“Letter to the Editor: Guns and Mental Illness”

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The president and president-elect of the American Psychological Association penned a letter to the New York Times calling on “Congress and other policy makers to address these factors with interventions supported by evidence rather than avoiding them by scapegoating the mentally ill.”

Institutional Psychotherapy in France: An Interview

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In this interview for Hidden Persuaders, Camille Robcis discusses institutional psychotherapy, a French psychiatric reform movement that began during the Second World War. Robcis explains...

Doctors Tortured Patients at Ontario Mental-Health Centre

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From The Globe and Mail: A judge has recently ruled that patients at a mental health facility in Ontario were tortured by doctors over a...

APA to Release Guidelines for Fat-Shaming Kids for Profit

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From Ravishly: The American Psychological Association has released a draft of their "Clinical Practice Guideline for the Behavioral Treatment of Obesity and Overweight in Children...

How Medical Professionals Have Enabled Torture

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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 Great Turning

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When I first heard of the proposed “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013” (H.R. 3717)”, I felt relieved and thought “maybe somebody has finally got it!” However, as I read and processed the words I realized just how much Tim Murphy didn’t get it. Is this mental health system broke? Yes it is. Can it be fixed? Yes it can. But we must do it collectively and with the experience and voices of those with true lived experiences including their families and allies. I stand with millions of others who have shown through our resiliency that our movement is real, has saved lives and most of all we have people that can give voice to what really needs to be changed within the system. If only people will listen.

We Should Not Forcibly Commit the Homeless During Hurricanes

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From Pacific Standard: In an effort to protect homeless individuals from the effects of Hurricane Irma, officials from the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust used the...

Leah Harris and Tim Murphy Talk “Mental Illness and the Law”

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Today on Radio Times, U.S. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), Mark Salzer, professor and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at Temple University, and Leah...

The Helping Room

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Every culture has its share of individuals who break down in bewilderment. People who hallucinate, behave beyond norms, seek to die, think in strange ways.

A Glimpse Inside US Mental Health Detention Centre

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From The Sun: New York photographer Lili Holzer-Glier was recently allowed inside the Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago, where 35 percent of inmates...

When “Recovery” Feels Like a Trap

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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.

“Maybe Oregon Shooting and Others Aren’t About Mental Illness”

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Matthew Cooper, writing for Newsweek, reports that despite the preponderance of political rhetoric about “mental illness” after mass shootings, a review of the research suggests that the connection between mental health and gun violence is dubious.

Psychiatrists Have Issued a Statement on Aversion Therapy

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From BuzzFeed: The Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a historic statement acknowledging the harm done to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who were subjected to...

Using Participatory Action in Bioethics Research

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Participatory action approaches in bioethics research used to decrease coercion and seclusion in psychiatric treatment.

Deadly Drugs Misused in U.S. Nursing Facilities

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From AARP: The family of Bobby Glenn Tweed recently settled a lawsuit with a nursing home over his wrongful death. Tweed was prescribed psychotropic drugs without...

Inside a Case of Repressed Memory

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From The Guardian: At age 17, Nicole Kluemper came to be one of the most controversial cases in modern psychology when she recovered memories of...

United Nations Report Calls for Revolution in Mental Health Care

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In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius PĆ«ras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

May 2nd – Day of Remembrance and Resistance

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On May 2nd, 2017, the International Association Against Psychiatric Assault (IAAPA) staged a demonstration in Berlin to commemorate the psychiatric mass murders in Nazi...

Psych Journal Issuing Caution About Torture Paper

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From Retraction Watch: The psychology journal Teaching of Psychology plans to issue an editor's note about a controversial paper exploring the APA's involvement in the torture...

Social Work Professionals Face Creeping Fascism

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From Rabble: The regulatory body for social workers and social service workers in Ontario — the Ontario College for Social Workers and Social Service Workers — is...

“Holding Big Pharma Accountable: Why Suing the Pharmaceutical Industry Isn’t Working”

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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.”

NPR: “Gun Violence And Mental Health Laws”

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On NPR’s Morning Edition, Lauren Silverman debunks the assumption that mass shooters are usually ‘mentally ill,’ and that mental health policy can substitute for...

I Smoked Weed Three Times and Ended Up in Rehab Hell

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From VICE: In her recently published memoir, The Dead Inside, Cyndy Etler tells her story of being abused and subjected to attack therapy in a teen rehab...

“Mental Health Bill Caters to Big Pharma and Would Expand Coercive Treatments”

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Oryx Cohen at TruthOut explains why the "Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (HR 2646) - commonly known as the 'Murphy Bill' - appears to cater more closely to the desires of pharmaceutical companies than to the actual needs of people in psychological distress, perhaps because of Murphy's connections to key lobbyists." "If the Murphy Bill is passed, psychiatric hospitals and pharmaceutical companies will reap huge financial benefits as a result of increased hospitalization and forced treatment."

Do Diagnoses Injure People?

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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.