Involuntary Treatment

Long-term treatment with antipsychotic drugs is currently considered the standard treatment for patients diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia.’ A new study challenges this practice, however. The...

From NBC: According to human rights investigators, anti-psychotic drugs are often administered to nursing home residents to address behavioral issues. Our nation's lack of funding...

-Time magazine reports on a study about Assisted Outpatient Treatment, without disclosing that the study was developed for prominent promoters of AOT.

Researchers provide an action-planning framework to engage providers in the reduction of low-value healthcare.

A California nursing home has settled with AARP in an unprecedented class-action lawsuit against the facility for using inappropriate kinds and amounts of psychiatric...

In this piece for Vice, Tess McClure describes New Zealand's Mad Pride movement, a movement that seeks to destigmatize, normalize, and celebrate experiences of voice-hearing...

Recent press coverage of top star Britney Spears, who remains under a personal and professional guardianship, reflects conventional attitudes about “mental illness” that are both stigmatizing and encourage legislation that promotes forced treatment.

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.”

From STAT: President Trump has nominated Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, a proponent of increased psychiatric treatment for those diagnosed with serious mental illness, to run the Substance...

This piece from Newsner chronicles the life and work of Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, a journalist who went undercover to expose the conditions at an infamous mental...

From BuzzFeed News: A six-year-old boy in Jacksonville, Florida was recently committed to a psychiatric institution for throwing a temper tantrum in school. There, he...

From ABC Australia: Australia's high rate of antipsychotic prescriptions, as well as the frequent usage of restraints and seclusion, has raised concerns among Australian mental health advocates, researchers,...

Over at CounterPunch, Carl Boggs takes on the knee-jerk mental illness response that pervades the airwaves after every mass shooting. He writes: “What the mental-health fixation lacks is any semblance of historical or social context. Given the persistence of U.S. imperialism and militarism — and mounting fascination with combat and guns in a society transfigured by its warfare state — Washington remains a thriving center of global violence: repeated armed interventions abroad have found their domestic parallel in the world’s largest prison system, a deepening gun culture, home-bred terrorism, police atrocities, and a media culture filled with spectacles of warfare and bloodshed.”

In this episode of ABC Radio National's All In The Mind, Lynne Malcolm interviews three experts about the impact of trauma on our memory and mental health. One guest,...

On her blog, A Disordered World, psychiatric survivor Jeanene Harlick writes that “prejudicial rhetoric about the mentally ill, following mass shootings, is exacerbating the already-overwhelming stigma, discrimination and oppression we experience as an unrecognized and disadvantaged minority group.”

In an editorial for NEJM, Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, discusses the decision to use involuntary psychiatric commitment. Article →

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.

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.

Researchers found that veterans with both conditions had higher odds of being prescribed second-generation antipsychotics than those presenting with just PTSD.

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.

Dinah Miller and Annette Hanson are psychiatrists who blog at Shrink Rap. On one topic we agree — the subject of involuntary care is the most contentious and troubling topic for psychiatry. To their credit, they have directed an enormous amount of attention to this subject in their latest book.

From Pacific Standard: The new Abilify MyCite pill, which contains a digital sensor that tracks whether a patient has ingested the drug, has the potential...

The results of the cross-sectional study show that U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) owned hospitals perform worst on most measures.

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