Art

I was told that I had only two choices: Do not have children, or take lithium while I was pregnant—the drug that posed the least amount of birth defects, and the very medication that had killed the painter in me years ago. I refused both options and set out on my own, and luckily found a willing psychiatrist to help me taper off the meds.

Men who report being self-reliant may be at greater risk of suicidal thinking.

Psychiatric meds can shut down the emotions and consciousness enough to make it possible to tolerate dynamics that would inspire rage or surges of empowered activity without the meds. It can be helpful to look closely at these blocks and start to create a map to freedom, understanding that it is a complex process that involves not only the physiology of the body of the individual taking meds, but the architecture of the social system around that person.

A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.

Meta-analytic study finds that psychodynamic therapy outcomes are equivalent to those of CBT and other empirically supported treatments.

For five years, I and others worked to create a residential healing community in Brookline, Vermont, where people could recover from debilitating and traumatic life experiences, which often lead to addiction and mental health challenges, without the use of psychotropic medications. We welcomed our first six seekers to a yearlong, therapeutic and farm-based, day program last September, and we now can report on what we have learned during this time.

I began reaching out to other psychiatric survivors, asking whether they would like to have their art featured in a book, and the response I received was amazing. People openly shared not only their art but their personal stories, their feelings, and their painful journeys into, through, and out of psychiatry.

“Overall, this study showed that the information and awareness campaign had almost no significant effects on the general public's attitudes toward people affected by either schizophrenia or depression,” the researchers, led by German medical sociologist Anna Makowski, wrote. “One could assume that deeply rooted convictions cannot be modified by rather time-limited and general activities targeted at the public.”

Writing in The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman discusses the comeback of Freud’s psychoanalysis, along with humanistic therapy, interpersonal therapy, transpersonal therapy, and transactional analysis and...

In a new study published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Professor Sam Porter and co-authors, present the results of a music...

A new article, published in The Arts in Psychotherapy, describes the ways art therapy and mindfulness have benefitted refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong.

A new study examines the preventative effects of cultural engagement has on depression among older adults.

Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, author of The Protest Psychosis, has published a brief history of "schizophrenia" in relation to African American culture in...

In this piece for Vice, Tess McClure describes New Zealand's Mad Pride movement, a movement that seeks to destigmatize, normalize, and celebrate experiences of voice-hearing...

From PsyPost: A new study has found that a course of arts-on-prescription can provide a significant improvement in mental wellbeing, including in those with very...

In this blog post, Dale M. Kushner explains how the field of epigenetics can illustrate the role of ancestral and transgenerational trauma in shaping our...

To coincide with World Mental Health Day on October 10th, 2015, Verso Books, the largest independent and radical publishing house released a series of blogs on mental health and critical and antipsychiatry. The posts include pieces on R.D. Laing, colonialism, women’s oppression, delusions and art, “The Happiness Industry,” and social and institutional oppression.

A new study finds that emotions may be represented by 27 categories, with each category relating to others in a more complex and continuous fashion than previously understood.

-"I could not have written those six words 30 years ago, when panic episodes, anxiety disorders and Tourette's syndrome clouded my view," writes Jonathan Friesen.

Relational therapy can be informed by the intersubjective dynamics observed in early childhood to facilitate the development of healthy relational patterns and a strong sense of self.

Between 2002 and 2014, JAMA Psychiatry published monthly essays by Dr. James C. Harris exploring the role of visual arts in representing emotional distress, trauma, life...

In this creative nonfiction piece for Literary Hub, one woman shares her story of trauma, depression, and suicidality, and recounts the unconventional approach of the...

Systematic review suggests social prescribing benefits individuals with mental and physical health issues, but more program evaluations are needed.

From CounterPunch: Although people are often pathologized and shamed for feeling hopeless, hopelessness is sometimes a natural reaction to an oppressive political climate. George Carlin...

If human beings were meant to be entirely stable entities, then “stabilizing” them would be an entirely good thing; a target for mental health treatment that all could agree on. But it’s way more complex than that: healthy humans are constantly moving and changing. They have a complex mix of stability and instability that is hard to pin down. All this relates to one of my favorite subjects, the intersection of creativity and madness.