The Real “Mental Illness” Epidemic: Withdrawal from Antidepressants
If the incidence of mental illness has remained the same, but an ever-increasing percentage of the population takes psychiatric medications, then these drugs are being over-prescribed. Now there is an epidemic of people trying to stop SSRI antidepressants, and the effects can be crippling.
“German Libraries Boycott Elsevier Demanding Open Access”
Germany's DEAL project, which includes over 60 major research institutions, has announced that all of its members are canceling their subscriptions to all of...
“Psychiatry’s List of Disorders Needs Real-Time Updates”
In a First Opinion piece for STAT, Michael First argues that a digital DSM should allow updates between editions. The American Psychiatric Association (APA)...
Withdrawal from Mood Stabilizers
A review of the scientific literature for withdrawal from mood stabilizers: mechanism of action, animal studies, withdrawal symptoms, discontinuation success rates, and relapse rates related to tapering speeds.
Withdrawal from Antipsychotics
A review of the scientific literature related to the withdrawal of antipsychotics: animal studies, withdrawal symptoms, tapering success rates, and consumer accounts of discontinuation.
Withdrawal from Antidepressants
A review of the scientific literature related to withdrawal from antidepressants: mechanism of action; long-term effects of exposure to antidepressants; discontinuation syndromes; relapse upon discontinuation; tapering protocols.
Withdrawal from ADHD Medications
This guide to the scientific literature on withdrawal from ADHD drugs provides a review of animal studies, withdrawal syndromes,
and possible tapering protocols.
“Navigating” Recovery: Difficult When the Map is a Psychiatric Fraud!
I was recently asked to contrast my views on psychosis and recovery with those offered by NAVIGATE, a US government (NIMH) sponsored program aiming to guide early intervention programs for psychosis. This inspired me to inquire into what NAVIGATE does tell people and families about psychosis and recovery. What I found, unfortunately, was quite disturbing.
The ACE Survey is Unusable Data
Do the effects of trauma matter more, or a person's ACE score? I think this is unusable data that harms people when you gather it. Here's why.
Troubled by Individual and Collective Psychosis? Maybe Compassion and Dialogue Could Help!
We need to learn to listen and respond in a caring way to the disturbed and disturbing voices within the population—to really engage with them, while also not believing any lies or distortions or letting destructive forces take over.
Pharma Data Sharing Efforts Off to a Slow Start
Researchers discuss the preliminary results of clinical trial data sharing efforts by pharmaceutical companies and other groups.
Is Society or Psychiatry to Blame for the “Seriously Mentally Ill” Dying 25 Years...
Adults in the U.S. diagnosed with “serious mental illness” die on average 25 years earlier than others. This is not controversial, as establishment psychiatry and its critics agree. What is controversial is who is to blame?
Why I Got Locked Up in the Madhouse (Twice)
I have grown a lot through my experiences, and would not have made the changes I have made, nor be the person I am today, had my madness not returned a second time. It returned because I did not pay enough attention to the wake-up call the first time around.
Policies to Reduce Antipsychotic use Among Elderly are Failing
Research reveals that rates of antipsychotic prescribing to the elderly in the UK have not dropped despite national recommendations.
A Guide to Minimal Use of Neuroleptics
This guide, by psychiatrists Volkmar Aderhold and Peter Stastny, provides a comprehensive review of antipsychotics and an evidence-based rationale for avoiding their use in first-episode psychosis, and for minimizing their long-term use.
The Mental Health Reform Act of 2016 (SB 2680) Would Be a Huge Step...
There is indeed a crisis in the mental health business. The crisis derives from psychiatry's spurious and self-serving premise that all significant problems of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving are brain illnesses that are correctable by psychiatric drugs.
Psychiatry’s Current Greatest Controversy: Fraud, Bullsh*t or What?
In the current issue of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Australian dissident psychiatrist Niall McLaren titles his article, “Psychiatry as Bullshit” and makes a case for just that. The great controversies in psychiatry are no longer about its chemical-imbalance theory of mental illness or its DSM diagnostic system, both of which have now been declared invalid even by the pillars of the psychiatry establishment. The great controversy today has now become just how psychiatry can be most fairly characterized given its record of being proven wrong about virtually all of its assertions, most notably about its classifications of behaviors, theories of “mental illness,” and treatment effectiveness/adverse effects.
“Shouting, Voting and Not Much Science: How Sexuality Becomes ‘Mental Illness’”
Tracy Clark-Flory describes “how subject to changing scientific understandings and, sometimes, even political influence the DSM can be-perhaps especially when it comes to sexuality.”
Article...
“New Federal Rules Target Woeful Public Reporting of Clinical Trial Results”
For STAT, Charles Piller covers new federal rules requiring stricter reporting for researchers conducting human studies. Previous investigations have documented widespread noncompliance with such...
“Did the FDA set ‘a Dangerous Precedent’ with Latest Drug Approval?”
STAT reports that the latest drug approval by the FDA “may have set a precedent that could rocket through the health care system, opening the...
STOP or GO? Tapering Pregnant Women off of Antidepressants
A team in the Netherlands is currently investigating the effects of tapering off of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy....
Depression, Antidepressants, and Expectancy
This study reinforces a large body of evidence suggesting that an individual’s expectancies for improvement significantly contribute to their actual improvement. The importance of expectancies is worth paying attention to now as more clients, clinicians, and researchers are endorsing a reductionist view of psychological disorders -- i.e., that psychological disorders are fundamentally brain disorders.
The ADHD Drug Epidemic: Addiction, Abuse, and Death
A new analysis of FDA data, published on September 10th by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today, reveals the dangers of the common prescription of...
Enough is Enough Series, #5 – The ADHD Fiction is Exposed. The French Have...
The time has come that the fictitious ADHD qualifies for my ‘Enough is Enough’ series. It’s time to stop addressing pharmaceutical psychiatry on its own terms: its fraudulent and corrupt 'science,' its spurious 'evidence base,' and its imaginary psychiatric ‘diseases.’ I’m done with this. The evidence is in. Let’s get real. Psychiatry has become a profession of drug pushers. As a psychiatrist I am beyond troubled. Let’s get real.
The Algorithm Will See You Now: A Geek Tragedy
We would, in fact, save vast amounts of money by giving the pharmaceutical companies ten times the inflated prices they currently receive for drugs as part of a bargain that ensures only 10% of those currently taking lipid-lowering drugs, antidepressants, biphosphonate and other drugs end up on them. The savings would come from not having to treat treatment-induced disabilities.