psychiatric drugs and violence

Prescripticide: A Proposal for Action and a Request for Your Help

221
The primary factor protecting psychiatry’s unwarranted power and authority is that it is perceived as shielding society from folks who are believed to be dangerous. It would seem, then, that one logical step toward reducing society’s trust in biological psychiatry would be to reveal the evidence of a significant correlation between theĀ use ofĀ prescribed psychoactive drugs and the commission of violent acts against oneself or others.

My Story of Benzo Withdrawal and Activism

22
My story starts in 1976. I had a nervous breakdown whilst studying for my Accountancy Technician examination. I was then prescribed a series of benzodiazepine/anti depressant drugs for 5 years. I have been campaigning for the last 28 years at local, national and international level on this public health scandal and government cover-up. The following questions need to be asked to those responsible: Why have the doctors and psychiatrists ignored the 1988 Committee on Safety of Medicines Guidelines on the prescribing of benzodiazepines? Why are the same physicians making the same mistakes with the newer drugs?

Suicide Rates Rise While Antidepressant Use Climbs

16
Multiple media sources are reporting on new dataĀ from the CDC revealing a substantial increase in the suicide rate in the United States between 1999...

Germanwings Pilot Saw Psychiatrist Three Times, Doubled Antidepressant Before Crash

11
The man who deliberately crashed a Germanwings commercial airliner with 150 passengers aboard was actively in psychiatric treatment at the time, reported the New...

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Halves the Risk of Repeated Suicide Attempts

7
A new study suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) may halve the likelihood of re-attempting suicide, for those who have attempted in the past.

Antidepressants Do Not Prevent Suicides, May Increase Risk

9
When the CDC released data revealing an increasing suicide rate in the US, some experts, speaking to major media outlets, speculated that the increase...

We are Whole People, Not Broken Brains

50
Many of us in the consumer/survivor movement have begun to worry that recovery is being co-opted. That it is being used too easily, and has lost its meaning. I think we live in bubble. Outside our world, the larger society has not even heard that recovery is possible. In fact, society hears a constant litany, through major media, that emotional distress is due to chemical imbalance. Today young people are told they will never recover, and should accept that they have a life long illness.
skeleton

Beneath the Fog

61
The medication left me emotionally numb, making it impossible to connect with people or sense the aliveness of the world around me. But after two years on antidepressants, I found something that gave me jolt of feeling strong enough to wake me up for a moment. I then spent the next seven years giving myself daily doses of horror to induce an emotional reaction.

Pilots Crashing on Antidepressants: A (Not So) Brief History

17
With the current focus on the possible contribution of psychoactive drugs to the crash of GermanWings flight A320 on Tuesday, March 24, it is useful to identify potential links between the effect of the antidepressants and the events.Ā  In all 47 cases listed on SSRIstories, the pilots were taking antidepressant medications, mostly SSRIs, often in combination with other medications and sometimes with alcohol.

How Canada’s Prisons Killed Ashley Smith: A National Crime and Shame

16
Ashley Smith was a very troubled and rebellious teenager. By the time she was 13, she was getting into trouble in school. On one occasion, Ashley was charged with the crime - actually a childish prank - of ā€œthrowing crabapples at a postal worker.ā€ Ashley was convicted and sentenced to detention in New Brunswick Youth Centre. Prison psychologists and psychiatrists labeled her defiant behavior a ā€œmental health issueā€; a thinly disguised term for ā€œmental illness.ā€ There is no record of any detention or prison staff or health professional trying to understand Ashley’s resistance to authority as youth rebellion.

On the Link Between Psychiatric Drugs and Violence

36
One of psychiatry's most obvious vulnerabilities is the fact that various so-called antidepressant drugs induce homicidal and suicidal feelings and actions in some people, especially late adolescents and young adults. This fact is not in dispute, but psychiatry routinely downplays the risk, and insists that the benefits of these drugs outweigh any risks of actual violence that might exist.

Does Psychotherapy Reproduce or Disrupt Neoliberal Capitalism?

42
Researchers explore neoliberal influences on interactions in psychotherapy and question whether the radical potential of psychotherapy can counter prevailing social systems.

The Need to Address Suicide in Prisons

3
Rates of suicide in prison are significantly higher than in the general population.

Study Finds Heavy Metal Music Beneficial to Mental Health

10
A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.

What Does Social Justice Really Mean for Psychologists?

8
Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.

Largest Survey of Antidepressants Finds High Rates of Adverse Emotional and Interpersonal Effects

163
I thought I would make a small contribution to the discussion about how coverage of the recent airline tragedy focuses so much on the supposed ā€˜mental illness’ of the pilot and not so much on the possible role of antidepressants. Of course we will never know the answer to these questions but it is important, I think, to combat the simplistic nonsense wheeled out after most such tragedies, the nonsense that says the person had an illness that made them do awful things. So, just to confirm what many recipients of antidepressants, clinicians and researchers have been saying for a long time, here are some findings from our recent New Zealand survey of over 1,800 people taking anti-depressants, which we think is the largest survey to date.

Psychotropic Medications Serve as Powerful Tools for U.S. Military, Imperialism

8
Ethnographic research sheds light on extensive psychopharmaceutical use by soldiers in post 9/11 U.S. wars.

Opening Doors in the Borderlands: An Interview with Liberation Psychologist Mary Watkins

10
MIA’s Micah Ingle interviews Mary Watkins about reorienting psychology toward liberation and social justice.

Michael Brown and the ‘Peer’ Movement

103
I’ve been arguing against calling this movement that I’m a part of a ā€˜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.

Childhood Trauma Predicts Risk of Violence in Psychosis

6
A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research finds the strongest association between a history of childhood trauma and the risk of violence...

The FDA Is Hiding Reports Linking Psych Drugs to Homicides

55
In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined being drawn into a story of intrigue involving my own government’s efforts to hide, from the public, reports of psychiatric drugs associated with cases of murder, including homicides committed by youth on the drugs. But that is precisely the intrigue I now find myself enmeshed in.

It’s About the Trauma: How to Truly Address the Roots of Violence and Suffering...

81
Representative Tim Murphy is a psychologist who proposes unsatisfactory solutions to our most pressing social problems. In a "shockingly regressive" piece of legislation known as the ā€œHelping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013ā€ (H.R. 3717), he proposes to expand the highly controversial practice of Involuntary Outpatient Committment (IOC) for persons with serious mental illnesses. But that approach is not the answer, as documented in a fact sheet authored by the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery:

Researching the Link Between SSRIs and Violence

38
In 2010, my 25-year old son was prescribed Prozac for depression. After a psychiatrist doubled his dose, my son became acutely psychotic and had to be admitted to the hospital. Over the next twelve months, during which time he was treated with antidepressants and neuroleptics, my son had five further psychotic experiences. I thought it might be that my son was having difficulty metabolising the drugs.

Feral Psychiatry: More on the Garth Daniels Case

50
On Wednesday, May 18th, Daniels had what was probably his 102nd consecutive episode of ECT. As always, he told the staff that he did not want it and did not consent to it; as always, he got it. Later on the next afternoon, Garth left to join his family in Brisbane. None of us have a crystal ball but his position now seems much better than at any stage in the past. Let's look at some of the facts and opinions surrounding this case.

Winging it: Antidepressants and Plane Crashes

18
The crash last week of the Germanwings plane has shocked many. In view of the apparent mental health record of the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, questions have been asked about the screening policies of airlines. The focus has generally been on the conditions pilots may have or the arguments they might be having with partners or other situational factors that might make them unstable. Even when the issue of the medication a pilot may be taking is raised, it is in the context of policies that permit pilots to continue on drugs like antidepressants to ensure any underlying conditions are effectively treated. But fewer treatments in medicine are effective in this sense than people might think and even when effective they come with effects that need to be balanced against the likely effects of the underlying condition.