Police Keep Using ‘Excited Delirium’ to Justify Brutality. It’s Junk Science.
From The Washington Post: Several analyses have found that the majority of deaths attributed to 'excited delirium' are associated with the use of physical restraint.
How 1 Panic Attack Led to 15 Years of Psychiatric Drugs
My brain zaps—symptoms of benzo withdrawal—were like having a mini seizure on a daily basis. But my doctor kept telling me that my “underlying” anxiety was causing all my distress.
An American History of Addiction: Ardent Spirits
Our fears about drugs and drug addiction have allowed our society to accept court mandated treatment and the continuing militarization of police.
Overdose Deaths Soar Across Country Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
From The Appeal: "COVID-19 really highlights the risk factors [for deaths of despair] that we know are most prevalent: unemployment, social isolation, disconnection. Those are huge risk factors."
Service-User Knowledge Helps Researchers Develop Psychiatric Drug Tapering Approaches
New strategies for tapering psychiatric drugs achieved by acknowledging withdrawal symptoms and valuing service-users’ first-hand knowledge.
Professional Mental Health Leaders: Experts in Humanity or in Marketing?
A lot of people, perhaps especially Americans, like a quick fix. Unfortunately, for those of us who get the “help” of the mental health system, the results can be disastrous.
Embrace the Messiness! An Interview with Pediatrician Claudia Gold
An interview with Claudia Gold, M.D., pediatrician, infant-parent mental health specialist, author, teacher, and speaker based in western Massachusetts. We discuss the importance of human interaction in child development.
Whose Finger is Taking the Pulse of America’s Shock Treatment Controversy?
My doctors presumed I had agitated catatonia and ran 450 volts of electricity through my head 116 times to “reboot” my brain. They called it electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). I call it Electroconvulsive Trauma.
Mental Health and Emotion in the Digital Age: An Interview with Ian Tucker
MIA's Tim Beck interviews psychologist Ian Tucker about the relationships between digital technologies, emotion, and mental health.
People in Mental Health Crises Need Help, Not Handcuffs
From STAT News: A mental health crisis can be a frightening thing. Those in its throes need help, but all too often get handcuffs
For People “At Risk for Psychosis,” Antipsychotics Associated with Worse Outcomes
Researchers studied whether antipsychotics could prevent transition to full psychosis and found that the drugs worsened outcomes.
Cops Criminalize Protest; Psychiatrists Medicalize It
From Susan Rosenthal: It doesn’t help to replace one form of oppression with another. Like the police, the ‘mental health industry’ is built on discrimination.
Reporting the COVID Crisis at Psychiatric Hospitals: A Missed Opportunity
In its coverage of the impact of COVID on psychiatric hospitals, the media missed opportunities to challenge stereotypes and interrogate problems with current carceral approaches to mental health treatment.
Stop Saying This, Part Two: “Reframing” and More
Myths around reframing, having to love yourself before someone else can love you, and being triggered are all addressed in this blog.
Is COVID-19 Making Everybody Crazy?
The response to the pandemic promises a vast expansion of the market for therapists, but such claims carry great potential for harm, adding to the burdens of people with upsetting but understandable, deeply human feelings.
RCMP Officer Drags Student in Crisis, Steps on Her Head
From CBC: Wang says she was experiencing mental distress and her boyfriend called the RCMP. The officer did not provide assistance.
The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals
From The New York Times: Two major study retractions in one month have left researchers wondering if the peer review process is broken.
Racism and Radical Psychiatry
A radical caucus within the American Psychiatric Association tried to combat systemic racism in the 1960s. So why is the APA still behind the times?
‘Bear Our Pain’: The Plea for More Black Mental Health Workers
From NPR: Dr Rhea Boyd says racism's toll threads through the psyche, manifesting in many ways, and shaping the youngest of brains.
Child Abuse and Psychosis: My Healing Journey
Hospitalized for "grandiose delusions," I began to wonder: Was my dis-orientation really just a sickness? Or in "treating" it, was I missing a powerful re-orientation toward healing old wounds?
Professionals and ECT Recipients Request Suspension of ECT in NHS
From The University of East London: They hope that by this time next year, the UK will be the first country to finally put an end to this well-intentioned but calamitous error.
Randomized Controlled Trial Confirms That Antipsychotics Damage the Brain
A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry connects antipsychotics with damage to the brain in multiple areas.
Angela Peacock – Medicating Normal
An interview with Angela Peacock who talks of her experiences of being prescribed benzodiazepines, her journey off multiple medications, her continuing work in veterans advocacy and her thoughts about the film Medicating Normal which will be screened on World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, July 11.
Bridging Critical and Conceptual Psychiatry: An Interview with Awais Aftab
MIA’s Justin Karter interviews psychiatrist Awais Aftab about how “conceptual competence” uses philosophy to transform psychiatry.
Snakes and Ladders: How Psychiatry Took Away My Choices
The psychiatric system takes away all choices and freedom and calls the resulting state "mental illness." Psychiatry justifies alienation rather than repairing it.
