Defund Social Workers: Cops by Another Name
From The New Republic: If you measure in terms of the power to coerce, surveil, and inflict lasting harm, social workers are, thanks to the nature of the job, cops by another name.
‘Speaking Grief’ Documentary Asks, ‘What if We Got Better at Grief?’
From WPSU Creative Services: What would happen if we could speak the truth about our pain, and hear the truth about other people's pain? What if we got better at grief?
In Andrewâs Honor: Attorney Elizabeth Richâs Fight Against Unjust Commitments
Anyone detained and then formally committed under Wisconsinâs 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 Alternative to Police That Is Proven to Reduce Violence
From Mother Jones: âThe lived experience cannot be understatedâ as a key part of a successful crisis response team, says a San Francisco Department of Public Health representative.
Antidepressants Work Better Than Sugar Pills Only 15 Percent of the Time
From Newsweek: Evidence is mounting that doctors are vastly overprescribing SSRIs, and clinicians are calling for a new approach to depression that involves curtailing their use.
A Return to Dignity from Psychiatric and Childhood Abuse
Homebirth was a reflection of how the mental health system should work: Informed person-centered care while respecting your agency.
Why We Urgently Need New Approaches to Mental Health
Emotions function like a guidepost to what we need. But if we are not aware this, we cannot understand what they are trying to convey.
Out-of-Touch U.S. Task Force Recommends Routine Anxiety Screening in Adults
From The Washington Post: "If primary care providers are asked to screen for one more thing, we are going to break without more resources," said a nurse practitioner in Northern California.
Doctors Stopped Believing in the ‘Chemical Imbalance’ Theory. But They Didn’t Tell Us.
From National Post: Many think too little serotonin causes depression and antidepressants can correct that imbalance. But psychiatrists stopped believing that theory long ago.
Meaningless Distractibility, or Meaningful Mind-Wandering?
What do we lose when we view boredom and curiosity as "symptoms" of ADHD? It can rob us of intuitions that crucial life changes desperately need to be made.
Deadline for Congress to Reauthorize FDA’s Drug Industry Funding Is Sept. 30
From The New York Times: The pharmaceutical industry finances about 75 percent of the FDA's drug division through its "user fee" program, which essentially means drug companies regulate themselves.
Dr. Caroline Leaf Podcast With Robert Whitaker: The Great Psychiatry Fraud
From Dr. Caroline Leaf: "The message Iâd like to give to people," says Whitaker, "is that if we can actually have an honest paradigm, we can hope again, and we can find solutions again, and we can build better environments."
Thomas Szasz Versus the Mental Health Movement
Unbiased experts must examine the claims and research of psychiatry and issue a report as to whether psychiatry not only has a valid medical basis, but whether this basis justifies the widespread violation of medical ethics and the routine use of imprisonment and torture.
Dramatic Decline in Californiaâs Use of Antipsychotic Drugs on Its Foster Children
From The Imprint: Youth and Family News: A new study indicates statewide reforms have freed thousands of abused and neglected children from the lasting effects of the most powerful psychiatric drugs, but concerns about other medications persist.
Michigan’s Mental Health Agencies Are in Charge of Investigating Themselves
From Detroit Free Press: When mental health service recipients' rights are violated in Michigan, the system for redress has a built-in conflict that is hurting the most vulnerable.
The Psychiatristâs Dilemma: In Defense of Placebo Psychiatry
Telling stories they know are or may be untrue has become standard practice in psychiatry. It is a small step to set aside the need to provide truly informed consent.
Is Service-User Research Possible in Mental Health? An Interview with Diana Rose
MIAâs Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Diana Rose about producing knowledge with survivors of psychiatry, abuses faced by service users, and what good research would look like.
Talking About Suicide Helps Us Stay Alive
From Slate: Normalizing discussion of suicide is the key idea behind Alternatives to Suicide (Alt2Su), peer-led groups intended for adults who have suicidal thoughts or identify as survivors.
âBeware, Scientology Relatedâ: How ADHD Experts Silence Criticism
We do not belong to the scientology movement, but this false accusation triggered an email correspondence that exposed the problematic happenings usually behind closed academic curtains.
#RestoreTheirRights: An Update on Guardianship Action
Itâs time to change the conversation around guardianship. The question is not âWhen do we remove someoneâs rights?â but âHow can we best support them?â
What Liberal Admonishers of Left Psychiatry Critics Get Wrong | Bruce Levine
From CounterPunch: It is disappointing to see Jacobin accepting the mainstream liberal narrative that goes like this: If one cares about alleviating emotional suffering, one must defend psychiatry.
Some Schools Bringing Back Corporal Punishment; Parents Opt In as Students Protest
From TODAY: "Corporal punishment signals to the child that a way to settle interpersonal conflicts is to use physical force and inflict pain," said the American Academy of Pediatrics in a 2014 statement.
Child Frustration Breeds Race Hatred; Columbia Scientist Finds Punishment of Baby Is Seed of...
From Project NoSpank/The New York Times, December 22, 1940: The aggressiveness which adults exhibit, said Dr. Ashley Montagu, is originally produced during childhood by parents, teachers, nurses, or whoever else participates in the process of socializing the child.
Our RCT Fetish: How the âGold Standardâ for Research Has Led to A Societal...
After Joanna Moncrieff and colleagues published their study debunking the low-serotonin theory of depression, the editor of Mad in Sweden, Lasse Mattila, wrote Swedenâs...
The NY Times Suddenly Discovered Weâre Giving Kids Dangerous Drugs
From the New York Post: The New York Times' splashy story about the overmedication of children was 20 years too late. Why does obvious damage to children go ignored for so long?