Fighting Unjustified Commitment in Wisconsin: Leslie’s Story
Leslie was not experiencing any depression, psychosis, or suicidal or homicidal ideation. She was not a danger to herself or others. Yet she had been picked up by police, placed in handcuffs, and brought to the hospital, and her social worker intended to have her placed in a group home.
Non-Gender Affirmative Treatment Detrimental to Mental Health
Gender identity conversion efforts impact psychological distress and lifetime suicidality in transgender people.
Loneliness Increases Risk of Severe ‘Common Mental Disorders’
Loneliness was found to both predict and be reinforced by severe common mental disorders.
Humanizing Mental Healthcare by Reducing Coercive Practices
A review of the literature demonstrates that coercive practices lack empirical support and violate human rights.
Mental Health Services Turned My Daughter’s Crisis into a Way of Life
My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?
Countervailing Forces Against Ritalin Use in France
A new study in the journal Social Science and Medicine explores why French children take stimulants far less than children in the United States. The study looks at how particular forces in society, in concert with government agencies, became an effective check on stimulant marketing for kids in France.
Steven C. Hayes – A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters
An interview with Dr. Steven C. Hayes about his recently released book, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters, which uses the principles of acceptance and commitment therapy to help readers overcome negative thoughts and feelings, turn pain into purpose, and build a meaningful life.
Climate Change, Mental Health and Collective Action: An Interview with Jennifer Freeman
In an interview with MIA's Akansha Vaswani, narrative therapist Jennifer Freeman calls for a shift away from individualistic approaches to 'eco-anxiety' and toward responses that connect us all to a counter-tsunami of action for the planet.
Functional Medicine: My Path Out of Psychiatry
My blood work indicated a host of issues that had been lurking under the surface of my “psychiatric diagnoses” for years. I’d seen various mental health professionals and none had recommended these types of tests, or stopped to think about any underlying factors, aside from the well-known “serotonin myth.”
Clinical Trials Show Antidepressants “Not Beneficial in the Long Term”
Clinical trials also consistently fail to measure and report long-term harmful effects.
Memories of a Childhood in a Mental Hospital
My stay at the hospital had no impact on the problem that led to my admission. But it did exacerbate other problems and change me in fundamental ways. I am a deformed product of that ‘cutting-edge facility’ and the ‘treatments’ I received there — social isolation, pills and shots, ice bath and ECT.
Clinical Guidelines for Depression Need Urgent Revision
A coalition of 35 health organizations expressed serious concerns that the NICE guideline for adult depression may cause clinical harm—they demand “full and proper” revisions.
Researchers: “Antidepressants Should Not be Used for Adults with Major Depressive Disorder”
A new review, published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, concludes that antidepressants should not be used as the risks outweigh evidence for benefits.
Forced-Treatment Advocacy Group Cherry-Picks Data to Support Agenda (Again)
Did the Treatment Advocacy Center actually uncover research proving that poor psychiatric medication adherence plays a "significant" role in whether people diagnosed with schizophrenia become violent? If such research does exist, is it as compelling as TAC described?
A Biopsychosocial Model Beyond the Mind-Body Split
Can a renewed biopsychosocial approach, grounded in an updated philosophy, foster person-centered medicine, and psychiatry?
A Doctor Cures His Bipolar Diagnosis Without Psychiatry: Review of ‘I’
I details what happened to Jeffrey Fidel when he quit psychiatric drugs and embraced an alternative, non-medical healing approach — a set of philosophical and spiritual teachings known as the Tao Te Ching and Hua Hu Ching.
Peter Kinderman – Why We Need a Revolution in Mental Health Care
An interview with Professor Peter Kinderman about his new book, A Manifesto for Mental Health, Why We Need a Revolution in Mental Health Care, in which he proposes a rejection of invalid diagnostic labels, practical help rather than medication, and a recognition that distress is usually an understandable human response to life's challenges.
Ambushed by Antidepressant Withdrawal: The Escape Story
I’m alive. More than 30,000 veterans in the past decade alone are not. I was not warned of the risks of this drug. I was not told that once on it, I might never be able to get off it, or the nightmare that would ensue when I tried. I know millions of others were not told either.
Time’s Up: Culture of Denial Impacts Mental Health of Sexual Abuse Survivors
Study finds that not believing sexual abuse survivors often leads to self-blame and mental health issues.
Decontextualized Depression and PTSD Diagnoses Fail Indigenous Communities
A case analysis of an American Indian woman illustrates how the DSM diagnostic criteria misrepresent the lives of indigenous people.
Marci Webber Granted a Conditional Discharge
In 2010, Marci Webber killed her four-year-old daughter during a psychotic episode that erupted while she was on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity. A judge has now ruled that she should be discharged from a mental hospital.
How Social Dynamics at School Impact Teen Suicide
Teen suicide risk is influenced by relationships with adults and teachers, perceived popularity, close friendships, and school connectedness.
Antidepressant-Induced Mania: When My Mind Became a Literal Hell
The amount of anxiety I felt on these medications — and for a couple of years after — was unfathomable. I felt as though I was trapped in an air-tight vat, constantly gasping for breath. And my thoughts were guided by my state of constant worry and panic.
Zoloft Does Not Improve Depression, Even in Severe Cases, Study Finds
Despite their finding, the researchers suggest that SSRIs be given to people who do not meet criteria for depression or anxiety.
Tensions in Mental Health Care in China: An Interview with Zhiying Ma
Anthropologist Zhiying Ma explores mental health care in China, including tensions between Western psychiatry and socially-oriented local frameworks.
