Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Psychiatrist’s 30-Year Challenge to Conventional Wisdom
For thirty years, Dr. Giovanni Fava has sounded the alarm on the long-term effects of antidepressants and the risks of withdrawal, pushing back against pharmaceutical narratives.
Human Suffering as Numbers and Graphs: The Problem with Measuring Outcomes in Therapy
Outcome monitoring is a product of bureaucratic healthcare: Human suffering reduced to efficiency optimization.
Antidepressant Withdrawal Commonly Misdiagnosed as “Mental Illness”
A new study reveals that more than two-thirds of patients experiencing antidepressant withdrawal were misdiagnosed with psychiatric disorders.
MindFreedom’s Shield Program: Working to Free People from Psychiatric Incarceration and Forced Treatment
“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.”
Beyond Pharmacare
From Briarpatch Magazine: Prisoner advocates and family members of institutionalized people depict the overprescribing epidemic as attempts to “control behaviour” turning people into “zombies.”
Elder Eyes Wide Shut
There is no universal moral code: Elder law and the injustice and inhumane practice of legal guardianship are a calculated effort by the court, the attorneys, and the healthcare system.
Do Depression Pills Improve Quality of Life?
In the upside-down world of psychiatry, the pills that destroy your sex life are called happy pills. I call them unhappy pills or anti-sex pills.
What I’ve Learned about Tapering Psychiatric Drugs—A Holistic Therapist’s Perspective
Liberation from pharmaceuticals is possible, but it is not an easy journey. I advocate for informed consent.
Antidepressants Overprescribed to Post-Menopausal Women Despite Risks
A new study reveals that antidepressants, commonly prescribed to post-menopausal women, may increase risks of falls, cognitive decline, and cardiovascular issues, raising questions about their overuse in this population.
The U.S. Disconnecting & Numbing Epidemic: The Culprit and Our Options
From CounterPunch: We are increasingly being forced to become machine components alienated from our humanity so as to fit into a large machine.
The Iatrogenic Gaze: How We Forgot That Psychiatry Could Be Harmful
The victims of psychiatric iatrogenesis believed they were taking a vitamin, only to later realize it was poison.
Targeted: For Those Who Hear Voices, the ‘Broken Brain’ Explanation Is Harmful
From Aeon: If psychiatry’s medical vision is failing, what should we replace it with? How can we break out of this bind?
Working to Transmute the Pain: Why I Do the Work I Do
I sought help and followed the prescribed path. About twenty years later, I began to question, "What is happening? Why am I still stuck?"
Modern Psychiatry and the Human Soul and Spirit: Is Our Freedom at Stake?
The medications are there to disconnect us from our divine, creative Self, but the human being is remarkable and incredibly resilient.
A Polyvagal Understanding of Being Human
At the core of trauma is the alienation from ourselves, our bodies and our emotions caused by our modern lifestyle.
Flying While Depressed? The FAA’s Troubling New Antidepressant Standards
The FAA should reconsider the policy on drugs that are ineffective for depression and increase the risk of suicidality and violence.
Descriptive Labels Are Not Causes, No Matter How Hard You Try: A Response to...
From Psychiatric Times: If circular claims are presented together with unfounded claims about purported brain mechanisms, they may further bias people towards falsely assuming that biological causes and mechanisms have been identified for psychiatric problems.
Multiplicity and Mad Studies: An Interview with Jazmine Russell
In this interview, Jazmine Russell describes her journey through psychosis and mental health advocacy to embracing a multiplicity of frameworks in Mad Studies.
Mishiguene
From my grandmother I learned about mishiguene, which means crazy in that ironic and funny tone that Yiddish can have in some families.
Psychiatric Diagnoses Don’t Explain ‘Why’—Only ‘How’
From Psychology Today/Denise Winn: Finnish researchers found that the most influential health organizations "used language that inaccurately described depression as a causal explanation to depressive symptoms."
To Young People of Color with Lived Experience: Pay it Forward; Become a Peer
A Peer Support Specialist tells her story and issues a callout to the BIPOC LatinX community, advocating for change.
Giving Caregivers a Platform: Leigh, Mother of Melissa
This is the story of a young woman who suffered through the agony of "kindling" and other drug-related harm, eventually dying by suicide. This is also the story of her mother’s path ahead.
The Co-Opting of the Peer Movement in Mental Health
Bureaucratic red tape often overshadows the quality of therapeutic engagement. Protocols often trump empathy, and paperwork overshadows personalized care.
The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines: An Interview with David Taylor and Mark Horowitz
Tapering should be tailored and adjusted to the patient, slowed and more hyperbolic in people who have severe and longstanding reactions.
When It Comes to Post-Surgical Opioid Tapering, You’re on Your Own!
I firmly believe that the people who give patients drugs have a responsibility to help people get off the drugs.
