A Radically Different Perspective on Mental Health
In this blog, Phil Wilshire, Principal Social Worker for Avon and Wiltshire NHS Partnership Trust, shares how the new Power Threat Meaning Framework aligns...
Child Abuse, Mental Health and Mental Illness
Psychiatrists and medical doctors donât ask who was hitting who and how often in your family. These questions would largely put them out of business and invalidate their industries. These questions would make a mockery of their many years of schooling and many prescription pad options. But these questions would also heal.
How Medical Professionals Have Enabled Torture
From Boston University School of Public Health: A new journal article in the American Journal of Public Health evaluates the similarities between the use of medical...
Bringing Trauma-Informed Care to Children in Need
From STAT: Numerous studies have confirmed that adverse childhood experiences are common and can lead to negative long-term health outcomes. Many pediatricians and hospitals are working...
Minority Groups Found Less Likely to Get Mental Health Care
From California Healthline: Although people of color are much more likely to suffer from severe psychological distress, they are less likely to receive mental health...
The Perspective of the Outside
From Red Wedge: Mark Fisher, an author and scholar known for analyzing mental health under neoliberal capitalism, took his own life this past January. His...
A Veteran Wonders: How Will My PTSD Affect My Kids?
In this piece for The Atlantic, Brooke King reflects on how her trauma currently affects and may continue to affect her children, as well as...
Bipartisan “RISE from Trauma Act” Introduced to Address Childhood Trauma in America
The Resilience Investment, Support, and Expansion (RISE) From Trauma Act, legislation designed to increase support for children who have been exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences, includes $50 million in funding for a âmental health in schoolsâ program. Exactly what these programs would entail remains unclear.
Psychiatric Retraumatization: A Conversation About Trauma and Madness in Mental Health Services
As a clinical psychologist and someone who was herself âdiagnosedâ and âtreatedâ for âserious mental illness,â NoĂ«l Hunter has a unique vantage point to view the mental health profession. I spoke with her about her new book, which offers an insightful critique of mental healthâs diagnostic and treatment irrationalities.
Introducing the Power Threat Meaning Framework
From The British Psychological Society: A group of senior psychologists and prominent service user campaigners has published a report offering an alternative framework to understand emotional distress.
"The Framework...
Perspectives on âRealityâ from an Alternative Epistemology
Contemplating human existence with a different paradigm of thinking will open our minds to perceiving the profound human diversities rooted in race and culture, developmental experiences, gender identities, sexual orientations, trauma, hunger, or immigration status, to name but a few ways we are or become profoundly diverse as humans.
“If You Wanted to Kill Yourself, You Would Have Done It”
From The Independent: The notion of choice is increasingly being used to discourage suicidal people from seeking help. Many people's suicidal thoughts and actions are...
Childhood Maltreatment Drives Self-Injury
From Medscape: New research shows that individuals who were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused as children are more likely to engage in non-suicidal self-injury.
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Trauma Outside the Box: How the ‘Trauma-Informed’ Trend Falls Short
Becoming "trauma-informed" is often just a way to advance one's career and feel good about oneself while pretty much doing nothing different. Here's a glimpse into the ways in which mainstream services and trauma specialists are perpetuating harm while patting themselves on the back for being progressive and aware.
How Psychological Injuries Cause Physical IllnessâAnd How Therapy Can Heal It
How does experiencing physical abuse as an 8 year old shorten one's lifespan? How do insulting words turn into diabetes? Or sexual abuse trigger a heart attack 50 years in the future? Emotional wounds can damage DNA and produce a huge web of destructive effects, but therapy can turn the process around.
Links Between Benefits and Mental Ill-Health Could be Recorded
From Vox Political: In a new proposal in the medical journal The Lancet, Kate Allsopp and Peter Kinderman have called for mental health professionals to record psychosocial...
Badiou, the Event, and Psychiatry, Part 1: Trauma and Event
In this piece for the Blog of the APA, Vincenzo Di Nicola critiques the scientism and methodolatry of contemporary psychiatry, and emphasizes the need for psychiatry...
The Demographics of Childhood Trauma
From Pacific Standard: A new study records the prevalence of several different Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as well as the demographic groups who are most likely to experience childhood trauma.
"The most prevalent...
Treating the Lifelong Harm of Childhood Trauma
From The New York Times: Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who has emerged as one of the country's strongest voices calling for a national public health...
A Different Mental Health Approach Could Have Saved My Mother
In this piece for The Independent, Nick Webb tells the story of his mother's suicide and explains how a more trauma-informed, community-oriented approach to mental...
Adverse Childhood Experiences: When Will the Lessons of the ACE Study Inform Societal Care?
The ACE study tells of how adverse childhood experiences increase the risk of psychological and physical problems in adulthood. When will we start incorporating these findings into public health policy and medical care?
How Our Ancestors’ Trauma May Influence Who We Are
In this blog post, Dale M. Kushner explains how the field of epigenetics can illustrate the role of ancestral and transgenerational trauma in shaping our...
Jeffrey Michael Friedman: Trauma and Forced Psychiatric Treatment
An interview with Jeffrey Michael Friedman, clinical social worker and activist in the psychiatric survivors movement who provides trauma-informed therapy to victims of abuse and violence, including those who have survived abuses within the mental health system.
Interview With Black Lives Matter Cofounder Patrisse Khan-Cullors
In this interview for Vice, Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Khan-Cullors discusses her efforts to fight for the civil rights of marginalized communities and to speak...
U.S. Politicians Now âTrauma InformedââShould We Be Hopeful?
It is good that the general public is finally hearing about the ACE Study, but I do not count on U.S. politicians to address the core implications of the ACE findingsâthe need to re-make U.S. society so as to (1) prevent preventable adverse childhood experiences, and (2) create a society in which healing from trauma can more easily occur.