Issues

Pointing to recent high-profile incidents of police violence, MIA Blogger Leah Harris discusses in Truthout the intersections and parallels between police or public discrimination...

Canoe.ca reports on the doings of Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Kutcher, previously exposed by MIA Blogger Alison Bass for his role as a co-author...

In many respects it is difficult to fault the report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, recently published by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP)[i]; indeed, as recent posts on Mad in America have observed, there is much to admire in it. Whilst not overtly attacking biomedical interpretations of psychosis, it rightly draws attention to the limitations and problems of this model, and points instead to the importance of contexts of adversity, oppression and abuse in understanding psychosis. But the report makes only scant, fleeting references to the role of cultural differences and the complex relationships that are apparent between such differences and individual experiences of psychosis.

In The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv discusses an apparently common practice among some US universities to expel students who attempt suicide -- even when...

"(A)t least 70 people have died, many of them by suicide, after Tamiflu-induced episodes," reports Newsweek, in an article about the popular anti-flu drug...

I’ve been arguing against calling this movement that I’m a part of a ‘peer’ movement for a long time. What has happened with Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has helped me to crystallize that point. If we do not see what happens to some of us in the psychiatric system as connected to what happens to others because they are black or because they are transgender or because they love someone else of the same expressed gender (or because they live in poverty, etc. etc.), then I’m not sure any of us really, fully understands what it is we are trying to accomplish at all.

Wired examines some of the latest self-surveillance mobile apps that people are using to help themselves manage their own behaviors. "Through the discreet and...

Biopolitical Times discusses the recent historic decision by the government of North Carolina to compensate 7,000 victims of its forced sterilization programs that continued...

In the New Yorker, Maria Konnikova explores various philosophical and scientific questions -- and reviews some of the recent research -- related to possible...

Evidence based care is supposed to drive up standards, ensure uniformity, establish best practice, guide clinicians and protect patients. This should be celebrated. Instead, evidence-based mental health is openly disparaged, and when psychiatrists don’t get the results they want, they ignore them, suppress them, or denounce them. These attitudes have repercussions on the training of psychiatrists.

A new generation of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements is likely to significantly threaten access and cost of healthcare, and limit signatory Governments sovereignty to prioritise health care policy to protect and improve the health of citizens. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a Pacific Rim regional trade agreement involving 12 countries — including New Zealand, Australia and the US — is one such agreement, and it has the potential to significantly alter the domestic environment for health policy-making.

"Disappointing" and "tragedy" are some of the descriptives everyday doctors are using to describe the expanding use of electronic medical records, according to The...

If their clients admit to having suicidal feelings or show evidence of serious psychological problems, how do lawyers' legal responsibilities to their clients change...

McGill University's Laurence J. Kirmayer and Duncan Pedersen examine the core controversies that dog the "global mental health" agenda in a freely available editorial...

Robin Williams had "therapeutic" levels of the tetra-cyclic antidepressant mirtazapine in his blood at the time of his suicide, according to the coroner's report...

Exposure to pesticides is linked to significant increases in suicidal depression in farmers, according to a study by US National Institute of Health researchers...

In the New England Journal of Medicine, Richard Friedman and Marc Stone present very different arguments about the reliability of the body of research...

In my last two posts, Back in the Dark House Again: The Recurrent Nature of Clinical Depression and Am I Having a Breakdown or Breakthrough? Further Reflections on a Depressive Relapse, I have shared my recent relapse into depression. Although it has been tough, when I wake up each morning I am grateful for one thing — I am not suicidal. Others are not as fortunate.

In Gigaom, privacy and security journalist David Meyer discusses the release of a new app from the UK Samaritans called "Radar." The app monitors...

What is the reason that people are 44.3 times more likely to commit suicide if they've visited a psychiatric hospital within the year? AlterNet...

Coercive situations like the one depicted in this blog subtly replicate older times when colonizers dominated Indian people using guns and ammo. In the contemporary times, oppressive mental health systems of colonizers use pills and labels to force-feed ‘civilizing’ principles. This intergenerational comparison might seem more intriguing if you consider that the psychiatric nurse in question was a Commissioned Corps officer in full uniform blues while meeting with this girl in the bunker-like Indian Health Service (IHS) clinic located along “Fort Road.” If you drive straight out along that road for 23 miles, you’ll end up on the park grounds of the actual historic fort where this girl’s ancestors were once bull-whipped for non-compliance.

To help my non-recovery oriented colleagues understand the stigma/resentment associated with ‘borderline personality disorder,’ I simply mention this: “Let’s say I call you and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a referral for you. She’s been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder . . .’” I need to go no further; without fail, my colleague will smile or laugh. We both know that such a referral is a no-no, so much so that it doesn’t even have to be mentioned; it is a given.

Both Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz dated the beginnings of a distinct Western institutional response to madness to the late 1500s-early 1600s. But while for Foucault it started in France with the creation of the public “hôpital général” for the poor insane, for Szasz it began in England with the appearance of for-profit madhouses where upper class families shut away inconvenient relatives. Regardless of their different ideas on the beginnings of anything resembling a mental health system, both authors agree that it was characterized by the coercive incarceration of a specially labeled group.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publication Psychiatric News has released an article about the recent British Medical Journal study finding strong links between long-term...

The Ottawa Citizen has published two feature stories exploring a growing collaboration between scientists involved in the US National Institute of Mental Health-funded brain...