation. Validation, the author says, "is a joining with the distressed person to reflect or give voice to that personâs feelings accurately."
Please Stop Saying Depression Is Like Diabetes
It seems more and more common for people who consider themselves mental health advocates to make the argument that âmental illness is like physical illness.â Have you heard this âdepression is like diabetesâ tactic? I have a hard time seeing how this is advocating for those in emotional distress.
Does Longer Duration of Untreated Psychosis Cause Worse Outcomes?
New research counters the long-held assumption that a longer duration of untreated psychosis is associated with worse outcomes.
Psychology is Not What You Think: An Interview with Critical Psychologist Ian Parker
MIAâs Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Ian Parker about critical psychology, discourse and political action, and whether psychology has anything left to offer.
To My Black Crows of Wisdom
Some might wonder why I'm still stumbling in the desert when there are cars and jobs and museums downtown, but really, the turquoise dawn is in the canyons. The thing is, my people seem to need this nutrition, the rarified medicine of this particular cactus and that specific root that I haven't found anywhere else.
How Radical Women Changed Psychiatry in the 1970s
Womenâs issues and mental health were embedded in radical mental medicine fifty years ago. Feminism and sexual politics in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a reassessment of gender-based hierarchies in the mental health establishment, and transformative change was the result.
6 Ways Trauma Might Inform Your Current Life
The following are some ways in which trauma commonly impacts a trauma survivorâs life. Imagine, as you read, how different our society might be if systems of care and justice were as trauma-informed as your life might be.
Beatrice Birch â Inner Fire and Soul Health
An interview with Beatrice Birch who is the initiator of the residential healing community Inner Fire. For over 35 years, Beatrice worked as a Hauschka artistic therapist in integrative clinics and inspiring initiatives in England, Holland and the USA. We discuss how Inner Fire works to help the people that attend, and how a core principle of their healing work is that âhuman being are creators, not victimsâ.
What Makes People Hear Voices?
Researchers treat voicehearing as the sign of a disease or a disorder or a dysfunction of the brain. That it might be something moreâa relationship of some kind with God that developed in this way as part of our evolution over eonsâdoes not seem to have occurred to anyone who has worked in the field of psychology.
UN Report: Involuntary Psychiatric Interventions “May Well Amount to Torture”
Such interventions, the report says, "generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or 'correcting' the victimâs personality, behaviour or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering."
Psychiatry Needs a New Metaphor
The metaphor of âmental diseaseâ is doing more harm than good. Rather than being a tool for communication, it has crossed the boundary from a metaphor to a theory that underpins much of what happens within public mental health services. This places psychiatrists in a position of dutiful compliance with what is essentially a fallacious model.
Benzodiazepines Linked to More Emergency Department Visits
Recent research implicates benzodiazepines as being involved in a high rate of emergency department visits in the US.
