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Philip Seymour Hoffman died only 5 weeks ago. I was disappointed by the immediate zoom-in on Hoffman’s heroin addiction and the immediate and zealous search for villains; for the evil dealer. The toxicology report completed after his death led the New York City medical examiner to conclude that he had been “killed by a poisonous mix of drugs that included … heroin … cocaine, amphetamines and sedatives.” Yet, no outcry against Big Pharma for producing these drugs – the amphetamines, sedatives and the oxycodone – in the first place. Nor against the FDA for allowing them willy-nilly in the marketplace with little regulation. Nor against the GP’s who dispense these drugs like M&Ms.

The recent publicity surrounding the Justina Pelletier case has focused attention, not only on the spurious and arbitrary nature of psychiatric diagnoses, but also on the legitimacy and appropriateness of mental health commitments. It is being widely asserted that these archaic statutes are fundamentally incompatible with current civil rights standards, and the question "should mental health commitments be abolished?" is being raised in a variety of contexts.

UN Human Rights Committee member Ms. Zonke Majodina said on Friday during the Committee's review of the United States: "I’m wondering whether any states have considered the ban which has been recommended by the Special Rapporteur on Torture made February last year, available on the UN website of documents. So given that it is really at state level that there is no compliance with the requirement to prohibit coercive treatments especially in mental health settings, I think the matter cannot just be left, there should be some form of good faith undertakings by federal government that these recommendations by UN bodies is taken seriously also at state level."

Under DSM-IV, a "diagnosis" of somatization disorder entailed a history of physical symptoms for which, despite thorough medical evaluation, no satisfactory physical etiology could be established. In DSM-5, this "diagnosis" was replaced by somatic symptom disorder. This is essentially similar to DSM-IV's somatization disorder – with one critical difference. The newer "diagnosis" can be assigned even if there is an identifiable physical illness.

When one is coming off of psychiatric pharmaceuticals, it's common to experience withdrawal induced anxiety, panic and psychosis. Here are some tips to help calm your body.

It’s become common place to give the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) a really hard time for accepting such high levels of pharmaceutical funding. While far too many people might still be surprised to learn the percentage of NAMI’s total donation income made up by big Pharma, it’s no surprise to those of us regularly lurking around these parts. However, I’ve come to realize that NAMI is taking an inequitable amount of heat on this topic, and that I, in fact, have been complicit in maintaining that imbalance.

When the benzodiazepines were first introduced, it was widely claimed, both by psychiatrists and by pharma, that they were non-addictive. This claim was subsequently abandoned in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and the addictive potential of these products is now recognized and generally accepted.

Apparently, May is ‘Mental Health Awareness’ month. However, the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) counters that with ‘Mental ILLNESS Awareness’ week that reportedly falls in October. Meanwhile, ‘Mental Health Awareness ’ day lands on April 16 (from 10am to 4pm, to be exact). ‘National Brain Awareness’ week picks up the baton on March 10 (passing it along to ‘World Bipolar Day’ on March 30). Other dates of note? Apparently, ‘Self Injury Awareness,’ day is on March 1, and the Disability World site cites an absolutely staggering list of dates to remember, including National Sauce Month (!?). But I digress. Suffice to say, my head is spinning

Justina Pelletier, who lived with her parents in Connecticut, had been diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, a rare and debilitating illness, and had been receiving treatment for this from Mark Korson, MD, Chief of Metabolism Services at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. In February of last year, Justina's parents took her to Boston Children's Hospital with flu-like symptoms. Dr. Korson had recommended an admission to Boston Children's so that Justina could be seen by Alex Flores, MD, a gastrointestinal specialist who had recently transferred from Tufts to BCH. But instead, Justina's care was taken over by the psychiatry department.

Since interviewing Robert Whitaker for AlterNet in 2010, after the publication of Anatomy of an Epidemic, the psychiatry establishment has pivoted from first ignoring him, to then debating him and attempting to discredit him, to currently agreeing with many of his conclusions. I was curious about his take on the recent U-turns by major figures in the psychiatry establishment with respect to (1) antipsychotic drug treatment, (2) the validity of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness, and (3) the validity of the DSM, psychiatry’s diagnostic bible. And I was curious about Whitaker’s sense of psychiatry’s future direction.

An NBC online News article dated October 15, 2010, carried the noteworthy title New blood test may help detect schizophrenia. The article was written by Natasha Allen, a freelance medical journalist. The gist of the article is that there is a new blood test called VeriPsych which "researchers say" is 83% accurate in discriminating people who are "schizophrenic" from people who are not.

Beyond Meds highlights a reappraisal of Andrew Solomon, whose book "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression" is often pointed to as testimony for the...

Rob Wipond is a freelance journalist who writes frequently on the interfaces between psychiatry, civil rights, the justice system, and social change. His articles...

Research has shown a correlation between schizophrenia and exposure to cat bites or scratches.  This has been theorized to be due to the effects...

Salon magazine reflects on "The Puzzling Reality . . . that human depression is increasing in an era when environmental conditions are relatively benign. The average citizen...

There's an interesting February 11, 2014, article on Peter Breggin's website: $1.5 Million Award in Child Tardive Dyskinesia Malpractice. Apparently the individual in Dr. Breggin's paper was diagnosed with autism as a child and was prescribed SSRI's before the age of seven. The SSRI's caused some deterioration in the child's behavior and mental condition, to combat which his first psychiatrist prescribed Risperdal (risperidone). Subsequently a second psychiatrist added Zyprexa (olanzapine) to the cocktail. Both Risperdal and Zyprexa are neuroleptics (euphemistically known in psychiatric circles as antipsychotics), and are known to cause tardive dyskinesia.

Those of us who question psychiatry’s relationship with medication may be be dismissed as ‘Pill Shamers’ or branded as irresponsible and dangerous voices by those who are convinced medication is the only way of treating someone’s ‘illness’. The debate can feel like a fight between two intractably opposed sides, giving the impression that we must either be ‘for’ or ‘against’ medication. Unfortunately the information and space needed to explore our complex relationship with medication – as practitioners and people – is in short supply, making the concept of informed choice a bad joke. Over the next two years, we will bring together a book made of contributions from people who have successfully taken control of their use of medication.

TMS is a psychiatric treatment that uses a rapidly alternating magnetic field to induce electric currents in the brain. These currents stimulate neurons, causing them to "fire." When used repetitively, TMS is said to alter the excitability of the brain area that has been stimulated. In the psychiatric field, TMS is being used increasingly as a treatment for depression, particularly with so-called treatment-resistant clients. I Googled the string "TMS + depression" and got 1.35 million hits. So the idea is attracting attention.

Outpatient commitment laws, passed by a number of states, permit forced commitment to ‎treatment of those whom a psychiatrist, psychologist, or mental ‎health official deems in need of treatment. The majority of this “treatment,” while not ‎specifically written in the law, results in coercive tactics to pressure agreement to take ‎pharmaceutical preparations of limited-to-no effectiveness but - as shown in early research - with ‎massive effects on cognitive functions and subsequent decision-making ability, not to ‎mention a long-term or lifelong diminished quality of life and ability to function as a productive ‎member of society.

Recently, I have been the target of much wooing by my local Sunovion rep. I think he leaves messages for me almost weekly and he sends me missives - glossy brochures and reprints from major psychiatric journal. What is the subject of this attention? The drug - lurasidone (Latuda).

A week ago, on February 7th, the Alaska Supreme Court issued its decision in Daniel G., and I am writing to obtain views on whether PsychRights should ask the United States Supreme Court to take the case on appeal.  (See What is the Emergency? for earlier discussion of this case)   There are close to 9,000 such requests, called a petition for certiorari each year, with the Supreme Court taking around 80, so the odds are very bad to begin with. It is not quite that bad because around 7,000 are prisoner appeals and only a handful of those are taken.

I’ve just finished reading Michel Foucault’s book History of Madness.  It is a tour de force that is at times almost impossible to understand, but I find if I am patient the loose ends usually are brought back together.  It is also highly upsetting to read for me as someone who has been locked up as mad.  The layers of history that Foucault uncovers demonstrate conceptual as well as legal and social forms of exclusion that are with us to the present day, although some of them have become transformed over time.

As noted in Anatomy of an Epidemic, the prognosis for someone experiencing psychosis is far better in developing countries than in industrialized countries. Robert Whitaker and others posit that this is due to the treatment models used in the developing world, as well as to debility and chronicity caused by psychiatric drugs themselves. I think it's also important to explore traditional tribal and village based models of helping people experiencing psychosis and examine why they may be effective. Do these traditional societies know something we don't?

On November 12, 2013, Molecular Psychiatry published online Evidence That Duplications of 22q11.2 Protect Against Schizophrenia, by Rees et al. The print version was published last month – January 2014. The idea of a genetic mutation that would protect one from schizophrenia aroused a good deal of interest and enthusiasm. The paper has added some impetus to psychiatry's claim that the condition known as schizophrenia is a genetic disease. For this reason, I thought it might be helpful to take a closer look at the study.

Delegates attending the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists at London’s Barbican Centre in June this year will almost certainly not hear about the results of the seven-year outcome of the Dutch First Episode (FE) study widely discussed on Mad in America in recent months.