What is Contributory Injustice in Psychiatry?

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An article on contributory injustice describes the clinical and ethical imperative that clinicians listen to service users experiences.

Correcting Misconceptions of Trauma-informed Care with Survivor Perspectives

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Trauma-informed approaches have the potential to promote recovery but must involve survivors and service-users to prevent the experience of retraumatization within psychiatric and mental health services.

German Psychologists Declare “the Drugs Don’t Work”

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Jürgen Margraf and Silvia Schneider, both well-known psychologists at the University of Bochum in Germany, claim that psychotropic drugs are no solution to mental...

Arts Participation May Improve Mental Well-Being and Social Inclusion

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Introductory arts courses at Open Arts Essex show improvements in mental well-being and social inclusion for individuals with mental health challenges.

Call For Abstracts: Philosophical Perspectives on Critical Psychiatry

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The Association for Advancement in Philosophy and Psychiatry is issuing a call for abstracts, with a particular interest in submissions from service users. The...

Yoga Intervention Effective in Reducing Depressive Symptoms

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Researchers find that yoga and controlled breathing reduced symptoms in individuals diagnosed with depression.

Study Highlights Importance of Social Interactions in Psychosis Recovery

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Study finds frequency of social interactions predicts long-term remission in first-episode psychosis.

Using Participatory Action in Bioethics Research

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Participatory action approaches in bioethics research used to decrease coercion and seclusion in psychiatric treatment.

Depression Discrimination More Severe in High Income Countries

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According to a study published in this month’s British Journal of Psychiatry, people diagnosed with depression in high-income countries are more likely to limit...

The Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) Study: Notes from the Trenches

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I was a psychiatrist who participated in the Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode Early Treatment Program (RAISE ETP). Although I welcomed the positive headlines that heralded the study's results, the reports left me with mixed feelings. What happened to render the notion that talking to people about their experiences and helping them find jobs or go back to school is something novel?

Mad Economy: Let’s Change the World!

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Everyone in the world is either touched by their own mental health issues or have had a family member affected. What if they directed their buying power to an organization that would use the profits to fund exciting mental health & recovery projects both in the developing world and in their own countries; projects that would be ethical, non-coercive, personal recovery-based, and were aimed at creating recovery communities? What if they could buy products, crafts, services, art, music, books from people who had experienced mental health issues, enabling them to set up their own businesses or buy from social co-operatives that enabled distressed people to work and earn a living wage?

New Book Deconstructs Ideology of Cognitive Therapy

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CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.

How to Involve Youth in Their Own Mental Health Care

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Clinicians play a key role in empowering adolescents and their parents to make decisions about their mental health treatment.

Psychics Who Hear Voices Could Be on to Something

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In this piece for The Atlantic, Joseph Frankel compares and contrasts the voice-hearing experiences of self-described psychics and mediums with the experiences of people diagnosed with...

Madness and the Family, Part III: Practical Methods for Transforming Troubled Family Systems

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We are profoundly social beings living not as isolated individuals but as integral members of interdependent social systems—our nuclear family system, and the broader social systems of extended family, peers, our community and the broader society. Therefore, psychosis and other forms of human distress often deemed “mental illness” are best seen not so much as something intrinsically “wrong” or “diseased” within the particular individual who is most exhibiting that distress, but rather as systemic problems that are merely being channeled through this individual.

“Hearing Voices: The People Who Say Talking Back is the Only Answer”

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Journalist Emma Reynolds profiles Amanda Waegeli, Ron Coleman, Nathan Grixli and Lyn Mahboub about their experiences coming to the Hearing Voices Network (HVN). HVN was established 10 years ago in Australia and provided a support group that encouraged people to listen to their voices rather than trying to block them out. The group now operates in 25 countries.

“Toward a Social Justice Therapy: Let’s Keep Talking”

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Can psychotherapy help dismantle oppression? “Social justice focused, analytic therapy- the kind of therapy I strive to do- is one that can support the...

Therapist Empathy Predicts Success in Psychotherapy

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An updated meta-analysis reveals that therapist empathy is a predictor of better psychotherapy outcomes.

Researchers Call for Transparency About Limits of Psychiatric Knowledge

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A new paper explores how the disputed nature of psychiatric knowledge influences public perceptions and debates within the field of mental health.

Therapy Recommended As First Line Treatment for Depression

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Following an extensive systematic review of treatments for major depression, the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued a recommendation to clinicians suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a first-line treatment for major depressive disorder along with second-generation antidepressants. The results of the review revealed that CBT and antidepressants have similar levels of effectiveness but that antidepressants present serious side-effects and higher relapse rates.

Opening A Dialogue In Mental Health

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I have sometimes stopped en route to work, unsure how much longer I can continue. There is a sense of betrayal to my father and grandmother by working in a profession that failed them and is the only medical specialty to have its own survivor movement, not from the illnesses it hopes to treat, but from the ministrations of the profession itself.
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Filling the Crack in the Liberty Bell

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Instead of an echo-chamber conference, in which treatment “experts” present to other treatment providers, and those with lived experience gather in their own rooms, the ISPS-US conference allowed for the clash of diverse opinions, which could sometimes amalgamate into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Social Recovery Therapy for First Episode Psychosis

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Social Recovery Therapy shows promising results for individuals who experience first-episode psychosis.

Improving the Efficacy of Mindfulness in Schools

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New research examines factors that make mindfulness interventions in school most effective for adolescent’s mental health outcomes.

More to Happiness Than Feeling Good, Study Finds

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Cross-cultural data suggest that happiness involves feeling the emotions one deems as right, in accordance with personal and cultural values.