Learning a Different Way: An Interview with Maori Psychiatrist Diana Kopua
MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Diana Kopua about the Mahi a Atua approach, the global mental health movement, and the importance of language and narratives in how we understand our world and ease our suffering.
End Kendra’s Law Now: Racist, Classist Practices in Involuntary Psychiatry Persist
In addition to involuntary outpatient commitment being an assault on and targeting people who are living in or near poverty, the statistics demonstrate racial disparities in the application of involuntary outpatient commitment.
Positive Antidepressant Study “Misleading” and “Erroneous”
An analysis of last year’s positive finding in The Lancet about antidepressant efficacy shows errors, obfuscations, and misrepresentations.
Why I Take Drugs and Don’t Plan to Stop
If the drugs I am prescribed did not benefit me overall, believe me, I would no more take them willingly than I would swallow rat poison. I went through many attempts to wean myself, but invariably the loss of my ability to do art brought me to the place where I went back on them. I remain on them and I want to remain on them.
System Change Toward a Green Movement in Mental Health
As a counter narrative, I believe that understanding system change and reform in mental health with a "green" lens makes use of a powerful theme which is increasingly accepted — and it lays out a road map to make innovative programs and initiatives the new norm for system-wide responses to mental health challenges.
Lack of Clear Guidelines Prevent Clinicians from Reducing Antipsychotics
A recently published study from noted critical psychiatry expert Joanna Moncrieff explored the barriers that prevent clinicians from helping service users in discontinuing or...
Benzodiazepine Awareness 2019
A special set of interviews for W-BAD 2019. We speak with Project Manager for W-BAD Rocks of Kindness, Janelle. We also chat with physician and Director of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition Christy Huff MD and we hear from Stephen Wright MD, addiction specialist and medical consultant to the Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices.
Equal Legal Capacity or ‘Supported Decision-Making’?
At a recent conference on legal capacity, I was struck by the failure of another invited expert to adhere to the paradigm of supported decision-making as articulated by the CRPD Committee. We still need to work to ensure that this paradigm is well understood and appreciated, despite the progress made in national reforms.
Antidepressant Use More Than Doubles Risk of Suicide Attempts
Throughout the past two decades, studies have warned of increased suicide rates in those taking antidepressants, especially in children and adolescents. Researchers also documented...
On Cognitive Liberty: A Principle to Rally Behind
The concept of cognitive liberty is valuable—one might even say necessary—precisely because it goes to the core of what we are as human beings. Correspondingly, it unmasks psychiatry for the profound human rights violator that it is. It reveals such transgression as the essence of what psychiatry is actually all about.
Being-Towards-Suicide
Is it not the very capacity for suicide that makes us human? This capacity, this freedom, of autonomy’s jurisdiction to extend to the outermost seconds of life, namely death, is an innate part of humanity and thus consciousness. Accepting death as a possibility embraces the finitude of our existence.
Why Mad in Italy?
The Italian mental health system, like the majority of them around the world, struggles with accepting a model based on principles of Recovery, which highlights individual and communal mental health needs, social determinants of emotional distress, integration of physical and psychological care and quality of life.
Prepared, Yet Unprepared: My Involuntary Hospitalization Adventure
Overall I learned a great deal during my hospital adventure. The whole experience seemed like a comedy of errors. For me the only people there who were truly out of touch with reality were staff members. All of the patients were very present, albeit in some distress. The reasons for their distress were not unreasonable.
Traffic Pollution Linked to Anxiety and Depression in Childhood
New research explores the impact of exposure to traffic-related air pollution on levels of anxious and depressive symptoms in childhood.
Researchers Propose “Metaphor Analysis” for Understanding the Experiences of People who Hear Voices
A new study, published in the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches, explores ways that metaphor operates in the lived-experiences of individuals who...
The Creation of a Conceptual Alternative to the DSM: An Interview with Dr. Lucy...
MIA's Zenobia Morrill interviews Lucy Johnstone about the reaction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework, her life influences, and her hopes for the future.
Anticholinergic Psychiatric Drugs Linked to a 50% Increase in Dementia
People who take anticholinergic drugs, such as antidepressants and antipsychotics, are at a 50% higher risk of dementia.
UN Report Criticizes Biomedical Approach to Mental Health
UN official writes that States should focus instead on resolving social inequality and injustice as determinants of health and human rights.
Against the Odds: ‘Unimproved Schizophrenic’ to Yale PhD
Forty years after I had first been admitted to the hospital, I was ready to confront my past. So, I sent for my hospital records, and I read them. As an experienced clinician, I recognized immediately what the doctors hadn’t been able to see in 1960: my problem wasn’t ‘schizophrenia’ but PTSD, connected with incest.
A Guide to Long-Acting Neuroleptics: Education or Promotion?
The National Council for Behavioral Health has released a new pamphlet titled “Guide to Long-Acting Medications for Providers and Organizations.” By downplaying some aspects of the available science, the pamphlet implicitly acts as a promotional tool for the pharmaceutical industry.
Report Addresses Barriers to Voting for Those Diagnosed with Mental Disorders
People diagnosed with mental disorders face systemic barriers to exercising their right to vote.
Researchers Call for Integration of Social Risk Factors in Mental Health Care
An understanding of the importance of social risk factors in mental health outcomes has professionals calling for better models and integrated treatments.
The Pill Shaming Phenomenon: What’s It Really About?
At best, the underpinnings of the ‘pill shaming’ accusation are misguided. At worst, they represent a concerted effort on the part of the current power structure to use us against ourselves (and they don’t need any more help). It’s the same old story packaged up as if it were something new and ultra woke.
The Voices My Daughter Hears
The voices were extraordinary; in a way, they were like ghosts. I could not see them, but only divine them by the turmoil they stirred up in Annie. They were not polite house ghosts who knew when to leave; they were ne’er-do-wells she could not get rid of. They were tormentors and torturers, testing the limits of her sanity, blackmailing her into submission.
Study Links MDMA Use and Self-Reported Empathy
Users of the substance ‘MDMA’ are reported to have higher emotional empathy than users of other drugs.
