Parachute NYC Peer Support Program Presents Challenges and Opportunities
Anthropologists study Parachute NYC to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing peer support and Open Dialogue practices.
New CDC Data Underscores Need to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences
New prevention strategies are needed based on our increasing understanding of the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
On Human Rights and Surviving Race: A Conversation with Celia Brown
An interview with Celia Brown: psychiatric survivor, human rights activist, and president of MindFreedom International.
No Matter Which Measure You Use, Antidepressants Aren’t That Effective
Researchers compared the efficacy of antidepressants using different rating scales and found them to be no different—just slightly better than placebo, and not meeting the criteria for clinical significance.
Anthropologists Contemplate the Future Role of Psychiatry
Anthropologists who study the psychiatric field recently had papers published in two highly influential journals. While they both call for or describe reform initiatives, they point us in different directions with regard to the future role of psychiatrists. With a shift in resources, might psychiatry finally get it right?
Psychotherapy Less Effective for People in Poverty and Those on Antidepressants
A new study finds poorer depression and anxiety outcomes in psychotherapy for people in economically deprived neighborhoods and those on antidepressants.
Lindsay Church: Military Mental Health – Journey from the Brink to Recovery
US Navy Veteran Lindsay Church describes how a surgical procedure led to her being prescribed 16 medications in 18 months and ultimately to consider taking her life. Lindsay now focuses on supporting minority veterans through social engagement and community building.
Involuntary Obedience: Rituals of Humiliation Disguised as ‘Care’
Like slavery took such a long time to be ‘officially’ forbidden, psychiatric hospitals will be with us for some time yet. Their masters, the doctors or administrators, no longer give beatings with their hands but with the far more treacherous chemicals that allow them to keep a good conscience and distribute what are beatings nevertheless.
Hearing Voices Network Launches Family & Friends Support Group
One of the HVN's fundamental principles is that "the person having these experiences is in the best position to decide or discover what they mean" and thus each person must "not try to speak for" another. The challenge for a family group will likely be for members to move past speaking about our loved ones to find or imagine the space where we ourselves are liberated.
Dehumanization Linked to Poorer Mental and Physical Health
A new review finds that dehumanizing language, including self-dehumanization, is connected to anxiety, depression, and disordered eating.
High Time for Anarchism in Mental Health
Anarchism has much to offer the debate. It can present a clear voice saying: Liberty is not an obstacle for quality treatment, it is rather the very basis of it. Research shows that the anti-authoritarian elements in methods such as Open Dialogue and Stabilizing Homes actually promote a stronger, fuller recovery in patients.
Parent Marijuana Use Associated With Substance Use in Children
A new study examines longitudinal, intergenerational patterns associated with marijuana use.
Deep Brain Stimulation and Deeply Biased Researchers, Revisited
In the Washington Post last week, a new treatment was being advanced as a breakthrough for opioid addiction. What was this miraculous new intervention? Implanting electrodes deep in the brain, and using a battery implanted elsewhere in the body to zap the addict and keep him from relapsing.
Fear and Belief in “Chemical Imbalance” Prevent People from Coming Off Antidepressants
Researchers interviewed people who were given medical advice to discontinue antidepressants.
Refugees and Immigrants Experience Increased Medical Coercion
Refugees and first-generation immigrants of African descent are at greater risk of experiencing medical coercion when compared to immigrants of other visible minority communities in Canada.
Training Health Workers in Therapy Leads to Improvements and Less Medication Use
A Nigerian study finds that more than three-quarters of patients improved, even when only 13% were prescribed medication.
“We Need a New Paradigm” — Rethinking Psychiatry’s Hospitalization Survey
Rethinking Psychiatry put out a survey on people’s experiences of psychiatric hospitalization in the Pacific Northwest. The results showed tremendous dissatisfaction, with the overwhelming majority of respondents reporting that they did not feel safe, secure or respected in the hospital.
Capitalism Makes Solutions Impossible: A Review of ‘Rebel Minds’
Psychiatry’s role, Rebel Minds makes clear, is to prepare the population for capitalism’s purposes, and to cull the humans who it fails to prepare. The relationship is symbiotic: psychiatry trades in medicalizing and biologicizing human suffering, which capitalism produces an endless supply of; it’s a match made in heaven.
Exporting Psychological Concepts Associated With Gender May Have Unintended Consequences
New qualitative research finds a shift in the meaning of gender as it enters the local lexicon of people in rural Malawi, in turn having negative ramifications for those it is meant to help.
Gender Affirming Interventions Reduce Mental Health Issues, Study Suggests
Transgender individuals who underwent gender-affirming surgeries demonstrated significant reductions in mental health concerns.
The Revolt Against Psychiatry: A Book Review
The focus of Bonnie Burstow’s new book, The Revolt Against Psychiatry, “is not the problems that psychiatry presents but the attempt to counter them.” Burstow asks, “What pressures might we bring to bear to loosen the grip of psychiatry? We habitually seem to be losing the battle; so how do we turn the situation around?”
How to Integrate Culture into Mental Health Care
Researchers explore how culturally responsive services can create greater equity in mental health care.
Got a Gene for That? The Latest from the Chronicles of Gene Worshiping
Among the latest examples of profiteering from the gene fad, there is now an app to determine your personal level of gayness, and researchers claim to have finally found real biomarkers to diagnose schizophrenia through a simple hair sample! Make no mistake: this is about the religion of scientism, not about science.
Psychiatry in Need of “Fundamental Rethinking”
Prominent researchers in psychiatry urge the field to move away from a rigid biological focus toward social and psychological perspectives to meet the needs of today’s world.
Textbooks Provide Misleading Information on the Neurobiology of ADHD
When it comes to ADHD, some researchers suggest that medical textbooks provide inaccurate and misleading information.
