Britney: In the Name of Health
So many of us young women believed the people who told us we needed them to make us healthy, who told us that without them, we’d be at the mercy of untameable "disease."
A Global Call to Action: Pay Attention to What’s Happening in Trieste Right Now
From Heart Forward LA: An interview with Dr. Roberto Mezzina about the unfolding threat to Trieste, Italy's world-acclaimed, community-based, human rights-respecting mental health system.
Four Essential Studies on Antidepressant Withdrawal Every Prescriber Must Read
A researcher and service user Stevie Lewis recounts her own experience with antidepressant withdrawal and what she wishes her doctors knew.
Greg Hitchcock: Voices, Visions, and the Power of Creating
Greg Hitchcock is standing and schmoozing with a cluster of people in the soaring, glass-domed rotunda of what once was a grand old bank...
Flying Over Australia’s Cuckoo’s Nest: A Review of “Overprescribing Madness”
"Overprescribing Madness" explains how our sane social, political-economic distress responses have become medicalized into a mental illness epidemic.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5: Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick...
Inaction by the medical profession regarding the prescribing of psychiatric drugs to children and adolescents is a form of child abuse and neglect, and institutional betrayal.
“Never Look on the Dark Side”: The Science of Positivity from Early Eugenics to...
The "science" of happiness has always been inextricably linked to eugenics. Modern positive psychology, with its focus on genetics and willpower, is no different.
Maryland Launches Statewide Movement to Heal Those Affected by Trauma
From CBS Baltimore: Baltimore's recently-launched Trauma-Informed Task Force will serve as a role model for the rest of the state, and potentially the entire country, through the Healing Maryland’s Trauma Act.
Britney Speaks: Are We Ready to Listen?
Comparing her circumstances to sex trafficking, Britney Spears told the judge she wished to sue her conservators and be allowed to tell reporters “what they did to me.”
Mental Health Experts Assail John Cox’s Plan to ‘Force’ Homeless Into ‘Treatment’
From Newsweek: Legal experts on homelessness and mental health said the California Republican gubernatorial candidate's comments "distract from the real issues" that cause homelessness and would "never work."
#FreeBritney – A Discussion on Conservatorship and Psychiatric Power
From Inner Compass Initiative: Laura Delano, Attorney Jim Gottstein, and Professor David Cohen discuss the unchecked power the mental health system has to strip individuals of their basic rights, dignities, and liberties.
A Self-Help Version of EMDR Could Make Healing from Trauma Easier
Se-REM is a self-help version of EMDR that uses sound instead of eye movement for bilateral stimulation. My clients have reported finding it helpful for healing from trauma.
Unregistered Podcast: Robert Whitaker
From Unregistered Podcast: Thaddeus Russell speaks with journalist Robert Whitaker about the catastrophic mass deployment of psychoactive drugs by contemporary psychiatry.
When Homosexuality Was a “Disease”: My Story of Abuse
The horrors I was forced to undergo to “treat” my homosexuality are now unthinkable, but continue to raise questions about psychiatry’s ethics.
Will US Agency New Head End Stonewalling About Money for Involuntary Outpatient Mental Health?
Hopefully, one of the first actions Dr. Delphin-Rittmon takes at SAMHSA will be ending the stonewalling about support for involuntary mental health care.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5: Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick...
Peter Gøtzsche discusses the ways in which young psychiatrists can stand up to the system and fight for change in psychiatry.
‘Prescripticide’: Short Film by ISEPP
From ISEPP: The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry looks at the devastating consequences of the unchallenged use of psychiatric drugs.
Screening for Bipolar: Have You Ever Been “Unusually Happy” for More than a Week?
A new questionnaire funded by AbbVie conflates antidepressant side effects with bipolar disorder and doesn’t actually meet the criteria for being considered “screening.”
The Politics of Distress: A Discussion With Dr. James Davies on His New Book,...
James Davies on the medicalization and individualizing of distress and its connection to neoliberal ideology, and the need to focus on pervasive inequality and other social causes.
UN Warns of Rise of Psychological ‘Cybertorture’ to Bypass Physical Ban
From The Guardian: Psychological torture is being exploited by states to circumvent the more widely understood ban on physically inflicting pain, the UN torture rapporteur has said.
W.H.O. and U.N. Join Calls to Transcend the Medical Model
From Psychology Today: It will be harder for die-hard defenders of the medical model to dismiss such organizations as the UN and the WHO as extremist, anti-psychiatry radicals.
Making Mental Health an Ongoing Priority: A Patch Adams Approach
My brother’s sudden death and Mental Health Awareness Month spurred me to spend May making small, very personal efforts to both honor his memory and move the mental health conversation forward.
How Far Has Psychiatry Really Come? Historical Practices Versus Modern-Day Psychiatry
The basic assumptions behind unethical practices like lobotomies and insulin shock therapy are still the foundation on which psychiatry’s main treatments are built today.
Seclusion, Restraint and Coercion: Abuse ‘Far Too Common’ in Mental Health Services Across the...
From The Telegraph: The WHO has called for 'considerable' changes in countries of all income levels, citing widespread use of forced admission and treatment; manual, physical and chemical restraint; physical, verbal, psychological and sexual abuse; and unsanitary living conditions.
Caught in a Trap: Psychiatric Sabotage by Liam Kirk
From Asylum Magazine: Liam Kirk explains what happened when he took part in the RADAR trial to try to come off anti-psychotic medication.
