Discrimination Leads to Mental Distress for Gender Diverse People

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Researchers seek to identify adaptive coping responses to discrimination for the transgender and gender diverse community.

Loneliness Increases Risk of Severe ‘Common Mental Disorders’

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Loneliness was found to both predict and be reinforced by severe common mental disorders.
trapped in mental health services

Mental Health Services Turned My Daughter’s Crisis into a Way of Life

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My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?

Climate Change, Mental Health and Collective Action: An Interview with Jennifer Freeman

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In an interview with MIA's Akansha Vaswani, narrative therapist Jennifer Freeman calls for a shift away from individualistic approaches to 'eco-anxiety' and toward responses that connect us all to a counter-tsunami of action for the planet.
mental health maze

Functional Medicine: My Path Out of Psychiatry

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My blood work indicated a host of issues that had been lurking under the surface of my “psychiatric diagnoses” for years. I’d seen various mental health professionals and none had recommended these types of tests, or stopped to think about any underlying factors, aside from the well-known “serotonin myth.”

Clinical Guidelines for Depression Need Urgent Revision

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A coalition of 35 health organizations expressed serious concerns that the NICE guideline for adult depression may cause clinical harm—they demand “full and proper” revisions.

A Biopsychosocial Model Beyond the Mind-Body Split

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Can a renewed biopsychosocial approach, grounded in an updated philosophy, foster person-centered medicine, and psychiatry?
I by Jeffrey Fidel cure bipolar diagnosis

A Doctor Cures His Bipolar Diagnosis Without Psychiatry: Review of ‘I’

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I details what happened to Jeffrey Fidel when he quit psychiatric drugs and embraced an alternative, non-medical healing approach — a set of philosophical and spiritual teachings known as the Tao Te Ching and Hua Hu Ching.

Decontextualized Depression and PTSD Diagnoses Fail Indigenous Communities

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A case analysis of an American Indian woman illustrates how the DSM diagnostic criteria misrepresent the lives of indigenous people.

How Social Dynamics at School Impact Teen Suicide

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Teen suicide risk is influenced by relationships with adults and teachers, perceived popularity, close friendships, and school connectedness.

Economic Deprivation and Social Fragmentation Drive Suicide Rates in US

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Major study finds that economic deprivation and a lack of social capital are driving increasing rates of suicide in the U.S.

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.

Therapy Gets More Effective Over Time While Antidepressants Decrease in Effectiveness

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New review of long-term depression data finds psychotherapy more effective over time whereas antidepressants decrease in effectiveness.

Psychiatrist Describes Role in Open Dialogue Model of Care

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Psychiatrist outlines varying roles in Open Dialogue model, fostering service-user and family agency through meaningful conversations with a team of providers.
psychological injuries

How Psychological Injuries Cause Physical Illness—And How Therapy Can Heal It

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How does experiencing physical abuse as an 8 year old shorten one's lifespan? How do insulting words turn into diabetes? Or sexual abuse trigger a heart attack 50 years in the future? Emotional wounds can damage DNA and produce a huge web of destructive effects, but therapy can turn the process around.
yellow wood therapy

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood: A Tale of Psychotherapy

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and not knowing which one to take, I stood straight, watching my life pass me by. But in therapy, I began to feel the knots of my life come alive inside me. The point is not just to talk, it is to feel your story inside, to hear your silences, and to realize who you are… and who you can be.
Howard Stern psychotherapy talk therapy

An Open Letter to Howard Stern, the “Poster Boy for Psychotherapy”

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Dear Howard Stern: What may come as a surprise to you is that the quality of talk therapy that was available to you—time-intensive, in-depth sharing of feelings, exploring childhood traumas, examining and changing difficult personality traits—is steadily becoming unavailable to the average American.

The Bipolar Artist: A Lifelong Sentence to Bear

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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.
OCD worry monster

Helping Children to Overcome OCD: 6 Creative Strategies for Parents

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Here, Dr. Ben Furman offers a creative approach to helping children who struggle with OCD. Explaining why behaviors like reasoning, reassuring, and superstitious rituals don’t work, he suggests engaging alternatives that teach kids how to manage their “worry monster” and make sense of their distressing experience.

Yoga and Mindfulness Benefit Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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A new review finds preliminary evidence for yoga and mindfulness-based interventions for youth diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Founding Member Looks Back on 20 Years of the Critical Psychiatry Network

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Founding member of the Critical Psychiatry Network (CPN), psychiatrist Duncan B. Double, reviews the past 20 years of the Critical Psychiatry Network in an editorial published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
flying girl open dialogue

Third Time Lucky: Open Dialogue and Finding Meaning in My Inherited Trauma

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A year after my twin’s death, I stood in a supermarket and felt my body disintegrating into a thousand pieces. My soul knew it needed the right teacher and helper. Fortunately, I found Open Dialogue. It helped me expose the real childhood trauma, and gradually rebuild my shattered, grief-stricken psyche.

Teacher Wellbeing Matters for Student Mental Health

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Teacher’s personal wellbeing plays a role in students’ mental health outcomes, suggests a new study.

Mad Science, Psychiatric Coercion and the Therapeutic State: An Interview with Dr. David Cohen

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MIA's Peter Simons interviews David Cohen, PhD, on his path to researching mental health, coercive practices, and discontinuation from psychiatric drugs.

De-Othering “Schizophrenia” by Placing it in Socio-Historical Context

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Understanding schizophrenia as a non-enigmatic, understandable human experience goes against a history of institutional “othering” that has sustained psychiatric legitimacy and further marginalized service-users.