âLetter to the Editor: Guns and Mental Illnessâ
The president and president-elect of the American Psychological Association penned a letter to the New York Times calling on âCongress and other policy makers to address these factors with interventions supported by evidence rather than avoiding them by scapegoating the mentally ill.â
The Power Thinker
In this essay for Aeon, Kolin Coopman explores the impact and legacy of Michel Foucault.
"It was a bio-power wielded by psychiatrists and doctors that,...
Are Neuroleptics “Anti-Psychotic”? Harrow’s 20-Year Outcomes
Martin Harrow along with his colleagues T.H. Jobe and R. N. Faull has published another paper on the long term outcome of people who experienced a psychotic episode. Funded by a grant from the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, this paper adds to our knowledge of an extremely important and valuable study.
Do We Need More Hospital Beds?
In an article published by the Treatment Advocacy Center, The Shortage of Public Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons, the authors (D. J. Jaffe and E. Fuller Torrey) present the idea that we have far too few hospital beds in this country, and because of that there has been a dramatic shift towards the diversion of people labeled with mental illness into prisons and homelessness. Their answer to this issue is that we should radically increase the amount of hospital beds and we should also dramatically increase our reliance on outpatient treatment in the form of mandated involuntary medication programs. As many people know here, the TAC has been highly influential politically and the authors of this paper have been instrumental in getting laws passed that mandate the outpatient use of psychiatric drugs for people who have been civilly committed.
“94 Psychiatric Patients in South Africa Died of Negligence, Report Finds”
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...
Current Research on Outpatient Commitment Laws (“Lauraâs Law” in California)â
Outpatient commitment laws, passed by a number of states, permit forced commitment to âtreatment of those whom a psychiatrist, psychologist, or mental âhealth official deems in need of treatment. The majority of this âtreatment,â while not âspecifically written in the law, results in coercive tactics to pressure agreement to take âpharmaceutical preparations of limited-to-no effectiveness but - as shown in early research - with âmassive effects on cognitive functions and subsequent decision-making ability, not to âmention a long-term or lifelong diminished quality of life and ability to function as a productive âmember of society.
Closing the Asylums
In this piece for Jacobin, John Foot describes the Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia's efforts to revolutionize the mental health system in Italy. Basaglia sparked a...
Psych Ward Reviews: A Yelp for Psychiatric Facilities
From Undark Magazine: A new app, Psych Ward Reviews, gathers anonymous reviews of patients' experiences with inpatient treatment at public and private psychiatric and general...
âToo Many PA Foster Children are on Psychiatric Medsâ
For Philly.com, staff writer Stacey Burling reports on the PolicyLab analysis of psychiatric drug use among Pennsylvania children on Medicaid. Â âMany children in foster...
First They Ignore You: Impressions From Todayâs Hearing on H.R. 3717
As I walked alone up the stairs to the Rayburn House Office Building this morning to attend the hearing of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on H.R. 3717 - the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act - I thought about how I wasnât truly alone. In spirit with me were all the people who had experienced scary, coercive, and dehumanizing interventions in the name of help. In spirit with me was every mental health provider who went into the field hoping to really make a difference in their communities, but became cynical and discouraged in the face of so many broken systems and broken spirits.
âWe Need REAL Change in Mental Health Policy, Not the Illusion of Reformâ
David Shern, from Johns Hopkins University, writes that the latest mental health âMurphy billâ in Congress is âan expansion of the approaches that got us into our current difficulties.â âEarly intervention and prevention, assessable and patient-focused services with a rehabilitation orientation and increased funding for the community supports needed for successful recovery are the tickets to system improvement.â
Snail’s Pace Race
I live a slow paced life. I meditate every morning, refuse to get a smart phone (yet), and it takes me generous amounts of time to do things. This isn't because I am âstupidâ or slow to get things. Sometimes I wonder how others get so much done each day - yet the quality and vibration of what I do is unique. It needs time. How does this relate with psychiatric drugs? Psych drugs are rooted in impatience, urgency, emergency.
Barbara Ehrenreich: Why I’m Giving Up on Preventative Care
In this piece for Literary Hub, Barbara Ehrenreich critiques the overuse of preventative medicine and describes how our healthcare system's emphasis on screenings and early...
The Problem With Hospitalizing Opioid Addicts Against Their Will
From The Washington Post: In Massachusetts, which has one of the highest rates of opioid deaths nationally, addiction-related civil commitments have doubled in the past...
âAll for the Best of the Patientâ
For psychiatric âhelpâ to happen by force is a paradox and makes absolutely no sense. It can destroy people's personality and self-confidence. It can lead, in the long run, to physical and psychological disability. My dear daughter Luise got caught in this âhelping systemâ by mistake, but she didn't make it out alive. I'm sad to say I later discovered that the way Luise was treated was more the rule than the exception.
In Praise of Defiance
From Aeon: Throughout history, psychiatry has pathologized defiance and continues to label individuals who resist authority and stand up for their rights as mentally ill....
âStudy Finds Mental Health Patients No Better Off Behind Locked Doorsâ
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...
The Touch of Madness
In this piece for Pacific Standard, David Dobbs recounts the story of Nev Jones, a psychologist with lived experience who is working to change the...
The Taint of Eugenics In NIMH-Funded Research Today
Recently, Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, identified the âNIMHâs Top 10 Research Advances of 2011.â He wrote: âThis has been a year of exciting discoveries and scientific progress . . . Here are 10 breakthroughs and events of 2011 that are changing the landscape of mental health research.â
The Truth About Long-Term Antidepressant Use
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...
Why Do We Say That Mental Health Detention is Discrimination?
The disability community, including users and survivors of psychiatry, has sent a letter (drafted and circulated by WNUSP) to the UN Human Rights Committee urging that treaty monitoring body to follow the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in prohibiting all mental health detention. The signatories came from all regions of the world and include user/survivor organizations, disability organizations, other human rights organizations and individual experts. Since our letter is quite technical in pointing out the divergence of the Human Rights Committee's position from that of the CRPD, which is a higher standard of human rights protection, I would like to bring out some additional points that may be helpful in our advocacy.
Corrupt Health Care Practices Drive Up Costs and Fail Patients
From The Huffington Post: Corruption is insidiously pervasive in our healthcare system and dramatically increases our health expenditures. Patients are increasingly being given unnecessary treatments...
Using Participatory Action in Bioethics Research
Participatory action approaches in bioethics research used to decrease coercion and seclusion in psychiatric treatment.
Madness in Civilisation: A Cultural History of Insanity
Until recently the history of psychiatry was a neglected backwater whose murky depths were explored largely by psychiatrist. The impression conveyed by books such as Tukeâs Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles, Macalpine and Hunter's Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry: 1535 - 1860, Berrios and Freemen's 150 Years of British Psychiatry 1841 - 1991, or Fuller Torrey and Miller's The Invisible Plague, is one that sees psychiatry and modern systems of mental health care as the inevitable outcome of progress through scientific thought, a (white European male-led) narrative from darkness and ignorance to enlightenment and knowledge.
Facebook’s AI Suicide Prevention Tool Raises Concerns
From The Daily Dot: Last week, Facebook announced a global rollout of their new suicide prevention algorithm, which aims to identify users deemed at risk...