Coercion

From the Drug Policy Alliance: Last week, Drug Policy Alliance Board Member Dr. Carl Hart visited the Philippines to speak at a drug policy forum....

Dennis Embry, a clinical psychologist and government consultant on mental health, shares a letter he sent to congressman Murphy warning him about how he may have been misled concerning his mental health bill. “I am specifically writing you about erroneous, false information you’ve been given about the National Registry of Evidence Base Programs and Practices. That erroneous information is likely to cause serious problems, which have been withheld from you.”

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...

A new episode of BBC's Our World investigates the increased usage of electroconvulsive therapy on children in America.

From the Lown Institute: For pharmaceutical companies who use scare tactics to sell drugs, every day is like Halloween. This list of egregious advertisements shows...

The Washington Examiner reports that the manufacturer of the antipsychotic Abilify is seeking FDA approval for new digitized pills that would alert doctors if patients fail to take their drugs on schedule.

From The Guardian: As antidepressant prescriptions rise and have doubled in the past decade, mental health experts are becoming increasingly concerned about adverse effects and...

From The Telegraph: Mental health patients across the UK are waiting for years to be discharged from psychiatric units. At least 91 patients have waited...

From Boston University School of Public Health: A new journal article in the American Journal of Public Health evaluates the similarities between the use of medical...

The University of Minnesota announced a change to its research ethics policies this month after coming under criticism “following the recruitment of a schizophrenia...

Beyond Meds provides the information you need if you want to stop section 224 of HR 4302 - A list of senators, and a...

From Engadget: An early trial has found that staff-worn body cameras can reduce confrontation and aggressive behavior, including incidents of physical restraint, in psychiatric hospitals. "If...

“While evidence of abuse of the disabled has piled up for decades, one for-profit company has used its deep pockets and influence to bully weak regulators and evade accountability.”

In this two-part video series for AdvancingMentalHealth.org, attorney Gary Brown questions the constitutionality of psychiatric confinement and discusses forced treatment from a legal perspective. Part I →­ Part II →­

An editorial in the Guardian discusses the fact that the number of people with intellectual or learning disabilities “who are being treated with psychotropic drugs far exceeds those with mental illness.” The authors of a new study examining the overuse of psychotropic drugs on people with learning disabilities, published this month in BMJ, argue: “If people without mental illness are given psychotropic drugs… it is probably to control their behavior.”

This week’s issue of the New Yorker examines the treatment of people diagnosed with mental health issues in Florida’s prisons. The horrifying stories of...

In The Opinion Pages of the New York Times, Matthew Epperson discusses the devastating results of police acting as the primary responders to mental health crises. “If we are to prevent future tragedies, then we should be ready to invest in a more responsive mental-health system and relieve the police of the burden of being the primary, and often sole, responders.”

From STAT: People with dementia are coming together to fight for the right to make their own decisions, to have a voice in public policy, and to...

The Lancet Psychiatry published a study last week finding no benefit to locking up patients in mental health hospitals. Data on 145,000 patients found...

Ed Silverman reports for STAT that a provision tucked into the 21st Century Cares legislation exempts companies from reporting payments made to doctors, journals,...

Only months after the American Psychological Association voted to ban psychologists from “advanced interrogation” facilities like Guantánamo Bay prison the Pentagon is asking them to...

I oppose HB1386 and request it be voted down. That, though, is not enough and I know it. So, here, I propose an alternative plan to HB1386.

The New York Times reports on the findings of a South African government investigation that determined that "94 psychiatric patients died of negligence last year after being...