pill shaming

The Pill Shaming Phenomenon: What’s It Really About?

At best, the underpinnings of the ‘pill shaming’ accusation are misguided. At worst, they represent a concerted effort on the part of the current power structure to use us against ourselves (and they don’t need any more help). It’s the same old story packaged up as if it were something new and ultra woke.
LGBT sexuality and sanism

Madness, Sexuality and Legacies of Strategic Sanism

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There has been little engagement between the survivor and LGBT movements despite a shared interest in critiquing and resisting the normalization project of the psy disciplines — that is, psychiatry and psychology’s clinical categorization of what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ or ‘healthy’ and ‘sick’. Why might this be?
three identical strangers

“Three Identical Strangers” and the Nature-Nurture Debate

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Three Identical Strangers is a riveting film describing the story of identical triplets separated at six months of age and reunited in early adulthood. Their story provides no evidence in support of the genetic side of the nature-nurture debate, but it does supply some evidence in favor of the environment.

Getting Pharma Out of Medical Education: An Interview with Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman

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MIA's Gavin Crowell-Williamson interviews PharmedOut founder Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman about Big Pharma's influence on medical education.
for your own good

When ‘For Your Own Good’ Actually Means ‘For My Own Good’

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“For your own good” is oppressive. Embedded in that four-word phrase is the idea that each of us doesn’t understand who we are or what we need. Someone else is the expert. Someone else has the privilege to hold all the answers, and if those answers don't work for us then somehow it's our fault.
Thomas Szasz

Tough Love for Thomas Szasz: A Book Review

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Dr. Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) was one of the greatest thinkers and prose stylists of the last 100 years. Enough time has passed since he died that we can start to take stock of his legacy. This important new collection of essays by former colleagues, psychiatrists, philosophers, and legal experts does just that.
on antidepressants everything is fine

Are Antidepressants Enabling the Population to Tolerate the Intolerable?

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Just how sad is our current state of affairs that it causes so much of the population to feel depressed and/or anxious? Just how much are these drugs changing the state of our society as a whole? Are the drugs desensitizing the population to the point that it will tolerate social conditions it would otherwise find intolerable?

Mad Science, Psychiatric Coercion and the Therapeutic State: An Interview with Dr. David Cohen

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MIA's Peter Simons interviews David Cohen, PhD, on his path to researching mental health, coercive practices, and discontinuation from psychiatric drugs.

Increase in Suicide Attempts by Self-Poisoning in Youth

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Researchers shed light on hike in attempted suicide by self-poisoning in young adults between 2011 and 2018.

Fighting for the Meaning of Madness: An Interview with Dr. John Read

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Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.

The Power Threat Meaning Framework One Year On

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The team that developed the Power Threat Meaning framework as a diagnostic alternative reflects on the response to the framework after one year.

“Dad, You Were Right”: I Got Better When I Stopped Treatment

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Through all the years that I was a mental patient, my parents were excellent advocates who constantly questioned what the docs were doing, even though my own faith in psychiatry was unwavering.... Amazingly, what cured me was not some type of “treatment,” but getting away from drugs and therapy.

Lee Coleman – The Insanity Defence, Storytelling on the Witness Stand

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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.

Psychiatrists View Drug-Free Programs for Psychosis as “Unscientific,” Study Finds

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

The Effects of Antidepressant Exposure Across Generations: An Interview with Dr. Vance Trudeau

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

Introducing Multi-Lens Therapy

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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.

Lee Coleman – The Reign of Error

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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.
recovery porn story

Recovery Porn: Tell Me Your Story, I’ll Tell You Your Value

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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.
brain zaps antidepressants

Dangers of Antidepressants: My Personal Struggle with Conventional Medicine

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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.
sales rep bribes doctor

Kick Big Pharma Out of the Classroom

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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.

Researchers Make the Case to Rename Schizophrenia

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

Youth-Nominated Social Support Reduces Mortality for Suicidal Adolescents

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

New Book Deconstructs Ideology of Cognitive Therapy

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

Alita Taylor – Open Dialogue: Making Meaning

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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'.

Racial Discrimination a Clear Contributor to Youth Mental Health Disparities

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