Non-drug Approaches

The World Psychiatric Journal has published an interesting article, Uses and Abuses of Recovery: Implementing Recovery-Oriented Practices in Mental Health Systems, that outlines "7 Abuses of the Concept of 'Recovery.'"  This effort to identify problems in the use of the term "recovery" is important,  and it is good to see the many issues they raise being discussed in a major journal.  I encourage people to read the article, as I won't be able to touch on many of its points here.  Instead, what I want to do is to add some to their list of abuses of "recovery" and to critique  some of their reasoning about what alternatives should be supported.

I am being asked by a number of grassroots communities to facilitate a dialogue about how they can better welcome and support individuals who experience emotional distress. This is a challenge for many aspiring peers and allies in a culture where responsibility for our individual well-being has been increasingly transferred to psychiatrists, doctors, and other health professionals.

Research from the University of East Anglia find that children who experienced chronic, but relatively common, family difficulties - such as arguments, tension, or...

Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital analyzed data from 4297 children surveyed over 3 time points (fifth, seventh and tenth grades) to find that bullying...

Furthering findings that social adversity and urbanicity increase the risk of psychosis, research in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry finds that moving schools, family adversity,...

Amidst a reported leveling in medication usage among young children, a disturbing side trend has emerged. Antipsychotic medication use in preschoolers has soared over the past decade, to the upwards tale of a two- to five- fold increase despite lack of FDA approval in almost all of these medications for this age group and little to no information about long-term side effects. In addition, researchers have noted that most antipsychotic medications were being used off-label, and increasingly for the treatment of behavioral issues that many argue are both developmentally inherent and often a product of significant environmental dysfunction.

Steven Morgan discusses his transformative journey from chronic "patient" to leading mental health advocate. Steven has been working in peer support and helping to create alternatives to traditional mental health services for the past decade...

Research by a team at the University of California in Berkeley (including noted stress researcher Robert Sapolsky) published research in Molecular Psychiatry that finds chronic...

This TED Talk sheds new light on stress. "... While stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress...

As noted in Anatomy of an Epidemic, the prognosis for someone experiencing psychosis is far better in developing countries than in industrialized countries. Robert Whitaker and others posit that this is due to the treatment models used in the developing world, as well as to debility and chronicity caused by psychiatric drugs themselves. I think it's also important to explore traditional tribal and village based models of helping people experiencing psychosis and examine why they may be effective. Do these traditional societies know something we don't?

In "the first randomised trial of cognitive therapy for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders not taking antipsychotic drugs", researchers from the U.K. found cognitive...

Avatar of equipoise Tim Gunn, reflecting on his two and a half years in a psychiatric hospital, offers some life advice to Terry Gross...

For most parents, addressing the topic of death is an uncomfortable proposition. Yet, it may be one of the most important discussions we have with our children.  Our lifelong response to death often affects our mental and physical health.  We must teach our children practices from an early age that can buffer the unavoidable distress that would come if the worst occurs.

People who saw an advertisement for Cymbalta were less likely to offer help, endorse recovery, and have positive attitudes regarding self-determination towards people identified with...

Julia has received a lot of media attention in the last few days as a result of her blinded RCT published in a prominent journal, the British Journal of Psychiatry, showing that micronutrients were better than placebo at improving ADHD and mood symptoms in adults. But what interests us far more is the amount of public emails we get as a result of this work. And the theme running through almost every email is that the child/adult/husband/wife has tried all kinds of medications and the symptoms are still there and, often, getting worse. Could the micronutrients help?

The traumagenic neurodevelopment model of psychosis, introduced in 2001, highlighted similarities between brain abnormalities found both in people who have been abused and those...

Although extensive research links spanking to behavior problems, parents who spank often believe it is the way to be an effective parent.  Research from...

Brattleboro, Vermont psychiatrist Nels Kloster and mental health counselor Robert Stack discuss the coming year in mental health, and the changing perceptions regarding mental...

Therapist and folk artist Daniel Mackler discusses the major barriers to creating a more effective and compassionate psychiatric system, as well as the practice of Open Dialogue in Finland, and recognizing pain as a motivator for growth.

The Guardian reviews the hypothesis that all therapies are equal, in light of recent evidence, finding that ". . . we shouldn't assume that the...

In the last 30 years, acupuncture and Chinese medicine have become increasingly popular as a modality for helping people not only with health concerns but also with emotional distress and addictions issues.  Acupuncture has been especially helpful for people who are detoxing from drugs and alcohol as well as those who have experienced a high degree of trauma, such as returning military veterans.  One of the most innovative and wide spread ways of helping this population is through something known as the five needle protocol, or the NADA protocol.

Research on neurochemicals associated with moods in mice and rats finds that, while less depression-like behavior was observed in those receiving fluoxetine (Prozac) administration...

Although psychosis is more common in the parents of people with psychosis than those without, the difference cannot be attributed to genetics, research from...

Giulietta Carelli started the Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club and, inadvertently, San Francisco's craze for artisanal toast.  "More than a café, the shop is a...

Researchers from Johns Hopkins, publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reviewed the research literature on mindfulness meditation to find that it...