The Answers Are in Our Weak Spots
When looking at your own weak spots as a therapist, it would be a safe bet to first consider how you can improve your skills in developing a stronger alliance.
Long Term Antidepressant Use Associated With Increased Morbidity and Mortality
A study finds that commonly prescribed antidepressants are associated with the development of diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases.
The Hidden Epidemic of Sexual Dysfunction Experts Are Blaming on SSRI Antidepressants
From The Daily Mail: Patients on antidepressants are not being warned of the risk that the pills could permanently ruin their sex lives, experts say.
Routine Anxiety Screenings Will Cause Overdiagnosis, Overprescription, Psychologist Warns
From Fox News: "You can’t just carve the world into 'disorders' and think you’re doing an adequate job of determining someone’s mental health needs," said UCSF professor Dr. Jonathan Shedler.
Grief, Intense Feelings, and Pathologization: Can We Conceive a Different Approach?
We still try to shove every kind of emotion into a neatly organized box, give it a label, maybe even an accompanying medicine to make it neat and predictable.
Health Risks to Babies When Antidepressants Used During Pregnancy
Babies born to mothers taking antidepressants during pregnancy were more than six times as likely to have neonatal withdrawal syndrome—including breathing problems, irritability/agitation, tremors, feeding problems, and seizures—than those born to mothers taking other types of drugs.
Dr. Gabor Maté on the Truth About ADHD and Anxiety
From The Joe Rogan Experience: "The so-called experts say that ADHD is 'the most heritable mental illness there is,'" says renowned physician Gabor Maté. "But I say, it's neither an illness, nor is it heritable."
Our Addiction to Control Is Enslaving Us
From Uplift: Our attempts to control both ourselves and the world around us lead to a kind of slavery, where we are both the slave and the slavemaster at the same time.
‘Toxic Culture’ of Abuse at Mental Health ‘Hospital’ Revealed by BBC Secret Filming
From the BBC: Humiliated, abused and isolated for weeks - patients are being harmed due to a 'toxic culture' at one of the UK's biggest mental health 'hospitals.'
Mental Health & Our Schools, Part 2
Schools are rolling out programs and services intended to safeguard students’ emotional well-being. They are full of potential—and pitfalls.
‘People Have the Ability to Heal and to Let Go. Healers Help You With...
From the Los Angeles Times: "From an Indigenous point of view, everything is a teacher, a spirit, if you will. So we ask what the so-called depression or anxiety tells us and where is it coming from." ~ Jerry Tello
20 Concrete Steps to Achieving System Change
I offer the following 20 suggestions for advocates who want to get something done and not just vent their quite justifiable criticisms of the mental health system.
An Illness, or Risky Experimentation?
Questioning is what I did, but once I started questioning so much of what I had learned and of what my identity had been, it wasn’t obvious to me where I should stop.
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 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.
The Alternative to Police That Is Proven to Reduce Violence
From Mother Jones: “The lived experience cannot be understated” 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 I’d 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."
