Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model

Researchers explore neoliberal influences on interactions in psychotherapy and question whether the radical potential of psychotherapy can counter prevailing social systems.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs have gained popularity in U.S. schools in recent years. A new study examines the nature and longevity of their impact on students.

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

Can a renewed biopsychosocial approach, grounded in an updated philosophy, foster person-centered medicine, and psychiatry?

As I have various discussions about mental health and disability on the internet, I am disturbed at how many people continue to use the terms “high functioning” and “low functioning” when referring to people with psychiatric or other disabilities. I have heard people refer to their family members as “low functioning.” I have seen these terms used by advocates to bully and discredit other advocates who critique calls for increased levels of involuntary treatment as “high functioning” individuals who don’t know what they’re talking about.

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.

A new study highlights the role heavy metal music plays in the mental health of adolescents facing adversity.

In 2012, I found out that the ten biggest drug companies in the world commit repeated and serious crimes to such a degree that they fulfill the criteria for organised crime under US law. I also found out how huge the consequences of the crimes are. They involve colossal thefts of public monies and they contribute substantially to the fact that our drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Dr. Raskin discusses psychotherapists’ dissatisfaction with current psychiatric diagnostic systems and explores alternatives.

Meta-analytic study finds that psychodynamic therapy outcomes are equivalent to those of CBT and other empirically supported treatments.

MIA’s Micah Ingle interviews Mary Watkins about reorienting psychology toward liberation and social justice.

A new study analyzing over 21,000 participants found that differences in activation of brain regions in different psychological “disorders” may have been overestimated, and confirms that there is still no brain scan capable of diagnosing a mental health concern.

Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.

Psych meds can not only put weight on regardless of how you otherwise care for yourself, they also tend to make people feel gravely lethargic and vaguely sick all the time. I could not exercise as I had before. Could not. It doesn't matter how much mental health professionals try to tell us that if we just exercised we'd be okay in the face of neurotoxic drugs that cause weight gain, because the fact is the drugs impede that capacity. This is not widely appreciated or understood and people on psych meds are again traumatized and made to feel guilty for something that is truly outside of their control as long as they are taking these medications.

I am alive today in the most intense, sometimes painful, always beautiful of ways, and one of the many reasons I credit for my life is this: I am a failed product of ‘Suicide Prevention.’ For this, I am eternally grateful. While this statement may sound like a confusing paradox, I’d like to explain what I mean.

Could the statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean be responsible for the dramatic effects of placebo—as well as the supposed effectiveness of some psychiatric drugs?

Are White Americans’ poor mental health outcomes caused by Whiteness?

Professionals across the Western world, from a range of disciplines, earn their livings by offering services to reduce the misery and suffering of the people who seek their help. Do these paid helpers represent a fundamental force for healing, facilitating the recovery journeys of people with mental health problems, or are they a substantial part of the problem by maintaining our modestly effective and often damaging system?

Neuroscience researchers find no differences in brain connectivity between children with diagnoses of autism, ADHD, and those with no diagnoses.

Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.

Sociologist Harold Garfinkel, in his landmark article "Conditions For a Successful Degradation Ceremony" wrote that "Degradation ceremonies are those concerned with the alteration of total...

The latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences features several prominent researchers arguing that mental health concerns are not “brain disorders.”

Findings suggest that treatment not only fails to reduce the severity of “ADHD” symptoms in adulthood but is associated with decreased height.

Kev Harding argues against conceptualizations of therapy as a ‘cure’ to an ‘illness’ and instead offers alternative approaches.

Amid calls for a retraction, Lancet Psychiatry publishes articles criticizing the original finding and a response from the authors.