“Toward a Social Justice Therapy: Let’s Keep Talking”
Can psychotherapy help dismantle oppression? “Social justice focused, analytic therapy- the kind of therapy I strive to do- is one that can support the...
The Pond, Learning and Humility
What an amazing ride I’ve had in the past few days on the tsunami of commentary from my previous post. While it’s been fun (dare...
“Suicide, Mental Illness Risks Increase During Recessions”
The latest economic recession led to a spike in diagnoses for mental illnesses, suicide attempts, and suicide, according to report out of the University...
Scientific American Reviews the DSM
In a continuing series, Scientific American analyzes the "Trouble at the Heart of Psychiatry's Revised Rule Book."
Article →
Part 1: Psychiatrists Are About to Shift...
‘Mental Illness’: Fact or Metaphor?
-Do we mean "mental illness" literally, or as a metaphor?
“Fixing the Brain is Not the New World for Psychiatry”
Writing on his critical psychiatry blog, Duncan Double critiques Joe Herbert’s piece on “Why can't we treat mental illness by fixing the brain?” in Aeon. While Herbert admits that there is a "mysterious and seemingly unfathomable gap" between psychology and neuroscience, which "bedevils not only psychiatry, but all attempts to understand the meaning of humanity,” he goes on to speculate that someday psychiatrists will be able to relate symptoms to brain activity.
“How Open Data Can Improve Medicine”
“Those who possess the data control the story.” In the wake of the reanalysis of the infamous Study 329, where scientific data claiming the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teens was egregiously manipulated, researchers are pushing for open access to raw data. “The issue here, scientists argue, is that without independent confirmation, it becomes too easy to manipulate data.”
Homeless crisis needs “transcendence of the nation state”
A scholar who spent 12 years working with homeless people summarizes his perspectives on how homelessness relates to “mental illness” in the Georgia Straight....
“As Diagnostic Thresholds Are Lowered, Being Normal Ends Up Being as Difficult as Being...
"We are in the process of turning the disease into the norm and where the normal becomes the exception. If this continues, we will...
Psychiatry’s Crisis May be Unsolvable
Even if The Lancet's attempts to forge a new vision in response to the crisis of confidence in medical psychiatry work (previously reported in...
“Reducing Future Suicide Attempts by Forging Connection”
A new study published Tuesday in PLOS Medicine may offer evidence for an intervention for people who have already been hospitalized for a suicide attempt. The...
Recovery: Personal, Achievable, and Multidimensional
Interviews with 30 individuals three to five years after initial treatment for a first-episode psychosis found that a majority considered themselves to be recovered,...
Madness Challenges Our Sense Of What It Is To Be Human
In The Lancet, psychiatrist and MIA Blogger Andrew Scull discusses the themes in his book Madness In Civilization. "Mental illness haunts the human imagination,"...
Your Input Welcome For 2012 Alternatives Keynote Speech – SURVEY
I was invited to give a Keynote Address at the 2012 Alternatives Conference in Portland Oregon, and I'm collecting your input on what I should...
Is Good Mental Health About Learning to Live Better with Fewer Resources?
An op-ed in The Advertiser begins with a quote from Carl Jung: “The foundation of mental illness is our unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.”...
Call for (Pithy) Submissions: “Is Psychiatry a Real Science?”
In a call for submissions posted on the History of Madness in Canada website, the long-running OUR VOICE / NOTRE VOIX magazine, publisher of...
“Maybe Companies Should Chill on Employee-Happiness Programs”
Will Davies, author of The Happiness Industry, does a Q&A on the ways companies are misusing psychological research on happiness. “I think that one thing that often gets lost in lots of the discussions of happiness (especially in the business world) is the possibility that happy work may mean less work.”
Symptoms do not Correlate with Quality of Life in Schizophrenia
Researchers in France found that among 306 outpatients followed for a year, quality of life remained stable relative to subjects' expectations and perceptions about...
Robert Whitaker: “Imagining a Different Future in Mental Health”
Robert Whitaker on Imagining a Different Future in Mental Health, Philadelphia May 6, 2012
Training the Brain for Well-Being
Experience shapes the brain, for better or worse. Richard Davidson & Bruce McEwen review the ways that adverse early experience create measurable changes in...
Letters to the Editor: “The Treatment of Choice”
Readers respond to the New York Times article, “The Treatment of Choice,” about innovative programs for psychosis and schizophrenia that involve patients and their families in treatment decisions. “Narratives of success counter a drumbeat of faulty links of mental illness and violence, inaccuracies which serve only to further stigmatize and isolate individuals with psychiatric illness.”
“When Pills Are the Problem”
In the context of the Silicon Valley suicides, one mother offers her story about her daughter. “It’s my premise that not only the culture of Silicon Valley, but also, almost more importantly, the nature of the remedies that are being proposed in the name of mental health counseling, are to blame in these deaths.”
