MIA Today

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

From Israel Hayom: Just as they do not know how the treatment mechanism works, they also do not know how to predict damages or prevent them.

From Forbes: In a new paper, biological anthropologists call on the scientific community to rethink mental illness as a response to adversity rather than a chemical imbalance.

Roxanne fled to Canada, and received formal refugee status, as a psychiatric refugee after being threatened with psychiatric imprisonment and forced drugging in Jamaica.

My experience of raising a son who was bright and creative but didn’t fit the mold helped me to approach my restless, impulsive students more compassionately and creatively.

The number needed to treat with a psychiatric drug to benefit one patient is largely an illusion, because more patients are harmed than receive a benefit.

The adage that one must step outside their comfort zone if one wants to achieve success is troubling, and it’s time to stop letting it go unquestioned.

Concerns rise about the adverse effects and longer-term harms of GLP-1 injections like Ozempic and Wegovy.

Slick salesmanship, dishonest and incompetent medical practice (overlooked by timid regulators) and cultural, commercial, and political drivers now see Australians hooked on a cycle of over-diagnosis and over-medication.

The Vice article was presented as an exploration of the “movement against psychiatry,” and yet you can see, once it is deconstructed, how it told a story that surely pleased the promoters of the conventional narrative, and put the “critics” on the defensive at almost every turn.

From Professor John Read/University of East London: At 10,000 signatures, government will respond to the petition. At 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.

From COE Commissioner for Human Rights: While the additional strain generated by the pandemic is new, the mental health situation and lack of services has been a neglected human rights crisis in Europe for a long time.

From BJGP Life: Recent research concluded that over half of people coming off antidepressants will suffer withdrawal symptoms, of which one in two cases will be severe.

A new Cochrane review details the lack of evidence for antidepressants in the treatment of chronic pain.

Study finds an apparent connection between SSRIs, the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant, and increased risk of violent crime.

The disease theory of addiction had been ingrained in our culture for 200 years when Nixon signed this law. But had we ever actually checked to see if it was all true?

In JAMA Psychiatry, the authors claimed we have no way to assess outcomes, and no way to know whether outcomes are "continuing to improve."

The psychiatric system takes away all choices and freedom and calls the resulting state "mental illness." Psychiatry justifies alienation rather than repairing it.

Les Ruthven addresses the lack of evidence for antidepressants being better than placebo, as well as a note about ECT.

With the leadership of industry and their cosseted, lapdog doctors, psychiatric medications are prescribed indiscriminately to nearly anyone entering a physician’s office with a psychological complaint.

You had better be able to back up what you say with enough force to overcome any opposition; this rule applies to both inmates and staff.

From The Lown Institute: Because of bias that exists in many clinical algorithms, doctors are unintentionally giving people of color worse treatment.

Cindi Fisher has gone on a hunger strike to demand that her adult child, Siddharta, be freed from Western State Hospital after being suddenly removed from the discharge list without explanation.

Psychiatry forcefully maintains its delusions, even when the most reliable science has shown that their beliefs are wrong.

Supportive patient-practitioner relationships are crucial to the successful discontinuation of psychiatric medication.