Features

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."

When Carina Håkansson sent out an invitation for a symposium on "Pharmaceuticals: Risks and Alternatives," some of the world's top scientists, along with experts-by-experience, came from 13 countries to explore better ways to respond to people in crisis.

A new mental health documentary awakens longstanding tensions around voice, representation, and the power to define problems and solutions.

Even after their own advisory committee criticized call tracing, leaders of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have been lobbying government for cutting-edge mass surveillance and tracking technology. Privacy experts are raising concerns.

Through years of turmoil and confusion, Cindi Fisher’s enduring love for her involuntarily committed son gradually changed her from compliant mom to mental health civil rights activist. That’s when authorities banned her from even contacting her son. But could she be a bellwether of a coming nation-wide wave of protestors?

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.

In 2008, a reviewer of psychiatric drugs at the FDA, Ron Kavanagh, complained to Congress that the FDA was approving a new antipsychotic that was ineffective and yet had adverse effects that increased the risk of death. Twelve years later, a review of the whistleblower documents reveal an FDA approval process that can lead to the marketing of drugs sure to harm public health.

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.

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.

The healing power of communal singing is at the heart of two organizations in England and Ireland: Sing Your Heart Out and 49 North Street.

Every year suicide hotline centers covertly trace tens of thousands of confidential calls, and police come to homes, schools, and workplaces to forcibly take callers to psychiatric hospitals.

"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!

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.

The prescribing of stimulants to preschoolers diagnosed with ADHD is on the rise, which is said to be an "evidence-based" practice. A review of that "evidence base" reveals that claims that ADHD is characterized by genetic and brain abnormalities are belied by the data, and that the NIMH trial of methylphenidate in this age group told of long-term harm.

Advocates vow to keep resisting psychiatric force, fighting for rights-based supports

In conversations with college students and recent graduates from across the country and around the world, they described feeling dismissed by views of mental health that narrow their experiences to individual medical problems.

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

Price Hancock views the Thelen verdict as a partial win. "The jury agreed that the manufacturer 'failed to warn.’ That's huge. It's a step in the right direction."

During the current pandemic, the practice of mutual aid—defined broadly as the ways that people join together to meet one another’s needs for survival and relationship—has become mainstream. Yet, often missing from major media coverage of mutual aid is any acknowledgment of its roots in movements led by marginalized people, including Black and Brown people, disabled people, mad people, and psychiatric survivors.

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?

The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry had the clout to draw a stellar line-up of presenters to its recent conference, including internationally prominent critics like David Healy, Peter Gøtzsche, Robert Whitaker and Allen Frances. There were lots of learnings and even some tense discussions, but one of the most intriguing aspects of the entire conference was the way in which scientific and social issues became deeply intertwined, especially when presenters reached for better pathways forward.

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.

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.

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.

“We need the MindFreedom Shield to have someone in our corner when we are told that it doesn't matter what we want, that someone else can make a choice about our bodies that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives.”