Recovery/Empowerment

The Association for Psychological Science (APS) was founded twenty years ago by psychologists and neuroscientists who were dismayed by trends in the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA had lost its old single-minded focus on the search for empirically based answers to psychological questions. This may have followed from the fact that the APA’s membership encompassed an ever-larger percentage of practicing psychologists with many immediate, practical concerns. Yet it is these very clinicians who are in such dire need of empirically validated procedures. It might be time to summarize newer empirical literature that challenges the assumption that the mere expression of emotion is helpful.

A new study has found that of 10 people who were fully recovered from their first episode of schizophrenia (FES), those not taking antipsychotics did better in terms of cognitive, social, and role functioning—and reached full recovery more quickly.

Changing the mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany requires public debate about the ways our society should help and support people in mental crisis and with chronic mental health problems. We believe the driving force behind all help and support should be humanitarianism and respect for inalienable human rights.

A new study explores how “psychosis” and “schizophrenia” are viewed within the Māori community in New Zealand.

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.

PsychAlive is releasing a new blog and e-course on “Making Sense of Your Life,” with psychologists Lisa Firestone and Dan Siegel. They draw upon the...

As the Global Mental Health Movement attempts to address cross-cultural mental health disparities, a new article encourages integrating traditional healing practices with psychotherapy.

In my last blog, I talked about how I was attempting to cope with a “mini-relapse” without using psychiatric drugs. One Sunday morning in the midst of this episode I awoke in a particularly dismal state. I didn’t have a structure planned for the day. And without something to look forward to, both my anxiety and depression increased.

Dr. Gail Hornstein, author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, discusses the importance of personal narratives and service-user activism in the context of the global mental health movement.

Brief psychodynamic and psychosocial interventions help maintain reduced depressive symptoms

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

A new analysis of antipsychotic treatment of schizophrenia (published in Schizophrenia Bulletin) has found that two-thirds of patients treated this way do not experience symptom remission.

A mental health social entrepreneurship is a business that uses market principles to maximize benefit instead of maximizing profit. For instance, my business, Wellness...

Psychologists and people with experience of psychotic symptoms publish a report on new ways of understanding psychosis.

I kept thinking, why was I the one to be labeled when my husband was doing all this unhealthy, violent stuff? I sought out doctors through health food stores and communities that didn’t believe in medications for a social and family problem. That way no controlling, pill-pushing medical doctor had authority over me.

Practitioners and public leaders identify methods and barriers for integrating those diagnosed with mental health issues into community life.

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.

Yale's Program for Recovery and Community Health will publish in World Psychiatry's June issue a review the history of peer support, from its roots...

A discussion of the role of epistemic injustice in the experiences of patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Dainius Pūras argues that the status quo in mental health treatment is no longer acceptable and demands political action to promote human rights.

Through years of turmoil and confusion, Cindi Fisher’s enduring love for her involuntarily committed son gradually changed her from compliant mom to mental health civil rights activist. That’s when authorities banned her from even contacting her son. But could she be a bellwether of a coming nation-wide wave of protestors?

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

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-...

Imagine if we, as a society, started recognizing trauma, pain, grief, fear, the need for connection and understanding, and oppression without defensiveness or denial. What if, hypothetically, we saw the signs in people who were "defiant," "withdrawn," "oppositional," "depressed," "manic," or otherwise as desperate pleas to have their needs met, and stopped telling them they were sick for doing so? What would a society that actually encouraged expression of emotion, compassion, and empathy look like?

New understandings of medication and withdrawal experiences warrant rethinking conceptualizations of health and “madness."