Restraints

Over the past few weeks I have been witness to, and increasingly involved in trying to stop one of the most extreme examples of psychiatric brutality I have encountered in my 40 years in this field. And I have encountered quite a few. I suggest you sit down before watching and reading. This is not your usual, run-of-the-mill psychiatric abuse story.

Colorado police trained in crisis intervention infrequently use force or arrest individuals experiencing a mental health crisis and are likely to transfer individuals to a treatment facility.

On Friday, Psych Rights won a legal fight in Alaska Supreme Court reversing an order for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation. Opinion →

From U.S. News & World Report: New Hampshire legislators are debating a bill that would make opioid use criteria for involuntary commitment to a psychiatric...

For psychiatric ‘help’ 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 ‘helping system’ 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.

This is the final of four installments about the bizarre, ongoing conduct of psychiatrists at Upton House, an Eastern Health psychiatric facility in Melbourne, and the collusion with their conduct by all relevant agencies. This last installment will document the failure, so far, of the State and Federal Governments to intervene in even this most extreme and blatant example of abuse of power by psychiatry. If I, as a Professor of Clinical Psychology with 40 years clinical and research experience in this field, can be so easily dismissed/ignored by the relevant systems in Victoria, what chance do the average users of mental health services and their families have of being heard in this State?

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

To this day I do not know how I found my way back. I think it might’ve had something to do with willpower, as I was NOT going to lose myself. I was NOT going to end up like those people who were living indefinitely in the hospital—those “chronic schizophrenics”, as they say. I was going to find my way back, back to myself.

"There's a growing awareness that alternatives to law enforcement are needed, that alternatives to emergency medical services are needed. There's a lot of people...

"In a rare intervention, the government has asked Victoria's Chief Psychiatrist for a report on Garth Daniels, a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia, whose case...

From Stuff: In 2015, the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed concern at New Zealand's use of seclusion against mental health patients. According to a...

Mad In America bloggers, and everyone who is interested, you are cordially invited to participate in a Campaign to Support the CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Commitment and Forced Treatment. The requested action is to write a blog post or contribute artwork, relevant to the purpose of the campaign, i.e. discussing and supporting the absolute prohibition that is promulgated under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).  Posts should be ready for March 29, 2016, the opening day of the 15th session of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

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,...

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...

BPS releases report encouraging behavioral interventions for people with dementia, rather than antipsychotics

A team of reporters and data specialists from the Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune spent more than a year investigating Florida’s largest...

Writing for the Campaign for Real Change in Mental Health Policy, psychiatrist Coni Kalinowski implores others not to support the Murphy Bill “or any other legislation that encourages the use of involuntary outpatient commitment for psychiatric treatment.” “For 9 years, I trained and worked in Wisconsin where involuntary outpatient commitment has been used to force people into treatment for over 30 years, and I can tell you first hand, it does far more harm than good to individuals, it is very expensive, and it does not address the public health and safety issues that people hope it will.”

On Tuesday morning, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of three former detainees against the psychologists who collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to oversee the torture program. According to the Intercept, psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen and their employees collected over $85 million dollars for designing and implementing techniques, based off of the work of Martin Seligman, that combatted torture-resistance techniques by creating a state of “learned helplessness.” There is, however, no evidence that these techniques gleaned any useful intelligence.

From The Guardian: According to a new Human Rights Watch report, U.S. nursing homes are inappropriately prescribing antipsychotics to an estimated 179,000 residents with dementia each...

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.

In this piece for La Otra Psiquiatría, Fernando Colina describes his vision for a compassionate, non-pathologizing mental health system. Below is the full translation of his...

Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, writing for Counter Punch, take on those who have criticized the Hoffman Report, which found that the APA had actively colluded in the US Torture program. “They have not credibly refuted these core findings of Hoffman’s seven-month investigation, nor have they even attempted to do so.”

In this piece for the Hartford Courant, Kathleen Flaherty describes why President Trump's assertion that more psychiatric hospitals would prevent mass shootings is inaccurate and...

New analysis of post-discharge suicide rates finds estimates 6 times higher than recent studies.

The International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry published an article titled Safety and utility of acute electroconvulsive therapy for agitation and aggression in dementia,  which concludes "Electroconvulsive therapy may be a safe treatment option to reduce symptoms of agitation and aggression in patients with dementia whose behaviors are refractory to medication management." But the participants were not a random selection of people taking the drugs in question. Rather, they were individuals selected because of aggressive behavior, most of whom had been taking some or all of these drugs on admission. So it is a distinct possibility that the aggression was a drug effect for many, or even most, of the study participants.