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 don’t 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.
U.S. Politicians Now “Trauma Informed”—Should 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 findings—the 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.
No Guns in Schools
The Society for Humanistic Psychology has released a statement by psychology faculty and students from the University of Massachusetts-Boston in opposition to the notion...
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 “mental health in schools” program. Exactly what these programs would entail remains unclear.
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.
The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma
In this piece for The New Yorker, Junot Diaz reflects on the impact of his experience of childhood sexual abuse and the ways that therapy...
How Psychological Injuries Cause Physical Illness—And 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.
Temperamentally Blessed
From Aeon: The finding that only one in five people avoid any kind of mental health problems or psychiatric diagnoses through their lives has prompted...
“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...
How Compassion Can Triumph Over Toxic Childhood Trauma
From Medical Xpress: New research findings suggest that when pregnant women who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) feel supported by those around them, their...
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...
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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Psychiatrists Have Issued a Statement on Aversion Therapy
From BuzzFeed: The Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a historic statement acknowledging the harm done to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who were subjected to...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Invisible Trauma: The Children Left Behind When Parents Are Hospitalized
It would take decades before I recognized the trauma caused by repeatedly being separated from my mom when she was hospitalized. I grieved almost exactly the way children did who had lost a parent to death. Yet it was grief without closure because my mom was not dead, just... gone.
Conversion Therapy Ban Will Get a Vote in Palm Beach County
From the Sun Sentinel: Palm Beach County is drafting regulations prohibiting therapists from practicing conversion therapy to try to change a child's sexual orientation. Palm Beach...
Badiou, the Event, and Psychiatry, Part 2
In the second part of a two-part series on philosophy and psychiatry, Vincenzo Di Nicola describes an alternative model of psychiatry that rejects some of...
5 Ways to Address a Mental Health Crisis Without Calling 911
From The Body Is Not An Apology: For many people, calling the police during a mental health emergency can result in brutality. Here are five...
The Forced Psychiatric Treatment of a Child
This is my story of forced psychiatric treatment as an eight-year-old girl, from my perspective as an adult mental health professional. Being held down kicking and screaming to be injected with a benzodiazepine is a human rights violation no child should endure for saying no to a pharmaceutical. In hindsight, when I reflect on that day, it feels like a form of child abuse.
Drop the Stigmatizing Term “Schizophrenia”
Dr. Brian Koehler is petitioning the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization to drop the stigmatizing term "schizophrenia." Click here to sign the...
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...
