Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model

Attempts to bridge the gap between research and practice result in a family therapy approach which employs clients as co-researchers.

A new study to be published in the next issue of Schizophrenia Research examines patients suffering from a first-episode of psychosis who stop taking any antipsychotic drugs. The researchers attempt to identify variables that can serve as predictors of the successful discontinuation of antipsychotics. They find, for example, that those who discontinue the drugs have, on average, the same outcomes as those who stay on them, and that those who have better social integration are more likely to discontinue without relapse.

In a review article for this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry, Daniel Weinberger and Eugenia Radulescu from John Hopkins University push back against the overreliance on MRI scans in recent psychiatric studies. While acknowledging that they both have contributed to this type of research in the past, the authors warn that “findings” from these studies “pose a serious risk of misinforming our colleagues and our patients.”

“Meditating before running could change the brain in ways that are more beneficial for mental health than practicing either of those activities alone,” Gretchen...

From Red Pepper: Capitalism produces much of the mental distress that is categorized as "mental illness" by turning human creativity and connectivity into social isolation,...

From Critical Psychiatry: The Critical Psychiatry Network's 2017 conference raised a variety of issues and featured a range of differing perspectives pertaining to the societal...

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

-How much is hoarding rooted in consumerism?

The Ministry of Health in Norway has ordered its four regional health authorities to offer medicine-free treatment in psychiatric hospitals. A six-bed ward in Tromso, which is in the far north of Norway, is now providing such care.

The bidirectional relationship between diet and nutrition and social, emotional, and educational factors among European youth.

According to psychologists, “mental illness is largely caused by social crises such as unemployment or childhood abuse.” If this is so, why are we...

Researchers find that psychometric properties in the CES-D, developed for White adults, may not adequately measure the lived experience for Black adolescents.

A new study demonstrates how the choice of statistical techniques when examining data plays a large role in scientific outcomes.

If I'd known then what I think I know now about our overuse of psychiatric medications (and all the words we were using to dehumanize people and their experiences), what would I have done differently? Was my occasional reference to recovery hollow? Once I get beyond my increasing regrets and start trying to imagine steps I could have taken, here's what I would do.

Acknowledging that current depression treatments are failing many people, researchers from Michigan State and MIT have developed a new model for understanding how multiple psychological, biological, social and environmental factors contribute to depression.

Researchers argue that blaming climate change inaction on psychological barriers ignores the effects of neoliberal capitalism and social structures.

A reader asked why more psychiatrists don’t speak up louder against psychiatric drugs. I’d like to think there’s someone in charge who could sound the alarm. It’s nice to imagine that working doctors have the power and freedom to speak up in a forceful and visible manner. If such a doctor exists, it’s not a psychiatrist who works in the trenches. A working doctor today is not in a position to be Paul Revere.

ServiceNet, a mental health and human service agency in western Massachusetts, received a three year, two million dollar grant to launch a program designed to support young adults who have recently experienced their first episode of psychosis. The Prevention and Recovery Early Psychosis (PREP) program is funded by the Massachusetts department of mental health and is designed to treat psychosis as a symptom, not an illness, resulting from other illnesses, substance abuse, trauma, or extreme stress.

In this piece for Nautilus, Veronique Greenwood discusses the legacy of Julian Jaynes, a psychologist best known for theorizing that consciousness was a cultural development resulting...

In this piece for Truthout, Noel Hunter lists seven facts it is important to be cognizant of during Mental Health Awareness Month, from the influence...

Re-conceptualizing the Clinical-High-Risk/Ultra-High-Risk Paradigm: A critique and reappraisal

We have just celebrated the anniversary of the rapidly expanding global Hearing Voices Movement which was founded more than twenty-five years ago following the ground-breaking research of Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher. Romme and Escher have advocated for a radical shift in the way we understand the phenomenon of Hearing Voices; in contrast to traditional, biomedical psychiatry which views voices as an aberrant by-product of genetic, brain and cognitive faults, their research has firmly established that voices make sense when taking into account the traumatic circumstances that frequently provoke them.

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.

My opposition to psychiatric drugs is not just that they are harmful, dangerous, and destructive. That would be plenty motivation enough. And it is. But in addition, my profession, which I love and value, has been hijacked by the APA and Big Pharma. It is my goal to return psychiatry to its proper place - where good psychotherapy is understood to be the treatment for human suffering.

A recent review of the evidence by the American College of Physicians (ACP) determined that cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants had similar levels of effectiveness for the treatment of depression. In a critical commentary for the Journal of Mental Health, however, Michael Sugarman from Wayne State University challenges these findings. Pointing to differences in research settings and clinical practice, Sugarman asserts that “these head-to-head comparisons are heavily biased in the direction of psychiatric care.”