Mad Pride and Spiritual Community: Thoughts on The Spiritual Gift of Madness
Let our Mad Pride movement be grounded in humility and kindness for each other in our diversity of life experiences, a recognition that social movements need good communicators and organizers more than charismatic leaders and messianic visions, and that the beautiful language we use to describe ourselves is only as powerful as the grounded actions we take to back up our words.
The Pond, Learning and Humility
What an amazing ride I’ve had in the past few days on the tsunami of commentary from my previous post. While it’s been fun (dare...
Pandora’s Box
This morning I remind myself to point my eyes forward. I tend to want to re-do the past and try to make bad things...
Why I don’t do “med checks”
I don't do "med checks". What do I do?
Life for Psychiatrists after Reading Bob Whitaker: Let’s Take Back Substance Abuse Treatment
An astounding development is the explosion in the numbers of substance abusers being diagnosed with Bipolar. I teach a class in Substance Abuse at...
Antidepressants Keep GIs Fighting
MIA Blogger Bruce Levine talks with American Free Press about the increasing use of psychotropic medications in today's military.
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Discipline, Not Drugs
This is how a child gets into the mental health system. At age 3 he pitches a fit in the grocery store because he...
Pathologising Infancy
I had an epiphany the day I first saw my son in a coffin after his suicide. The moments following his hanging himself were...
Hallucination is Common in Children and Adolescents
Hallucinatory experiences are common in childhood and adolescence, and most cases discontinue in the short-term, according to a review of the data conducted by...
Cannabis May Precipitate Psychosis
In a study of 785 patients with a psychotic disorder, researchers from The Netherlands found that cannabis us was associated with an earlier onset...
Playing Hide-and-Seek with Psychiatric Drug Studies
If I were in charge of distributing NIH grant money, I’d be sending a lot of it to researchers like Erick Turner, a psychiatrist...
1984 & DSM5, Revisited: Where Are the Social Workers?
Where are the social workers? Where are the NASW and its local and state-wide chapters? For that matter, where are the peer-run and -led...
Dyskinesia, Dissociation, and the Long Term Consequences of “Antipsychotic” Drugs
I recently receive a tweet from Intervoice, that said “This is a odd research finding in my view, what do you think? http://fb.me/L9cs3NTR”
Curious, I...
Carl Elliott, MD, PhD – Long Bio
ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Carl Elliott, MD, PhD, is Professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, where he also has joint...
Activity-Based Therapies Reduce Antipsychotic Use
Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that activity-based therapy and care reduced the use of antipsychotics in a study of 107 people...
Generative Narratives and the Counterculture Psychiatrists
For outsiders like me who are really critical of mainstream psychiatry, the first thing to understand is that "community psychiatry" is a counterculture within the larger culture of biomedical psychiatry. When I say "counterculture" I don't mean these people had flowers in their hair or face piercings.
Why I Prescribe
This is about neuroleptics. It is about psychosis or madness or whatever term one prefers. It is about people 18 years and older.
I take...
The Shame Game of “Patient Responsibility”
On one hand the use of prescription drugs in mental health treatment has been compared to insulin for the diabetic. You never hear about...
Philip Thomas, MD – Long Bio
ENGLISH MADNESS
After working as a full-time consultant psychiatrist in the NHS for over twenty years, Philip Thomas, MD, left clinical practice in 2004 to write. He...
Anatomy Front Page Content
Robert Whitaker's
BlogSpeaking
Schedule
Source Documents
Slide Presentations
Videotaped Talks
Interviews
Answering Critics
Books
Reviews
Anatomy of an Epidemic
"Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown 2010), by the journalist...
Polypharmacy/Bipolar illness
A. Bipolar Illness Before the Psychopharmacology Era
Prior to 1955, bipolar illness was a rare disorder. There were only 12,750 people hospitalized with that disorder...