Uncategorized

An interview with Doctor Lee Coleman, in which we focus on psychiatry in the courtroom and why the psychiatric expert witness role may be failing both the individual on trial and society at large.

Voice hearers, mystics, visionaries, and mad people are found throughout the scriptures of Judaism. What does Jewish theology have to teach us about madness and psychiatric diagnosis?

From The Globe and Mail: A proposal made by the Ontario Ministry of Health in January would radically limit psychotherapy provided by psychiatrists and family physicians.

Author William Styron is often remembered for speaking about depression as an illness. But a review of his life reveals that psychiatric drugs may have triggered and even worsened his depressive episodes.

A new study provides an insider’s look into how psychiatrists view the establishment of drug-free programs in Norway.

Dr. Vance Trudeau discusses his study's finding that antidepressants may have far-reaching, adverse effects that last up to three generations.

How can we restore something as essential to the healing and helping process as knowing what is going on? If your client has an actual biological problem, he needs one sort of help. If he hates his job, he needs another sort of help. It is absurd (and not okay) that a helper would look only at putative “symptoms” and not at what’s going on.

From The Atlantic: The protracted attempt to usher psychiatry into medicine’s modern era is the subject of Anne Harrington’s Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness.

An interview with Doctor Lee Coleman, psychiatrist and author of the 1984 book Reign of Error. Now retired, Lee devotes his time to public education that exposes the individual and public harms from today’s “mental health” industry.

There is little denying the power of story… until our own stories get taken from us, positioned against us, and used to determine our value as some sort of human commodity. We deserve to have our stories heard and to hear the stories of others, but on our own terms, without being fetishized or controlled, and without competition for paltry awards and recognition.

I believed my doctor knew best about my health. I trusted that he knew it would be safe to switch me from an anti-anxiety drug that I had been taking for several years and put me on this new drug. It was only during the horror I went through afterward that I found out everything about this evil drug all on my own. To this day, I still get brain zaps in my sleep.

School-based strategies such as the “talk to your doctor” campaign about any childhood problem have been extremely effective in helping the pharmaceutical industry to marginalize traditional child-rearing practices and replace them with advice from mental health “experts” and the use of dangerous drugs. These campaigns are reminiscent of now-illegal vintage tobacco ads in which doctors endorsed cigarette smoking.

From Pamela Wible MD: Physician suicide is a global public health crisis. In the U.S., more than one million Americans lose their doctors each year to suicide.

From University of South-Eastern Norway: "This so-called treatment is so cruel and inhuman that I need[ed] to make use of it for something, someday... all this suffering must not be in vain."

The authors outline reasons for renaming schizophrenia and the way a change can reform practice.

The Youth-Nominated Support Team intervention invites adolescents to select adults in their life to receive training on how to support them.

CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.

From Intellectual Takeout: When children have educational experiences that aren't geared to their developmental level, it causes them feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and confusion.

An interview with psychotherapist, trainer and facilitator Alita Taylor who shares her passion for Open Dialogue, explaining why Open Dialogue 'cannot be taught, but needs a teacher'.

Greater perceptions of discrimination during adolescence are linked to more depressive and internalizing symptoms.

A new study suggests digital media use among adolescents has a smaller negative effect on well-being than bullying or smoking marijuana.

Healing From Benzodiazepines – A positive support group for those withdrawing from Benzodiazepines. We also provide a safe space for loved ones. We focus on helping our members with positive distractions, resources and practical coping skills.

I recently became the foster parent of a 10-year-old girl. She is on a cocktail of several medications prescribed to treat behavioral problems, according to her social worker. They don't really seem to help her. What are the considerations involved with withdrawing her from the meds, and what power do I have to influence this decision?

From Fox News: "The government has a duty to respond to the overdose crisis, but to do so in a way that [harms] people [with] a legitimate medical issue is a human rights issue."

My son was diagnosed with schizophrenia five years ago and now lives in a residential facility with a holistic treatment approach. However, his father has repeatedly and aggressively tried to coerce him to get off medication. My son and his provider have repeatedly asked him to stop, and the stress of his father’s pressure is setting him back. What should we do?