The Lessons of Music: Nurturing Mental Health in Cultures Around the Globe
Music is an ancient and omnipresent tool for wellness, a carrier of peace for individuals, and a bonding agent for communities throughout history and the world.
Fireside Project: Peer Support for Psychedelic Experiences
A new nonprofit support line takes a harm-reduction approach and helps people process their psychedelic experiences.
Music Aids Mental Health: Science Shows Why
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?
Love is Dialogical: The Open Dialogue UK International Conference and Training
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.
Campaign Against ECT Gains Traction in UK
"Across the pond," campaigners’ efforts against electroshock are gaining public notice. Can their approach work in the US?
Beyond Labels and Meds—Closer Look: Isabella Castillo
At times I tend to feel invisible. Sometimes I don’t feel like I fit in with everyone else; I feel like an outsider.
Andrew Rich: “I Didn’t Know Stuff Like This Existed”
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.
Twenty Years After Kendra’s Law: The Case Against AOT
The proponents of compulsory outpatient treatment claim that it leads to better outcomes for the recipients, and protects society from violent acts by the "seriously mentally ill." Those claims are belied by history, science, and a critical review of the relevant research.
Inner Fire: Where Seekers Have a Choice
A Vermont residential community program helps people taper or stay off medications with holistic care embedded in a pastoral setting.
Beyond Labels and Meds—Closer Look: HoJin Kwak
This is the first of 4 spotlight interviews with some of the talented youth behind the pieces in MIA's art exhibition. HoJin states: "The original idea for my drawing started with the brain. The complexity of its sudden twists and curves fascinates me."
Diving into Your Soul: Lessons from “Queer Eye”
"Queer Eye" has a fresh, therapeutic twist: Installment after installment, it sends the repeated messages: Take care of yourself. Be kind to yourself. You’re beautiful. You’re good. We love you. Love yourself. Or, in the words of Van Ness: Yass, queen!
“Holy Shit!” Psychiatry’s Cognitive Dissonance on Display
Even those who would seek to reform the profession of psychiatry cannot confront the reality that exists in the research literature
Medication-Free Treatment in Norway: A Private Hospital Takes Center Stage
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.
DRC Will Challenge California’s Outpatient Committal Laws in Court
Disability Rights California will challenge Los Angeles’ Assisted Outpatient Treatment program in court this fall, DRC attorney Pamela Cohen announced Friday. According to Cohen, California’s AB-1241 or “Laura’s Law” diverts funding from community mental health services and towards police, administrators and courts, doesn’t reach the people it purports to be trying to help, and violates people’s civil rights. “This is an illegal program,” said Cohen.
The Whistleblower and Penn: A Final Accounting of Study 352
After 18 years, the full story of the scientific corruption in a study of paroxetine for bipolar disorder, and the psychiatrist who blew the whistle.
Soteria Israel: A Vision from the Past is a Blueprint for the Future
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.
In Andrew’s Honor: Attorney Elizabeth Rich’s Fight Against Unjust Commitments
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.
Anatomy of an Industry: Commerce, Payments to Psychiatrists and Betrayal of the Public Good
Pharmaceutical companies paid psychiatrists $340 million from 2014 through 2020, corrupting every aspect of the testing and marketing of new psychiatric drugs.
MIA Survey: Ex-patients Tell of Force, Trauma and Sexual Abuse in America’s Mental Hospitals
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.
And Now They Are Coming for the Unhoused: The Long Push to Expand Involuntary...
Mayor Adams' plan to "involuntarily remove" unhoused people has met with backlash from activists and the unhoused, who say it violates their rights and further entrenches systemic racism.
Adverse Childhood Experiences: When Will the Lessons of the ACE Study Inform Societal Care?
The ACE study tells of how adverse childhood experiences increase the risk of psychological and physical problems in adulthood. When will we start incorporating these findings into public health policy and medical care?
Screening for Perinatal Depression: An Effective Intervention, or One That Does More Harm Than Good?
Why does the U.S. describe perinatal screening as providing a proven benefit, while the task forces in the U.K. and Canada see no evidence of such benefit?
Prescribing an Epidemic: A Veteran’s Story
Had I known what I know now, I never would have taken any of these drugs, and I absolutely would not have taken a role in which my outreach efforts to get veterans into mental health treatment might place thousands of lives at risk.
Adverse Effects: The Perils of Deep Brain Stimulation for Depression
Hundreds of people have been given remote control deep brain stimulation implants for psychiatric disorders such as depression, OCD and Tourette’s. Yet DBS specialists still have no clue about its mechanisms of action and research suggests its hefty health and safety risks far outweigh benefits.
Suicide in the Age of Prozac
During the past twenty years, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and American psychiatry have adopted a "medicalized" approach to preventing suicide, claiming that antidepressants are protective against suicide. Yet, the suicide rate in the United States has increased 30% since 2000, a time of rising usage of antidepressants. A review of studies of the effects of mental health treatment and antidepressants on suicide reveals why this medicalized approach has not only failed, but pushed suicide rates higher.