Coercion

Refugees and first-generation immigrants of African descent are at greater risk of experiencing medical coercion when compared to immigrants of other visible minority communities in Canada.

Justina Pelletier, who lived with her parents in Connecticut, had been diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, a rare and debilitating illness, and had been receiving treatment for this from Mark Korson, MD, Chief of Metabolism Services at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. In February of last year, Justina's parents took her to Boston Children's Hospital with flu-like symptoms. Dr. Korson had recommended an admission to Boston Children's so that Justina could be seen by Alex Flores, MD, a gastrointestinal specialist who had recently transferred from Tufts to BCH. But instead, Justina's care was taken over by the psychiatry department.

Garth Daniels, a 39-year-old Melbourne man, has been shackled for 110 days and forced to undergo ECT 94 times at three times a week against his will. Last year, his family asked me to provide a second opinion on Garth’s case. As predicted, my recommendations against continued ECT were quickly dismissed by the hospital. There are critically important issues at stake in this case.

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.

A review of the literature demonstrates that coercive practices lack empirical support and violate human rights.

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.

New study links involuntary hospitalization with psychotic diagnosis, previous involuntary hospitalization, and economic deprivation.

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.

One-third of adults with an intellectual or developmental disability are dispensed antipsychotics, despite having no existing psychiatric diagnosis.

I am not comfortable with an all-or-nothing insanity defense that is both legally and socially stigmatizing because it sets the person apart as someone who is legally determined to be incapable of being treated as a moral agent. This stigma spills over onto all people who are psychiatrized, and it is part of the conception of madness that also ends up serving as a justification for civil commitment, since we are perceived (incorrectly) as outside the reach of ordinary law.

Study finds more patients are visiting physicians who have ties to industry than previously thought.

A bottom-up approach to understanding the history of asylums allows us to learn from past successes and failures in the mental health system.

People in roles of power in the mental health system often don’t realize how much complicity they have in actually creating the symptoms they claim are biologically-based in individuals with psychiatric labels.

I am a psychiatrist who believes that involuntary treatment is rarely effective in the long run but I am also a psychiatrist who sometimes forces people into hospitals against their will.

A new study tracks the approval of the latest antidepressant, vortioxetine, by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The...

Concerns have been raised about inconsistent and unreliable results, which may lead to injustices in sentencing or even wrongful convictions.

From The Independent: The notion of choice is increasingly being used to discourage suicidal people from seeking help. Many people's suicidal thoughts and actions are...

A California jury ruled that Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceutical and a psychiatrist were responsible for the death of 25-year-old Leo Liu. During a clinical trial for Risperdal, Liu died of a heart injury that was “further complicated” by the drug and ignored by the study doctors. Janssen was found 70% responsible for Liu’s death and ordered to pay $5.6 million to the family.

The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 14. I won’t go into the indignity of being involuntarily locked up, time after time, until I satisfactorily convinced the staff that I wouldn’t harm myself or attempt suicide again. (I was lying.) The system taught me to lie, to hide my suicidal feelings in order to escape yet another round of dehumanizing lock-ups and “treatments.”

In an effort to reduce coercion, researchers isolate associated factors including age, relationship status, location, and diagnosis.

A new scale has been developed and validated to examine beliefs held by mental health professionals towards service users’ rights.

Dr. Dainius Pūras argues that the status quo in mental health treatment is no longer acceptable and demands political action to promote human rights.

A discussion of the role of epistemic injustice in the experiences of patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

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.

Researchers examine psychiatrist-client interactions and find that clients are often left with few opportunities to make explicit requests to change their medication regimen.