A Mother’s Worst Nightmare Continues
Marci Webber is a single mom who experienced a medication-induced psychotic episode, during which she killed her daughter, believing it would "save" her, and then tried to kill herself. For over seven years now, Marci and I have been trying unsuccessfully to get the mental health system and judicial system to acknowledge the true cause ofĀ her crime and let her go.
The Scientism of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Calling ADHD a diagnosis, i.e., something with the capacity to explain the behaviours that it describes, is like saying the headache isĀ causingĀ the pain in my head or the inattention isĀ causedĀ by inattention. Scientism has turned ADHD from a vague, difficult to pin down concept into a fact of culture masquerading as a fact of nature.
Study Confirms Higher Suicide Risk for Sexual Minority Adolescents
Researchers report that sexual minority adolescents have considered, planned, and attempted suicide substantially more than their heterosexual peers.
Psychiatryās War on Free Will
Psychiatryās main role was always to forcibly negate the free will of societyās outliers. Its methods included forced removal, confinement, and electrical, surgical, and chemical lobotomy. But then it sought to lure non-outliers into willingly allowing psychiatry to negate their free will, too. So it devised ways to trick people into "lobotomizing" themselves.
Michael Fontaine: What the Ancient World Can Teach Us About Emotional Distress
An interview with Professor of classical languages and literature, Michael Fontaine. Michael is Associate Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education at Cornell University in New York. We discuss what Ancient Greece and Rome can teach us about psychiatry and the concept of mental disorders.
I Used to Be Psychotic and Then I Heard a Voice Again
When I heard a voice speak to me last week, I was experiencing a response to significant events ā the voice was a way for my mind to intentionally contain a confusing personal event or experience. As a professional, I am grateful for the powerful reminder that hearing voices is something to embrace and support, which includes putting aside my own prejudices.
Why Should Suicide (Or Voluntary Death) Be a Civil Right?
Regardless of what one's moral stance is on the value of life, or the meaning of death, it is time to recognize that there are people whose views differ from ours, and that we do not have the right to force them to live (and die) the way we want to. We all die; it's the journey that matters, not the destination.
Psychiatry’s Failure to Acknowledge Who I Really Am
This is not how the mental health system should treat "psychotic" people. Mental health providers should treat them with compassion, empathy, respect, love and understanding. With a circle of loving and understanding people surrounding a person in crisis, I have no doubt that most "psychosis" would normalize in time.
Confirmed: Las Vegas Shooter on Benzos
A Las Vegas newspaper has released the autopsy blood toxicology report for Stephen Paddock. Three metabolites (breakdown products) of Valium were found in his blood: nordiazepam, oxazepam, and temazepam. Paddockās autopsy report confirms he was a regular user of Valium, at least in the days leading up to the shootings.
Researchers Challenge Industry-Friendly Depression Guideline
Review of a new mixed depression guideline reveals financial bias of guideline developers and lack of evidence supporting recommendations for prescribing of antipsychotics.
Spending on Social Services Improves Health Outcomes
Canadian study finds that social service spending is associated with a decrease in mortality and increase in life expectancy.
Who Gets to Define āPeer Support?ā
The definition of āpeer supportā should be straightforward. But over the years, āpeer supportā seems to have morphed into āpeer specialistāĀ ā or, to put it more bluntly, psychiatric survivorsā experiential knowledge has been co-opted by the system. How does peer-developed peer support differ from theĀ peer staff model? And what can we do about this?
Seeking Justice
My life flashed before my eyes as my entire medical history over the last decade was rewritten from having a genetic brain disease to being a victim of a medical scam. It was bittersweet, for I realized that I was not sick and dying, but I had been robbed of so many years of my life due to the psychiatristās lies. Now I am suing my former psychiatrist for damages.
Multisystemic Therapy No More Effective than Standard Care for Antisocial Behavior
Study counters previous evidence supporting multisystemic therapy, finding adolescents are just as likely to have out-of-home placements when receiving multisystemic therapy versus management as usual.
Reflections on the Torture Parents and the Pedophile Olympic Doctor
Parents should be very cautious about entrusting their children to any institution ā private boarding schools, ballet schools, training facilities away from home. We are all best off raising our adolescents subject to our oversight, rather than entrusting them to others. Those who should protect us from trauma are harming our children.
Study Finds Heavy Metal Music Beneficial to Mental Health
A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.
What Would a Truly Integrated System of Care Look Like?
Imagine that you were the director of a health insurance company and you had just agreed to provide health coverage to several hundred thousand people and you will have to fund health care including mental health and alcohol/drug care too. The purpose of this blog is to show the kind of system you would have to design.
CDC Reports Increased Psychostimulant Prescriptions in Women of Reproductive Age
Psychostimulant prescriptions have increased by 344% (from 2003 to 2015) for women of reproductive age (15-44 years old).
Problem Behaviors are Medicalized in White Children and Criminalized in Black Children
Race often determines whether school punishment or therapy and drugs will be used to address childrenās problem behaviors.
Shock Class Action ā Case Update
In September of 2017, DK Law Group, LLPĀ filed a Class Action ComplaintĀ against the manufacturers of ECT shock devices, alleging that they caused injury to patients by withholding from the FDA data relating to serious iatrogenic brain injuries resulting from ECT. The following developments have taken place since then.
Beyond the Medicalization of Insomnia
There is hope that the truth about sleeping pills will become more commonplace. As it does, however, we are faced with an even greater challenge: to move beyond the medicalization of insomnia in order to help people sleep better naturally. The alternative paradigm I suggest is that nutrition is a primary cure for insomnia.
Is Binge Eating Disorder Just Another Made-Up Disease?
If a person binges habitually, upon sensing certain stimuli the pancreas prepares the body with insulin, and simultaneously, the stomach prepares by getting more acidic. This means that for many of us, the drive to binge is a physical need. Therapy blames the patient for ābad copingā when all she is doing is responding to her body's signals.
Estimates of Depression Prevalence are Exaggerated, Study Finds
New research demonstrates that common methods for estimating depression prevalence lead to overestimation and exaggerated statistics.
Targeting Hypocrisy Reduces Islamophobia and Collective Blame of Muslims
Interventions calling attention to participantsā hypocrisy proved effective in reducing Islamophobia and collective blame of Muslims for individual acts of violence.
Antidepressants Save People From Suicide, Right?
If depression leads to suicide and antidepressants like SSRIs resolve depression, we could decrease suicide rates by increasing the number of antidepressant prescriptions, right? Yet researchers found the opposite in a new study from Sweden that examined antidepressants in the context of suicide.
