An Alternative to Psychiatric Hospitals: Report From Israeli Soteria Houses
From Psychology Today/John Read, PhD: A recent article reports on the successes and challenges of three new Soteria-style houses, an effective and innovative alternative to psychiatric hospitalization.
Pathologized Since Eve: Jessica Taylor on Women, Trauma, and “Sexy but Psycho”
Our guest today is Jessica Taylor, author of Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them, which was published in March...
Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites
From The Markup: Experts say some hospitals’ use of an ad tracking tool may violate a federal law protecting health information.
The UK’s IAPT Service Is an Abject Failure
Despite the hype, the IAPT is hardly “world-beating.” In fact, it is a doubtful model for other countries to follow. Over half of IAPT clients don’t even attend two sessions.
Less Than a Quarter of Those with Depression Respond to Treatment in Real Life
In a real-world setting, less than a quarter of patients diagnosed with depression improved with medication, hospitalization, and therapy.
Experts Urge Caution as AAP Calls for Mental Health Screenings for Newborns to 21-Year-Olds
From Children's Health Defense: With warnings of a mental health crisis among young people, the recommendation may appear sound and reasonable—but depression screening can be dangerous, some experts say.
Point/Counterpoint: What Is the Importance of Nassir Ghaemi’s Conclusion that Psychiatric Drugs Do Not...
A dialogue between Jim Phelps and Robert Whitaker about Nassir Ghaemi's latest article, which concluded that psychiatric drugs, except for lithium, do not provide a long-term benefit.
Former Cerebral Employees Say Company’s Practices Put Patients at Risk
From CBS News: America's largest online "mental health provider" is being investigated by the DOJ for their "chaotic," "confusing," "dangerous" prescribing practices.
Are ‘Mental Disorders’ Diseases, or Strategies?
From Psychology Today/Justin Garson PhD: Calluses are designed responses to friction. Fevers are designed responses to infection. Are delusions a designed response to a painful reality?
Peer Values Versus Violence: A View from Lived Experience
Some of us have survived violent, coercive forms of socially condoned mental health treatments. But many of us grow past the pain, into healing and compassion.
Psychiatric Drugs Do Not Improve Disease or Reduce Mortality
Nassir Ghaemi: “Most psychiatric medications are purely symptomatic, with no known or proven effect on the underlying disease. They are like 50 variations of aspirin, used for fever or headache, rather than drugs that treat the causes of fever or headache.”
What Is Hatred? | Alice Miller
From Alice Miller: Child Abuse and Mistreatment: We tend to associate "hatred" with the notion of a dangerous curse we need to free ourselves of as quickly as we can. I take a very different view of this matter.
Cargo Cult Psychiatry
Cargo Cult Psychiatry uses the courts to force people, who are otherwise assumed to have the right to refuse treatment, to submit to their pseudoscientific approach to "mental health."
Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses
From Psychology Today/Christopher Lane PhD: Sarah Fay's new memoir draws heavily from the DSM and its various editions to challenge their reliability and validity and asks clinicians to pause before assigning powerful diagnostic codes.
Philosophy Can Help Us Connect, Even in the Face of Psychosis
From Psyche: Philosophical concepts can help us to examine what can go wrong in our communicative exchanges and to re-examine our priorities in mental health.
Call Centers Struggling to Hire for New Nationwide Mental Health Crisis Line
From Slate: As 988 creeps closer to launching without sufficient staffing, experts worry that workers for the new crisis line could face the same challenges as their cousins at 911.
Jock McLaren – The Biopsychosocial Model is a Mirage, Time for a Biocognitive Model?
Dr. Niall McLaren joins us to talk of his experiences working in Australian psychiatry and explains why the models that purport to guide psychiatric diagnosis and treatment are not what they seem.
The Power of Activism
Getting support from other psychiatrized people, outside of the system, has the potential to be mutual. You are not being “treated” or talked down to. The contact is genuine and natural.
Antidepressant-Induced Serotonin Syndrome a Danger for the Elderly
Researchers found that 25% of elderly patients taking antidepressants had serotonin syndrome, which is potentially life-threatening.
How Drugmakers Influence Our Beliefs About ‘Mental Illness’
From Medium/Markham Heid: "Greater awareness” campaigns can often be little more than pharmaceutical marketing tactics that turn normal human feelings into illnesses.
Open Season on Mental Patients
No one is safe from psychiatry’s project of medicalizing every variation of human emotion and behaviour, especially people viewed with suspicion and contempt by the powerful.
Scientism and the Health Crisis in the Modern World
From Pathways to Family Wellness: Science has been waging war against subjective experience for a very long time, and this has taken its toll on Western culture.
Ecological Trauma and Common Addiction
From Rex Weyler: Breaking the cycle of abuse, trauma, and addiction requires a radically new relationship with society and with the more-than-human world.
Behaviorists Must Confront Psychiatry’s Pseudoscience
Despite the well-documented greater effectiveness of behavior therapy, psychiatry's choice of treatment for mental disorder heavily favors drugs.
Psychiatrists Thought This ‘Antipsychotic’ Was a Miracle Drug. They Were Wrong.
From Slate: There have been no great medical solutions, not for psychosis, not for our more common conditions like depression and anxiety.
