MIA Today

Headlines of Today's Posts

This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She’s Not Alone.

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From The New York Times: The problem of multiple medication use, or polypharmacy, that first emerged a decade ago among young people in foster care and low-income settings, has now gone mainstream.

Brainwashing in the Medical Training | Two Letters to Alice Miller

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From alice-miller.com: Just as children are often blamed for anything that happens to them, patients are often blamed, and thus denied adequate care, for their afflictions.

Driving Ourselves Crazy: Car Culture as Collective Madness

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From Mental Hellth: The dominant belief is that cars form a welcome and irreplaceable part of modern life and that their benefits outweigh the negatives. What advantages, though, do they really bring?

Beyond Drugs: The Universal Experience of Addiction | Gabor Maté, MD

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From drgabormate.com: Most addicted people use no drugs at all, and addiction cannot be understood if we restrict our vision of it to substances, legal or illicit.

Mad Parenting: On Becoming an Unlikely Family Man

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I’ve often been told I shouldn’t have kids because I’m “bipolar.” But since my twins’ birth, I’ve been way more stable than I thought I would be, and I’ve found what I’ve always been looking for.
A black man stands with fingers in his ears as if pretending not to hear

The Phobic Avoidance of Attending to Real World Mental Health Outcomes

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The avoidance of real-world outcome measures in research seems almost phobic. Yet this type of outcome should be considered the most important.

Some Antidepressants, Antipsychotics May Make Heatwaves Challenging

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From the BBC: Evidence suggests these medications can hinder the body from regulating temperature properly, cause people to sweat excessively, not register thirst or make skin more sensitive to sun.

Scots With Learning Disabilities and Autism Locked in Hospitals for Decades

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From the BBC: They remain unable to get out despite Scottish ministers saying 22 years ago that they should be living independently in the community.
Stock photo of unhappy little girl; adult woman is trying to make her do worksheets

A Therapist Tried to Explain CBT When I Was 11 Years Old, Ineffectively

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As a therapist, I feel that CBT is offered best on a voluntary basis. The therapist must move away from CBT-like interventions when it is not helpful.

How China Weaponizes Psychiatry Against Dissent

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From The Washington Post: A report by Safeguard Defenders charges that reform laws passed in 2012–13 “did not bring about any substantial improvement to the systematic political abuse of psychiatry in China.”

‘The Medical Model Has Presided Over Four Decades of Flat-Lining Outcomes’

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From The BPS: Our services, as they are currently configured, make the medicalisation of our suffering the core precondition for receiving any care or support at all. That is wrong and must change. Dr. James Davies

‘I Was a Rebel Without a Cause Before My Breakdown… I Saw Psychology as...

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From the BPS: Rufus May had a breakdown at 18 and was 'diagnosed' with 'schizophrenia.' Now a clinical psychologist, he explains his approach and what he thinks needs to change in the mental health system.

‘We Are Engaged in Something Much More Complex Than a Debate About the Evidence’

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From The BPS: The current debate in mental health poses a challenge to power, and as we know, few people or institutions will give up power voluntarily. Dr. Lucy Johnstone

Beverley Thomson–Antidepressed: Antidepressant Harm and Dependence

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We talk with author Beverley Thomson about her latest book, entitled Antidepressed: A Breakthrough Examination of Epidemic Antidepressant Harm and Dependence.

New Narrative Game Raises Awareness of ACEs & Their Impact on Youth Mental Health

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From iThrive Games: Children of the Flame was created by youth designers at the SEED (System-Educated Expert Disrupters) Institute to raise awareness of trauma and trauma-informed practices.

Ken Burns’ “Hiding in Plain Sight…”: Candid Interviews, Canned Conclusions

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I was hoping for more accurate representation of youth mental health challenges. What I saw instead was a glossy patchwork of mixed messages.
A set of folders, one labeled "Conclusions"

Condensing “Anatomy of an Epidemic” into a High-Level Summary Document

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After reading "Anatomy of an Epidemic," I needed something that could be read quickly, summarizing the material at a high level, to share with the general public.

Antidepressants No Better Than Placebo for About 85% of People

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Researchers can’t predict the 15% who benefit from antidepressants, and the other 85% are unnecessarily exposed to the harms of the drugs.

Ending Child Abuse: The Next Spiritual Revolution

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From Bryan Eden/alice-miller.com: Humanity’s progress toward peace, love, prosperity and happiness is being held captive by an invisible plague of cruelty and violence.

I Was a Cult Member in the Cult of Psychiatry

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From Mental Hellth: Today I believe OCD is a trauma response. But at the time I believed what the psychiatrist told me, that there was something structurally wrong with my brain.

1 in 3 UK Teens Given Antidepressants, Despite Official Guidelines

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From inews.co.uk: Family doctors say a lack of access to effective psychological therapies on the NHS is leading them to over-prescribe medication.

Behind Rolling Stone’s Hatchet Job on a Psychiatrist Critical of Neoliberal Capitalism

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From CounterPunch: Why did Rolling Stone attempt to associate Joanna Moncrieff, author of the recent serotonin study, with the right-wing in order to discredit her for its readers?

Away From Psychiatrization: Towards Socio-Ecological Wellbeing in the Community

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The modern notion of poor mental health and how to respond to it is an escalating series of biomedical interventions that don’t actually solve the underlying problem.

Capitalism and Coercive Control

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From Red Flag: A society that normalizes the dynamics of coercive control in most aspects of life is ill-equipped to eradicate them from our personal lives.

Depression and Serotonin: It Was All a F*cking Lie | Russell Brand

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Comedian Russell Brand offers a humorous take on the recent news that depression has not been found to be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.