Coercion

From Live Science: Stanley Milgram's infamous experiments on the science of obedience to authority figures were recently repeated with very similar results. Participants showed a high...

In this piece for STAT, Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu describes the value of psychiatric advance directives for those at risk of experiencing an emotional crisis. "'It’s something that can...

The experience with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention's visit to the US is a watershed for our work against forced psychiatry. Step by step, global and national advocacy support each other as part of a worldwide movement to abolish forced psychiatry using the UN human rights framework.

From Aeon: In the early 20th-century Age of Empire, officials in the British Empire sought to better understand their colonial subjects through the use of...

I am quarantined in Stabilization. In front of me an old woman with cherry lipstick and a clipboard asks questions about sexual abuse, but my mind is through the square window on the door behind her. In that room I see a steel bed surrounded by emptiness. On top of it lay leather straps that are uneven in width where they’re wearing thin. Each strap has a set of holes to fasten the buckles tight, and I can see quite clearly that the ones nearest the end are circles while the ones furthest away have stretched into ovals. Tonight will be a Haldol night.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Caroline Beaton looks into how drugs continue to make billions in sales even after they lose lawsuits for fraud and misconduct. “The persistence of Big Pharma's fraud despite ubiquitous legal action suggests that our present efforts to hold the industry accountable are ineffective,” Beaton writes. “New polices in motion will make potentially unsafe drugs even easier to bring to market and promote.”

Various instruments of the United Nations have commented on forced treatment, or involuntary confinement, or both (for details, see Burstow, 2015a), and a number of truly critical additions to international law have materialized. Arguably, the most significant of these is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. What makes it so significant? For one thing, it is because this landmark convention puts forward nothing less than a total ban on both involuntary treatment and the involuntary confinement of people who have broken no laws.

In this piece for Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, Hazel Croft argues for a more radical approach to mental health, exploring the impact of neoliberal...

From the Tampa Bay Times: The Tampa City Council recently moved to ban mental health professionals from providing gay conversion therapy to minors, proposing penalties of...

In this piece for Healing Journey, Anne O'Beirne briefly summarizes the history of the medical usage of lithium and describes the impact that the drug has...

From Reductress: "Let me just start this by saying I am so sorry I have been acting so crazy lately; I don’t know what’s gotten...

The United States desperately needs good programs to help people withdraw from neuroleptic drugs. From all I have seen and heard, there aren’t any - none at least that can reputably claim to get good results on a fairly consistent basis. Again and again I find myself challenged to envision such a program, and in reply to the challenge I have broken down this hypothetical program into various components.

From Pacific Standard: ADAPT, a national direct action disability rights group, recently staged a protest to fight provisions in the GOP's health care plan that will...

From Vox Gibraltar: Many people confuse psychology with psychiatry. Too often, general practitioners recommend psychiatric treatment when psychological treatment or therapy could be just as effective without resulting...

From Mail & Guardian: Colonialism today is more entrenched in our society than it ever has been in the past, and traditional psychology and mental...

In this interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books, cultural theorist and philosopher Erin Manning discusses neurodiversity, a movement that seeks to depathologize traits, experiences, and...

Author and clinical psychologist Bruce Levine discusses society's relationship to drugs, psychiatry's increasing credibility issue, and the cultural response to incidents of mass violence.

Psychiatrist Keith Ablow of Fox News writes "That’s why Boston’s Children’s Hospital, in making a play to take over the life of Justina Pelletier,...

Yes, a psychiatric diagnosis can be a dangerous thing to have. But, these days, so is having any medical diagnosis. The names and words of the diagnoses themselves are not so much to blame for the harm. Rather, the harm comes through the ways the diagnoses are created and how they are used.

From The Onion: “Thank God that in America our mental health facilities are too poorly funded for something like this to happen.” Article →­

From ABC News: Advocates for gay conversion therapy have been heartened by the election of President Trump, believing that the new administration will fight off efforts...

In this piece for The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv investigates how a psychologist and deputy sheriff convinced several suspects that they committed a murder, for which...

From the National Post: An independent report found that disabled people were being unjustly confined in a Nova Scotia psychiatric hospital. Law professor Archie Kaiser...

In this piece for Youth Ki Awaaz, Nibu Augustine recounts his traumatic experiences with psychiatry and the mental health system, including forced drugging and adverse...

From Stuff: In 2015, the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed concern at New Zealand's use of seclusion against mental health patients. According to a...