The Reckoning in Psychiatry Over Protracted Antidepressant Withdrawal
Medically-induced harmāaffecting tens of millions of people worldwideāhas taken the field decades to take seriously.
The Spin Doctors: “ADHD” Research
We now spend over twenty billion dollars a year on treatment for something called āADHD.ā For that amount of money, we could pay the mid-career salaries of an extra 365,000 teachers or 827,000 teachersā aides.
Anticholinergic Drugs Increase Risk of Cognitive Decline
A new study finds that anticholinergic drugs, like antidepressants and antipsychotics, are associated with mild cognitive decline.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 2: The Scientism of Psychiatry (Part 1)
Wherever you find mental health services to have expanded, you find a parallel increase in the numbers who have been classed as disabled due to a mental health disorder.
UK āSleepwalkingā to Mental Health Crisis as Pandemic Takes Its Toll
From The Guardian: Health experts and charities have said that lockdown uncertainty, fear, isolation and loneliness will be exacerbated by the colder and darker months ahead.
Researchers: It’s Time to Stop Recommending Antidepressants for Depression
Researchers review a new synthesis of the existing evidence and conclude that the harms of antidepressants outweigh any benefits.
Voting While āMentally Illā: A Legacy of Discrimination
Legal and practical barriers to voting disenfranchise people judged "mentally incompetent." The centuries-old, unclear laws and regulations also disproportionately affect people of color.
Texas Social Workers Can Now Turn Away LGBTQ, Disabled Clients
From NBC News: The state Board of Social Work Examiners voted to change a section of its code of conduct last week following a recommendation from Gov. Greg Abbott.
The Double Standard at the Heart of Peer Services
There is clear evidence of a double standard and attitude that favors and privileges one side of the binaryāthe cliniciansāover peers. This discrimination must be made visible and revealed to mental health advocates and changemakers.
An American History of Addiction, Part 3: Mr. Booze
Coupled with a burgeoning new movement (AA) for temperance members to refer to, the movement changed from a public policy interest group to what we would now call a treatment-based outreach organization.
Teenager’s Death After Being Given Antipsychotic Was ‘Potentially Avoidable’
From The Guardian: An inquest in 2018 ruled that the use of olanzapine was appropriate but the McGowans have now called for a fresh inquest, saying the first was ādeeply flawed.ā
Original Soteria House Members to Speak!
Soteria Houseās history is complex and fascinating. Soteria Houses have never had the support they needed, but they still managed to change so many lives.
Stop Saying This, Part Five: Fake It Till You Make It
Megan Wildhood discusses the flaws in phrases like "fake it till you make it," "you can choose how you feel," and "no one is responsible for your life but you."
De-Weaponizing Empathy
I am not immune to what I call weaponized empathy, which I see as the pure intention of compassion for another tainted with aggression around eradicating pain, pain that could be a source of growth for the sufferer if allowed to arise and pass away without force.
Insane Medicine, Chapter One: The Medical Model of Mental Health Is Finished
The concepts we use have undermined our natural resilience, sensitised us to an idea of our vulnerability, and encouraged us to transfer our agency to practitioners who use a system as if it has scientific validity and is clinically useful.
Nov. 1 Zoom: Meet Voyce Hendrix, Former Executive Director of Soteria House
From Rethinking Psychiatry: Voyce will discuss his time at the original Soteria House in San Jose, CA, an alternative to the medical model for schizophrenia that ran from 1971 to 1983.
Psychiatric Oppression Under Victoria’s Mental Health Laws
Public mental health authorities continue to oppress persons with psychosocial conditions through a combination of punitive and discriminatory laws that are constructed with a "best interests" paradigm in mind and a medical model that pathologises difference and dissent.Ā
Has the Drug-Based Approach to ‘Mental Illness’ Failed?
From Scientific American: John Horgan interviews Robert Whitaker about how his views have evolved since publishing Anatomy of an EpidemicĀ in 2010.
What is Open Dialogue Today?
Please join us on Friday, October 23 for OpenExcellence, HOPENDialogue, and Mad in Americaās ongoing Town Hall conversation about what Open Dialogue is ā and is becoming.
Marketising the Mental Health Crisis: How the CBT Empire-Builders Colonised the NHS
From Novara Media: The governmentās flagship talking therapy service, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, has become an empire, offering assembly-line state therapy to a society suffering the mental ill-health of neoliberal capitalism.
Antipsychotic Augmentation Increases Risk of Death
A new study finds that adding an antipsychotic to existing antidepressant treatment is associated with a 45% increased risk of early death.
Hundreds of Children Stuck in IL Psych Hospitals Despite Stateās Promises to Find Them...
From ProPublica Illinois: āThereās not a whole lot that tells a kid you donāt matter [more] than keeping them locked up in a psych ward for no reason other than thereās nowhere to place them for months on end."
Can We Move Toward Mindful Medicine? An Interview with Integrative Psychiatrist Natalie Campo
MIA's Madison Natarajan interviews Natalie Campo about integrative psychiatry and holistic approaches to drug tapering and withdrawal.
The Smoldering Wick: Suicide and Faith
Some suicidal people may only benefit from the extraordinary selflessness and profound empathy demonstrated by St. Paul to his jailer.Ā Credentials donāt measure for that.
Greater Exposure to Antipsychotics Associated with Worse Long-Term Outcomes
A new study finds adverse long-term consequences associated with the increased use of antipsychotics in first-episode psychosis.
