Parent Resources

Hospitalized for "grandiose delusions," I began to wonder: Was my dis-orientation really just a sickness? Or in "treating" it, was I missing a powerful re-orientation toward healing old wounds?

Jennifer Kinzie was a licensed mental health counselor who used her lived experience to guide her work—not only as a counselor and therapist, but also as a volunteer with psychiatric survivor groups.

Since many psych patients become forced consumers, their advocates have a duty to be educated and concerned with adverse reactions.

Dr. Rucklidge talks about the emerging field of Nutritional Psychiatry, which looks at the relationship between nutrition and brain health and how it may affect children’s moods and behavior.

My stay at the hospital had no impact on the problem that led to my admission. But it did exacerbate other problems and change me in fundamental ways. I am a deformed product of that ‘cutting-edge facility’ and the ‘treatments’ I received there — social isolation, pills and shots, ice bath and ECT.

A new article reviews studies in the field of nutritional psychiatry and how nutrition can prevent and treat mental health issues.

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.

Imagine being a parent at a meeting with educators to discuss Johnny's academics or behavior. Suddenly, your child’s teacher is telling you that he needs to see a doctor for an assessment of a suspected “mental disorder,” which usually leads to a prescription for medication. Warned of “the risks against failing to intervene,” you will likely acquiesce.

Risk of depression increased when children were taking methylphenidate for ADHD, but once they stopped taking the drug, depression risk dropped to normal levels.

My sister was told if she took medications everything would be fine. But everything was not fine, and the medications sent her down a path of no return.

The FDA just approved sales of an electrical device called the Monarch eTNS to be used on the brains of children diagnosed with so-called ADHD. The device “sends therapeutic signals to the parts of the brain thought to be involved in ADHD,” according to the FDA press release. “Therapeutic signals”? Really?

From HERE This NOW: Advances in science in the last thirty years help us realize the fallacy of "mind over matter," yet we still hold an entrenched belief that children and adults possess 100% conscious control over their behavior.

MIA’s Samantha Lilly interviews critical youth suicidologist Jennifer White about what suicide prevention could look like outside of the medical model.

The stakes are very high when loving parents anxiously sit down across from a child psychiatrist who has completed an ADHD evaluation of their child. All of the parents' high hopes for their precious child's well-being and future happiness are pressing on the parent's heart and mind. The psychiatrist leans to the side, reaches into a drawer, and lifts out a life-size model of a human brain for the parent or parents to see. The little five-year-old sitting on the floor playing stops and looks up at a model of his or her brain as the psychiatrist breaks the bad news. And the question is formed right then in the little boy or little girl's soul that may haunt the child for the rest of their lives – "Why is there something wrong with my brain?"

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

If you discover that your child has been experiencing a bout with depression, what wise words might you share? Brilliant psychologist William James was forced to address this issue himself when his 13-year-old daughter, Peg, began to struggle with melancholy. I present his long, thoughtful reply for your consideration.

Dear Doctor, I wonder if you remember my son... you only spent about ten minutes with him, exactly four days after his first suicide attempt. I asked you if his medication, Zoloft, had anything to do with what was happening. You looked at me and said, "There's no way of knowing; there are too many factors involved."

My hope and prayer is that this dramatic look at a negative effect of this class of drugs will help you understand that, in my professional assessment, their risks outweigh their benefits.

Doctors refuse to believe psychiatric medications have caused my sibling, Pat, any harm.  Over a three-year period, however, Pat's insurance companies have paid out more than one million dollars to warehouse Pat and to provide "treatment" that has caused complete disability.

A review of the "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" books by Lindsay Gibson. Even though adults experience emotional loneliness, such loneliness can also start in childhood when we might have felt (and I would submit, actually were) unseen emotionally by self-preoccupied parents.

A new study finds that newborn babies experience antidepressant withdrawal after birth if their mothers take SSRIs when pregnant.

From the Washington Examiner: I learned the hard way that doctors can be remarkably casual about things patients can’t afford to be when it comes to putting people on, and taking them off, antidepressants.

I never questioned the adults around me or wondered if the medications were necessary. Of course they were necessary. A doctor said so.

For years I had hoped that psychiatry would free itself from the psychoanalytic doctrine, and when my wish finally came true, my profession went from the frying pan to the fire. My main goal, currently, is to convince professionals as well as the public that most child psychiatric problems can be handled effectively without medication.

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