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Consider an imaginary child called Jack who has been avoiding school as much as possible for a month. Standard practice would be cognitive-behavioral therapy or psychoactive drugs to help Jack deal with his anxiety. But what if Jack's social network instead mobilized to help him regain the role of student?

CTIPP Executive Director Jesse Kohler answers our questions about the organization's new report and what the findings mean for families and communities.

A psychiatrist and mom reflects on teen suicide clusters in Palo Alto and discusses alternative ways to address adolescent mental health.

The Nurtured Heart Approach represents a massive shift in thinking—about schooling, about children and how to raise them, about how we regard those with intensity, and about the medical model pathologizing them.

Psychologist Jim Probert of the University of Florida's student counseling center explains why "Our goal is not to take the steering wheel out of the person's hands."

Respondents described the grief and rage associated with being socially isolated while healing from childbirth and caring for a newborn, in some cases, entirely on their own.

This is what social media does, she says. It draws people in. It hurts people. In the worst cases, it kills people.

Using personal stories from my own family, my new booklet Engaging 'Madness' paints a clear picture of what an alternative healing journey outside the biomedical paradigm can look like.

Diagnosing children with juvenile or pediatric bipolar disorder is largely an American phenomenon. Do we actually have more “bipolar” children in the United States—or are we simply labeling more of them as such? If it is ever fair to call a child “manic,” isn’t the child’s environment the direction in which we should look?

The published articles underreported suicide-related events and provided false claims that the drugs were effective.

A mom describes her son's descent into the harms of psychiatry—and his way out. "It was really difficult to watch Matt decline. He had given up hope that he could get well."

The prescribing of stimulants to preschoolers diagnosed with ADHD is on the rise, which is said to be an "evidence-based" practice. A review of that "evidence base" reveals that claims that ADHD is characterized by genetic and brain abnormalities are belied by the data, and that the NIMH trial of methylphenidate in this age group told of long-term harm.

Finnish psychiatrist Ben Furman reviews various non-drug therapies for children with aggressive outbursts of anger, including the Kids' Skills approach that he and social psychologist Tapani Ahola developed. These approaches focus on helping children come up with their own ideas for overcoming their problems with the help of family and friends.

The poster-children of psychiatric genetics, who endured abuse throughout their lives, were also the product of a racist culture.

Here, Dr. Ben Furman offers a creative approach to helping children who struggle with OCD. Explaining why behaviors like reasoning, reassuring, and superstitious rituals don’t work, he suggests engaging alternatives that teach kids how to manage their “worry monster” and make sense of their distressing experience.

Here are methods for reducing or eliminating a child's psychiatric medications that I have seen work well over years of supporting families through this process.

Parents, beware: Disability rights lawyer Diane Smith Howard shares disturbing findings on conditions at youth residential treatment facilities.

Sharing the similarities between Lindsay Clancy's homicidal episode and my own will hopefully help prevent rare SSRI-induced suicides and homicides, including mass shootings.

Why does the U.S. describe perinatal screening as providing a proven benefit, while the task forces in the U.K. and Canada see no evidence of such benefit?

Sam Ruck shares his third excerpt from his book Healing Companions, which describes his life with, and love for, his wife and her “alters.” 

The Concerned Parents’ Project grew out of the idea that there may be parents out there who are confused and bewildered by the mixed messages on what it is to have normal and healthy childhood experiences. We posted a new question and answer for parents each day in March.

The main problem with prescribing psychiatric drugs to children is that it hasn’t been very effective.

Researcher Nev Jones, Ph.D., talks about her study of youth hospitalized against their will, and how their experiences affected their attitudes about mental health treatment and providers.

Soon after states finally began providing adults who remembered childhood abuse with the legal standing to sue, the FMSF began waging a PR campaign to discredit their memories—in both courtrooms and in the public mind.

Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Nandita Chaudhary about children’s lives across cultures, the problems with global aid agencies and their interventions, psychology’s bias in the study of children, the limits of attachment theory and more.