Responding to Madness With Loving Receptivity: a Practical Guide

39
In my last three blogs I posed the question- "If madness isn't what psychiatry says it is, then what is it?" Now I'm asking-...

Study Shows Success With Reduced Antipsychotic Use

8
People who reduced antipsychotic use by tapering were doing just as well after five years as those who continued using the drugs.

BPS Releases Review of Alternatives to Antipsychotics

2
BPS releases report encouraging behavioral interventions for people with dementia, rather than antipsychotics

How to Change Psychology to Address Racial Health Disparities

Psychology can only deal with racial health disparities effectively by incorporating critical race theory and intervening at a structural level.
wilted flower

Language of Mental Illness “Others” People: It’s a Human Rights Violation

38
When separation and microaggressions are legitimized and put into public policy and discourse, we become second class citizens and subhumans. This is oppression and bigotry systemically supported and then denied by almost everyone, including those most seriously affected. We come to believe these lies.

Study Finds No Correlation between Personality at 14 and 77

5
This result calls into question popular notions about the correlations between personality and later-life achievement and health outcomes.

Increasing Prevalence of Mood Disorders Among Teens and Young Adults

36
Depression, serious psychological distress, and suicide attempts have risen substantially since the early 2000s among young adults – what’s changed?

Study Finds Hearing Voices Groups Improve Social and Emotional Wellbeing

7
Hearing Voices Network self-help groups are an important resource for coping with voice hearing, study finds.

Neoliberalism Drives Increase in Perfectionism Among College Students

6
Meta-analytic study detects upsurge in patterns of perfectionism in young adults and explores how neoliberalism contributes to this trend.

Paxil Progress

1
Paxil Progress is a forum for people engaged in withdrawal from Paxil. It also offers adverse drug reaction reporting, FDA Warnings, published withdrawal studies,...

The Hearing Voices Movement: Beyond Critiquing the Status Quo

13
We have just celebrated the anniversary of the rapidly expanding global Hearing Voices Movement which was founded more than twenty-five years ago following the ground-breaking research of Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher. Romme and Escher have advocated for a radical shift in the way we understand the phenomenon of Hearing Voices; in contrast to traditional, biomedical psychiatry which views voices as an aberrant by-product of genetic, brain and cognitive faults, their research has firmly established that voices make sense when taking into account the traumatic circumstances that frequently provoke them.

Pets Play Central Role in Management of Mental Health Problems

11
Individuals with long-term mental health conditions identify pets as valuable supports in their daily lives.

The Conflicts That Result From Globalizing Euro-American Psychology in India

3
Researchers examine the transformation of work, life, and identity in India as a result of Western corporate and psychological culture.

Blaming Climate Change Inaction on Psychological Barriers Misses the Point

9
Researchers argue that blaming climate change inaction on psychological barriers ignores the effects of neoliberal capitalism and social structures.

Researchers Call for Structural Competency in Psychiatry

9
Structural competency in psychiatry emphasizes the social factors shaping patient presentations and encourages physician advocacy.

Debate Ensues Over Rights-Based Approach to Mental Health

16
Debate ensues as scholars and policymakers discuss how to bring a rights-based approach to mental health policy.
scrooge christmas carol

Dickens’ Christmas Carol: A Psychiatric Primer of Character and Redemption

26
Scrooge’s character was forged from his own emotional pain. Indeed, we can change the course of our lives through facing and mourning that pain. Want, deprivation and cruelty create the evils of the world. Mourning and trust, in the context of love, are its antidotes. 

Most People with Common ‘Mental Disorders’ Get Better Without Treatment, Study Finds

27
A new study suggests that most people diagnosed with depressive, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders recover without treatment within a year of diagnosis. “This...

To Live and (Almost) Die in L.A.: A Survivor’s Tale

44
After 25 years of chronic emergency, 22 mental hospitalizations, a stint at a “community mental health center,” 13 years in a "board & care," repeated withdrawals from addictions to legal drugs, and a 12-year marriage, I plan to live every last breath out as a survivor, an advocate, and an artist.

Problem Behaviors are Medicalized in White Children and Criminalized in Black Children

6
Race often determines whether school punishment or therapy and drugs will be used to address children’s problem behaviors.

Peer Support Reduces Chances of Psychiatric Readmission

7
A randomized control trial finds that receiving peer support from individuals with similar lived experiences reduces one’s risk of readmission to an acute crisis unit.

How Helpers Empathize may Affect Their Personal Well-being

23
Researchers distinguish between two different forms of perspective taking and examine their impact on helpers’ wellbeing.

Married Individuals with Schizophrenia Show Better Outcomes, Study Finds

24
14-year study of a rural sample in China shows those who were married had higher rates of remission from schizophrenia.

10 Reasons Survivors Might Know More Medicine Than Psychiatrists

24
We've been discussing a potential role for psychiatrists on this site, and I wanted some of the doctors to understand why many mental health...

Loneliness as Lethal: Researchers Name Social Isolation a ‘Public Health Threat’

3
Researchers present loneliness as a health threat facing a growing number of Americans.