Features

For the past 15 years, the VA's suicide prevention efforts have focused on getting veterans screened and treated for psychiatric disorders, with antidepressants a first-line therapy. This effort has caused veteran suicide rates to steadily rise.

In a MIA survey of people who had been patients in mental hospitals, nearly 500 respondents told of an experience that was often traumatic, and frequently characterized by a violation of their legal rights, forced treatment with drugs, and physical or sexual abuse. Only 17% said they were “satisfied” with the “quality of the psychiatric treatment” they received.

A new questionnaire funded by AbbVie conflates antidepressant side effects with bipolar disorder and doesn’t actually meet the criteria for being considered “screening.”

Veterans struggling with a diagnosis of PTSD, or depression and other difficulties find that learning to perform Shakespearean monologues, and developing their own dramatic monologues, can help them "unwire" from the traumas of war.

In the past five years, there has been a dramatic explosion of interest in the Open Dialogue Therapy practiced in Tornio, Finland. It is a humanistic “treatment” that has produced five-year outcomes for psychotic patients that are, by far, the best in the developed world, and there are now groups in the United States, Europe and beyond that are seeking to “import” this care. However, the challenges for doing so are many and, last month, Open Dialogue UK - on the occasion of the first-ever fully recognized Open Dialogue training outside of Tornio - organized a conference in London to hold an open dialogue about Open Dialogue.

Sharing the similarities between Lindsay Clancy's homicidal episode and my own will hopefully help prevent rare SSRI-induced suicides and homicides, including mass shootings.

"Across the pond," campaigners’ efforts against electroshock are gaining public notice. Can their approach work in the US?

At the Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center in Norway, patients with a long history of psychiatric hospitalizations are tapering from their medications and, in a therapeutic environment that emphasizes a good diet, exercise, and asking patients "what do they want in life," are leaving their old lives as chronic patients behind.

As uses of psychiatric force expand, can social media be better used to focus critical attention?

Pharmaceutical companies paid psychiatrists $340 million from 2014 through 2020, corrupting every aspect of the testing and marketing of new psychiatric drugs.

The digital pill Abilify MyCite, which is now being introduced into the market, foretells of a future where such technology is used to monitor the behavior, location and "medication compliance" of a person 24 hours a day.

In their letter to the editor, Rush et al. have doubled-down on the fraud they committed in their 2006 summary report of STAR*D outcomes.

The Nurtured Heart Approach represents a massive shift in thinking—about schooling, about children and how to raise them, about how we regard those with intensity, and about the medical model pathologizing them.

Despite new claims that their study provides "clear evidence" linking serotonin and depression, their data actually supports the opposite conclusion: serotonin levels did not correlate with depression.

Legal and practical barriers to voting disenfranchise people judged "mentally incompetent." The centuries-old, unclear laws and regulations also disproportionately affect people of color.

This week on MIA Radio, we present the second part of our podcast to join in the events for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020...

Soon after states finally began providing adults who remembered childhood abuse with the legal standing to sue, the FMSF began waging a PR campaign to discredit their memories—in both courtrooms and in the public mind.

In this second part of MIA’s report on compulsory outpatient treatment orders, Michael Simonson tells of how he came to report on this topic, the results from MIA’s survey of people who have experienced such forced treatment, his interviews with several of the survey respondents, and more on Andrew Rich’s life.

Researchers have calculated the dose-response benefits of ordinary hobbies, habits, and lifestyle practices that are available without any trip to a doctor or a drug store.

In Israel, there is a budding Soteria movement that foretells of a possible paradigm shift in care. The thought is that such care may become a first-line treatment for newly psychotic patients.

What can science tell us about music’s impact on our cognition and on our mood, on our capacity for empathy, and our sense of connection with others? How does it change the brain? How does it change us?

Anyone detained and then formally committed under Wisconsin’s civil mental health laws can initially be held and forcibly drugged for six long months. Yet, for years, not a single person has been able to appeal the six-month commitments in court.

Insiders paint a picture of chaos and fear in public and private psychiatric hospitals across the country. "Now that she has been discharged, Sevigny is getting the truth out, just as the nurse asked her to do. She also plans to continue to organizing in her state, with and on behalf of those who continue to be subjected to dangerous conditions in the name of care."

A dramatic rise in demand for college mental health services has led to counselors feeling burned out. Counseling center directors are looking for solutions.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is eager to provide advice or assistance to US citizens who may wish to sue their physicians for prescribing off-label psychiatric drugs to children, said lawyer James Gottstein in an interview with Mad In America.