Involuntary Treatment

A new study published in Lancet Psychiatry challenges the common practice of locking psychiatric wards to prevent patients from attempting suicide or leaving against...

From TIME: In 1972, 51 of the most troubled mental health patients at Oregon State Hospital were sent into the woods for a camping trip....

For those of us who have been labeled by medical model psychiatry, it is frightening to watch the wolf of social prejudice being cloaked in the guise of mental health reform. The reality for many of us is that our lives and well-being have been profoundly affected – not only by the bad science and good marketing of pharmaceutical companies - but also by a wholesale refusal to listen. The result is a mental health system that many of us do not trust to operate in good faith. The Murphy bills add fuel to this fire.

I have long been concerned with the way society responds to people who come back from war. Veterans are routinely funneled into psychiatry’s grasp. Over the decades, some people who fought in wars have shared with me their experiences of being psychiatrized upon return from war. Sometimes these experiences included veterans being stripped of their second amendment rights, and a host of other constitutional, civil, and human rights violations as they began to be forced into complying with psychiatric regimens, and on several occasions this included veterans being subjected to electroshock.

From The Independent: Thousands of people with Lewy Body Dementia are being prescribed antipsychotic drugs, increasing their risk of death fourfold. "These medicines, prescribed to around...

An internal government investigation found that authorities did not investigate 50% of deaths that occurred inside mental health services in Ireland, reports the Irish...

From The Guardian: Daniel Swift's book The Bughouse renders a poignant account of poet Ezra Pound's years spent in a psychiatric institution. Article →­

From STAT: An unprecedented number of Americans have been diagnosed with a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder. Does this represent an increase in psychological distress...

The news media frequently write stories that connect mental health issues with violence, according to a new study published this month in Health Affairs....

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...

From The Age: According to a new report, sexual assault claims by mental health patients are not being reported to the police or even the...

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

Rob Wipond reports on a constitutional challenge in British Columbia against a key component of the province’s Mental Health Act. “This case isn’t arguing...

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 →­

From The Times of India: A psychiatrist from the Uma Nalini Mary Clinic and Research Institute was recently arrested on charges of homicide of a middle-aged patient....

From the Boston Review: In his new book Doctors in Denial: The Forgotten Women in the "Unfortunate Experiment," Ronald W. Jones chronicles the history of New...

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.”

Emotional support, religion, and searching for meaning are positively correlated with posttraumatic growth among prisoners.

Changing the mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany requires public debate about the ways our society should help and support people in mental crisis and with chronic mental health problems. We believe the driving force behind all help and support should be humanitarianism and respect for inalienable human rights.

In this piece for the National Survivor User Network, Liz Sayce argues that people with mental health conditions will continue to stay silent about their...

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...

From The Guardian: Kelly Savage, a 27-year-old New Zealand man working abroad as an English teacher in Japan, was admitted to a Japanese psychiatric hospital...

From Tales from the Madhouse: On May 1st, the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act published a 60-page interim report. The report makes it clear that no...

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...

Again and again I am told the ‘severely mentally ill’ are impaired and incapable, not quite human. I am told the “high utilizers” and “frequent flyers” burden services because they are different than the rest of us. And when I finally do meet the people carrying that terrible, stigmatizing label of schizophrenia, what do I find? I find – a human being. A human who responds to the same listening and curiosity that I, or anyone, responds to. I find a human who is above all terrified, absolutely terrified, by some horrible trauma we may not see or understand.