Letting Negative Projective Identifications Come, and Letting Them Go
In the instant I perceive that I’ve succeeded in inducing fear and shame in you, I can feel a palpable relief from my own fear and shame. This process is called projective identification. I gradually learned as a therapist to be aware of when a person seemed to be mysteriously able to create distressful emotional states in me — states that they were themselves subjectively feeling, but weren’t fully aware of.
I Was God: And You Were A Figment Of My Imagination
The drugs combined with my desire to know how life worked and what made a human broke down all past social conditioning of my individual self. I realized I was God. So was everyone else and I shared with anyone who would listen, but found no one who could understand or navigate the territory. There was little internet to speak of then and no Google to find others who experienced life as I was, so I voyaged on my own as best I could.
The Impervious Surface of Professional Help: A Letter to My Therapist
Why is it that members of the community who have no formal education in psychology or counseling or therapy like myself are receiving more training in compassion and effective responses to the public health crisis that is suicide than “professionals?” My coworkers at the crisis center are far less pathologizing, cold and judgmental than those with licenses to “help.”
Adolescent Suicide and The Black Box Warning: STAT Gets It All Wrong
STAT recently published an opinion piece arguing that the black box warning on antidepressants has led to an increase in adolescent suicide.
It is easily debunked, and reveals once again how our society is regularly misled about research findings related to psychiatric drugs. STAT has lent its good name to a false story that, unfortunately, will resonate loudly with the public.
Research Emphasizes Association Between Inflammation, Diet, and Depression
Study finds adults with a pro-inflammatory diet have a greater incidence of depression.
What Stops People From Using Exercise to Treat Depression?
New research examines important factors of adherence when prescribing exercise to treat depression.
When Rain Comes, Words Are Unnecessary: Our Search for a Better Way
As stories wove together, Ron turned to the son and said, “You know, I don’t think you were ever schizophrenic at all.” There was an extended silence as this statement sunk in and the group drew closer to hear what came next. But the rain fell harder until all sound was drowned out. We sat together, feeling the rain soak into our ears, our bodies, the ground; words were unnecessary.
Review Examines Causes and Consequences of Overdiagnosis in Primary Care
A new review in BMJ investigates overdiagnosis in primary care settings, where the majority of mental health care is provided in the U.S.
Why Mainstream Psychiatry is Ableist
Psychiatry offers medication that can only be tolerated by the extremely able bodied. Those who are already physically ill or disabled will be made more and more ill by psychiatry over time, and the field of medicine marginalizes disabled folks by not addressing these issues. Many differently abled people are not aware of how vulnerable their bodies may be to these drugs, and doctors are unlikely to tell them.
Large Increase in Poison Control Calls for Children Taking ADHD Drugs
New data shows that calls to US poison control centers have increased significantly for children taking stimulant ADHD drugs.
Prolonged Exposure Reduces Dropout Rates and Symptoms for Individuals with Complex Trauma
New study finds that intensive prolonged exposure is a promising treatment option for individuals with multiple trauma experiences.
Waiting for Gravity
Of course one wishes for an easy answer, but the things that conspire to drive a person over the edge are too numerous and varied ever to point and say, it was this one; one can never really be so certain. No one can say it wasn’t that one, or that it wasn’t really all of those together, or that, when it came my own turn for “insanity,” I wasn’t standing halfway over the edge already, waiting for gravity to kick in and for me to fall.
The Psychoanalytic Struggle Against the DSM
Let us go back to 1975: psychoanalytic psychiatry was then quasi-hegemonic, and psychopathological models were accepted and used by most practitioners; other behaviourist practices were of minor importance and psychoanalysts had learned to make use of the advances of pharmacology. And yet a shadow was already looming over the picture.
SSRI Exposure in Pregnancy Alters Fetal Neurodevelopment
Alterations in gray matter and white matter development found in infants of mothers taking SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy.
Publication Bias Inflates Perceived Efficacy of Depression Treatments, Study Finds
Researchers report the cumulative effects of major biases on the apparent efficacy of antidepressant and psychotherapy treatments.
Suicides Are Increasing – And So Are Antidepressant Prescriptions
Disturbingly, our study and others reveal that the black box warning is now ignored in many countries, since antidepressant prescriptions for children are on the rise again. Despite increasing certainty that antidepressants are ineffective and likely cause suicidal behavior in young people, psychiatry continues to claim that they reduce suicide risk.
Uncomfortable Relations: Reflections on Learning From Psychiatric Survivors
I increasingly think we can only reach greater understanding by working through our own experiences first, and then, if we can, alongside survivors. That will help us become more open to survivor knowledge. For example, we may need to work through our own need for control and understanding. It’s helpful to consider our own reactions to distress or madness — in ourselves and others.
Can Education Level Predict Prescription Drug Misuse in Young Adults?
A new study examines the extent to which patterns in prescription drug misuse and substance use disorder symptoms can be predicted by education level
Catching My Breath After A Panicked Journey
$24,000 later and no one knew what was wrong with me. They sent me home with a bag of pills. After being in the hospital, I developed a fear and mistrust of doctors. My general practitioner suggested antidepressants. More pills. It was all they could recommend. I wouldn’t take them. My anxiety worsened. I was obsessed with the idea that if I slept, I would die. So, I stayed awake as much as I could. For an entire year, this was how I lived.
Sociologist Questions Effectiveness and Ethics of Mental Health Services
Medical sociologist David Pilgrim argues that mental health care is neither effective nor “kindly,” as it often relies on flawed research and ineffective treatments.
Peer Support Reduces Chances of Psychiatric Readmission
A randomized control trial finds that receiving peer support from individuals with similar lived experiences reduces one’s risk of readmission to an acute crisis unit.
A Time For Rain: Teaching Our Children About Sadness
The only way out of the epidemic of feeling-people-turned-medicated-psychiatric-patients is to rebrand and reframe feeling as a cultural collective. And I believe it starts with our messaging as parents and our orientation toward shadow elements like anger and sadness. We have to model a conscious relationship to our own dark parts, and we have to show our children what it looks like to move through these spaces. Feelings can be messy, wild, and sometimes ugly to our constrained sensibilities.
Envisioning Psychiatric Drug Freedom
Psychiatric meds can shut down the emotions and consciousness enough to make it possible to tolerate dynamics that would inspire rage or surges of empowered activity without the meds. It can be helpful to look closely at these blocks and start to create a map to freedom, understanding that it is a complex process that involves not only the physiology of the body of the individual taking meds, but the architecture of the social system around that person.
Call to Monitor Adverse Effects of Antipsychotics in Youth
Researchers point to the risks of using antipsychotics with youth and caution against the practice.
Resistance Matters: The Activism of Don Weitz
I have spent much of the past few years compiling and editing Resistance Matters: An Antipsychiatry Activist Speaks Out, which will document the long and rich activist career of Don Weitz, the grandpappy of Canadian antipsychiatry. Before I met Don in 1986, I thought I was the only person in the world who didn’t believe in “schizophrenia” (with which I had been diagnosed), and who realized that psychiatry was completely bogus.
