Is Psychiatry the Tea Party of Medical Science?
When I as a European follow American politics I can’t help being amazed by the - I believe a polite expression would be – colorful personalities in the Tea Party and how they manage to continue to be a powerful part of American politics despite making claims that as I see them reported are easily debunked. American politics does not affect me directly but when I compare psychiatry as a part of the medical science to the Tea Party there are some striking similarities.
Simon Says: Happiness Won’t Cure Mental Illness
How do we distinguish between ordinary feeling down, on the one hand, and depression-the-illness on the other. Psychiatry's answer is that depression-the-illness causes " . . . clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." This phrase occurs as a criterion feature in almost all psychiatric "diagnoses," and is embodied in the DSM definition of a mental disorder, but is unsatisfactory from a number of aspects. Firstly, the term "clinically" has no meaning, other than a thinly-veiled attempt to lend a medical flavor to the phrase. Secondly, the term "significant" is not defined, and inevitably rests on the subjective opinion of a psychiatrist, who, in many cases, has a vested interesting in "finding" a "diagnosis."
The Use of Neuroleptic Drugs As Chemical Restraints
On July 17, I wrote a post on the use of neuroleptic drugs as chemical restraints in nursing homes. The article generated some comments, one of which touched on some very fundamental issues which, in my view, warrant further discussion. The comment read as follows: "All drugs can be dangerous toxic chemicals when not used appropriately. While many valid points are made in this article, it’s very one-sided and could be considered biased in that it’s written by a psychologist. I’ve seen many patients and families benefit from their use."
Illegal-Psychiatric Drug Hypocrisy, & Why Michael Pollan is Smarter than Me
Before Michael Pollan gained well-deserved respect and influence authoring five bestselling books about food, he got my attention in the late 1990s writing about American illegal-legal psychotropic drug hypocrisy. Then he stopped writing about it. If he had continued his assault on American drug hypocrisy, he likely would have been attacked by many psychiatric drug users, mistaking his confronting this hypocrisy as challenging their decision to choose psychiatric drugs.
How Can Professionals Learn to Reduce Fears of Psychotic Experiences Rather Than Emphasize Pathology?
The kinds of experiences we call psychotic are often incredibly scary: people feel they are being persecuted by strange forces, or that their brains have been invaded by demons or riddled with implants from the CIA . . . the list of possible fears is endless, and often horrifying. While standard mental health approaches counter many of these fears, they often create new fears of a different variety. Wouldn’t it be helpful if professionals were trained in an approach that could help people shift away from both dangerous psychotic ways of thinking and also away from the sometimes equally terrifying explanations which emphasize pathology?
The Use of Neuroleptic Drugs As Chemical Restraints in Nursing Homes
There's an interesting article in the July-August 2014 issue of the AARP Bulletin. It's called Drug Abuse: Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes, and was written by Jan Goodwin. AARP is the American Association of Retired Persons. Jan Goodwin is an investigative journalist whose career, according to Wikipedia, ". . . has been committed to focusing attention on social justice and human rights…" The article is essentially a condemnation of the widespread and long-standing practice of using neuroleptic drugs to suppress "difficult" behavior in nursing home residents.
Responses from Rethinking Psychiatry to Jason Renaud’s Op-Ed
To the Editor:
I’m sorry to see that you did not wait to get feedback from Marcia Meyers and the Rethinking Psychiatry core group before...
Some Thoughts on Insanity Defense
I am not comfortable with an all-or-nothing insanity defense that is both legally and socially stigmatizing because it sets the person apart as someone who is legally determined to be incapable of being treated as a moral agent. This stigma spills over onto all people who are psychiatrized, and it is part of the conception of madness that also ends up serving as a justification for civil commitment, since we are perceived (incorrectly) as outside the reach of ordinary law.
SELF: Sharing Experience Lived Firsthand
Service users and survivors who work in a behavioral health settings are faced with important questions about whether or not to share their lived experience and when. We may ask ourselves: Am I ready? What about the risks and politics of disclosure? How do I address an associated expectation or barrier, or deal with the possibility of discrimination? What kind of support is available to me in the process? I’m pleased to announce Sharing Experience Lived Firsthand (SELF).
Suicidal Behavior After FDA Warnings
On June 18, the British Medical Journal published an article by Christine Lu, et al., titled Changes in antidepressant use by young people and suicidal behavior after FDA warnings and media coverage: quasi-experimental study. < /em>Here's the conclusion paragraph from the abstract: "Safety warnings about antidepressants and widespread media coverage decreased antidepressant use, and there were simultaneous increases in suicide attempts among young people. It is essential to monitor and reduce possible unintended consequences of FDA warnings and media reporting." Note the slightly rebuking tone directed against the FDA and the media.
Talking About Psychosis, Part 1: Why Do It?
I was taught in medical school and psychiatric residency not to talk to people about their voices and their delusions: “It will only feed into them and make them worse.” Nor was I supposed to argue with people with paranoia because they’ll just get agitated and won’t change their mind anyway. We were taught that the psychoanalysts had wasted a lot of time trying to connect people with psychosis by trying to find meaning in their psychosis. I was taught that there is no meaning. All we needed to know about their psychosis was enough to prescribe medications and assess if the meds worked.
Lingering Doubts About Psychiatry’s Scientific Status
Professor Sir Simon Wessely is a British psychiatrist who works at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London. He is also the new President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and in that capacity, he recently wrote his first blog, titled, appropriately enough, My First Blog (May 24, 2014). The article is essentially a perusal of, and commentary on, the program for the RCP's Annual Congress, about which Sir Simon expresses considerable enthusiasm. He also engages in a little cheerleading: " . . . We [the RCP] are the most democratic of colleges. We welcome the views of patients and carers . . . " This statement struck me as odd
Believe and Know . . . (as it pertains to psych drug withdrawal syndrome...
Mahatma Gandhi said "If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning." That is certainly how recovering from the heinousness of the iatrogenic injury of psychiatric drug withdrawal syndrome has worked for me!! -- my unrelenting determination to find a way through the maze of autonomic nervous system chaos has, indeed, brought me many gifts and continued healing . . . and it's not done yet!
MIA’s New Store & More
As MIA readers may have noted, we recently opened a store on this site. You’ll find videos for sale there, as well as MIA merchandise. In the near future, we intend to begin selling ebooks as well.
Goodbye to Ken Braiterman
This is a memorial to my friend Ken Braiterman who was a long time member of the mental health civil rights movement. He was a best friend/ally/coworker/enemy of David Hilton, who lost his life to mental health civil rights battles. Ken wrote a great series of posts about David's struggle with advocacy.
New APA President: Same Old Cheerleading
As my readers know, I am a great fan of former APA President Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. His regular articles on Psychiatric News were always helpful to the anti-psychiatry cause, and he will be greatly missed. But his successor, Paul Summergrad, MD, has recently posted his first presidential message, APA Poised to Take Advantage of Unique Time in History, and it is already clear that not much has changed.
What is a Warm Line and What Should I Expect When I Call One?
A warm line is an alternative to a crisis line that is run by “peers,” generally those who have had their own experiences of trauma that they are willing to speak of and acknowledge. Unlike a crisis line, a warm line operator is unlikely to call the police or have someone locked up if they talk about suicidal or self-harming thoughts or behaviors. Most warm line operators have been through extreme challenges themselves and are there primarily to listen.
An Open Letter to Persons Self-Identifying as Mentally Ill
Like you, I have experienced severe cognitive and emotional distress in my life. This distress was sufficient that I once received a psychiatric diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, though I imagine other diagnosis could have easily been applied as well. I know what panic attacks feel like. I know how it feels to experience a "dissociative episode" from the inside out. I know what it feels like to believe that you are going crazy. I know what it feels like to convulse in sobs so intensely that you tear muscles. I know what it feels like to want to die.
Psychiatry’s Response: Attack and PR
In the last decade or so psychiatry has received a great deal of criticism. The fundamental point of contention is psychiatry's insistence that an ever-increasing range of problems of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving are in fact illnesses that need to be aggressively treated with drugs, intracranial electric shocks, and other somatic interventions. It is further contended, by those of us on this side of the debate, that this spurious medicalization of non-medical problems was not an innocent error, but rather was, and is, a self-serving and deliberate policy designed to expand psychiatric turf and to create an impression of psychiatry as a legitimate medical specialty.
A Look at Madness Through the Lens of Culture
Twenty years ago, I was invited to watch a young monk named Thupten Ngodrup go into a trance and ‘channel’ the State Oracle of Tibet (The Nechung Oracle). It took place in a small monastery next to the Dalai Lama’s residence in the little Himalayan town of Dharamsala, India. As the monks began to chant and beat their drums, Thupten’s eyes rolled back, his face flushed and he began to speak in a high-pitched voice. A few monks gathered around him and began writing down everything he said. After a few minutes, he collapsed and had to be carried from the room. At the time, I didn’t know what to think of what I had seen. Was this a dramatization?
Blame the Clients?
I'm old enough to remember a time when outpatient psychiatry was almost entirely a talking and listening profession. Depression was considered a fairly ordinary and understandable phenomenon – part of the human lot, so to speak - and remediation was conceptualized as being largely a matter of seeking support and solace from friends and loved ones, and of making positive changes in one's circumstances and lifestyle. In extreme cases, people did consult psychiatrists, but the purpose of these visits was to discuss issues and problems – not to obtain drugs.
The Story of “Teenagers Against Psychiatric Drugs”
My name is Jaquelin Kalach. I am 19 years old and live in Mexico City. A friend, a teacher, and me created our association; Teenagers Against Psychiatric Drugs.
Why I Work in the System
I find it to be a really difficult decision—some days more so than others—to do peer support in the traditional mental health system. I need to remind myself pretty often why I am doing this because it’s really, really hard! Here are the reasons I go to most often . . .
Why Do We Say That Mental Health Detention is Discrimination?
The disability community, including users and survivors of psychiatry, has sent a letter (drafted and circulated by WNUSP) to the UN Human Rights Committee urging that treaty monitoring body to follow the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in prohibiting all mental health detention. The signatories came from all regions of the world and include user/survivor organizations, disability organizations, other human rights organizations and individual experts. Since our letter is quite technical in pointing out the divergence of the Human Rights Committee's position from that of the CRPD, which is a higher standard of human rights protection, I would like to bring out some additional points that may be helpful in our advocacy.
The Proliferation and Elimination of Mental Illness: Clinging to the Slopes of Everest
A month ago, I published a critique of specific terminology of DSM-5. Like countless others, I have serious concerns about the overpathologizing of normal behaviors that appears to be occurring over the past few decades. The potential consequences of this trend have been widely articulated in many circles, and have raised a serious question, “What is normal?” But while this has been occurring in both psychiatric and lay arenas, another movement has been gaining significant support. It is the idea that mental illness (or disease) is a fabrication, and as Sera Davidow quoted E. Fuller Torrey in her recent moving article, “Mental illness does not exist, and neither does mental health.”
