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."
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 California’s 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 Psychiatrist’s 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
MIA’s 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.
“Beware, Scientology Related”: 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
It’s time to change the conversation around guardianship. The question is not “When do we remove someone’s rights?” but “How can we best support them?”
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 “Gold Standard” 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 Sweden’s...
The NY Times Suddenly Discovered We’re 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?
The Culture Is the Poison: Why Psychedelics Are Dangerous Medicine in a Neoliberal Society
Extraction of psychedelics from the ritual process has dissociated them from community, connectedness, and responsibility, which used to define psychedelic drug use.
As a Cop, I Know Police Contempt for Drug Users Is Still Widespread—And It...
From Filter: The US drug-warrior mentality reflects many troubling things, but what strikes me the most is its lack of compassion for people who use drugs and their families.
In Afghanistan, a Quiet Epidemic of Mass Psychogenic Illness
From Undark: Mass psychogenic illness is “a collective stress response,” says medical sociologist Robert E. Bartholomew, and “everyone is potentially susceptible because it’s based on a belief” — in many cases, of a perceived threat.
A Developmental Response to Trauma and Trauma Language
Understanding life events (and/or our responses to them) as trauma has transformed how we suffer and how we relate to pain.
Our Gut Feelings Are Not Luxuries | Gabor Maté, MD
From Sustainable Human: When we are alienated from our gut feelings, we no longer have a sense of reality, nor a sense of truth.
Relational Disconnection as ‘Mental Illness’ | Darcia Narvaez, PhD
From Kindred Media: Many of the most problematic behaviors are not considered “mental illness” by the DSM, though they would be by any indigenous psychology standard.
Top 10 Myths About the Critics of Psychiatry
Service-users' experience was at the heart of everything the critics spoke about, as well as the importance of relying on the most up-to-date and accurate evidence.
Are New Guidelines in Order? The Psychexperience – Interview with Robert Whitaker
From The Pyschexperience: Dr. Nardi, creator of the New England Psychiatry Mentorship Institute (NEPMI), interviews Bob Whitaker about his 2010 book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.
