Steve McCrea as moderator like in polyphony? Seriously?!
I feel “Power Threat Meaning Framework” is not a very good name.
It seems it is not released yet, I guess we have to wait a couple of hours or days. The PDF on the BPS website contain only one page (the cover), so I cannot tell what I think about the content. I’m between very excited and skeptical.
Scary description of a psychotherapy cult. I’m glad you listened to your own wisdom, did the research and wrote this article.
DOA
“Finally, unlike DSM–5, the HiTOP project adheres to the most up to date scientific evidence, rather than relying on expert opinion. HiTOP effectively summarizes information on shared genetic vulnerabilities, environmental risk factors, and neurobiological abnormalities. For example, it is becoming increasingly clear that genetic risk factors do not adhere to diagnostic categories, instead genetic research identifies broad genetic risk factors that cut across diagnoses and largely line-up with the HiTOP dimensions.”
bio-bio-bio “medical” model of psychiatry got replaced by bio-bio-bio “medical” model of (g)astro(entero)logy?
Transcendental Meditation™ (yes, it’s a trademark)
Great article, I agree that psychiatry is really a hard target.
But we have to ask ourself: how tribal are we? Are we maybe capital-S Skeptics, too? From our point of view, is psychiatry a hard target or a soft target?
“So I’m a skeptic, but with a small S, not capital S. I don’t belong to skeptical societies. I don’t hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists.
When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.”
Maybe promoting was the wrong word, English is a foreign language? Should I say praising EMPowerplus? Or recommending? Or how should I describe it to not get moderated?
No question nutrition and mental health are linked, but promoting a company like truehope ist harmful. If Kaplan and Rucklidge were serious scientists they would do research without promoting this one product and company. This is just advertisment for a very expensive multi-vitamin that claims it is THE wonder supplement for all popular psychiatric diagnoses.
Thank you Jill, that is the science and information that is helpful.
As far as I understand it RC is not affiliated with Scientology, but is borrowing ideas from Dianetics. RC is criticized as cult or cult-like. Does anyone know more about RC?
symptoms of so called “mental illness” can be related to the gut flora, a leaky gut, inflammation, autoimmune reactions, food sensitivities, micronutrient deficiencies, etc.
fasting, for a short or long period, could have a small or big, positive or negative impact. so can changing your diet (for example getting rid of gluten containing grains, milk, eggs, …)
These are not real alternatives, but unscientific bullshit, that could be harmful too (because it is not working). A link to the website of Paula Curtis, a member of the Wholeness Center team (just one example):
“Energy work can be directed anywhere on the planet. How cool is that? Places and animals absorb energy just like we do. Paula can clear and balance the energy in your pets, home, office, or land. It’s especially helpful to cleanse the energy during times of transition.”
This not healing, this is delusional.
Why is they recommend suspension for Quetiapine for some countries (Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal,…), but not for others?
Did I understand Julia Rucklidge right, that she is a proponent of a disease model and doesn’t criticize diagnoses at all (“recover from schizophrenia”).
I think it’s interesting, but it really depends what kind of interventions they are looking for and which they will implement in the future.
I understand it exactly like you. It’s a very interesting finding and I wonder how it can be explained.
I agree Joe. Regular reading Mad in America might one give the impression that a revolution is underway, but when I look what’s happening in my city I don’t see a revolution happening anytime soon. Quite the opposite, the medical model seems stronger than ever. But that is only my interpretation and I could be completely wrong. So yeah, where is the evidence?
“point of return website” not “point of no return”
Thanks elocin for that information. I went to the point of no return website and looked what they have too offer. The supplements are overly expensive and the amounts of vitamins are so low, that it’s quite unlikely you will experience any improvement (although they will not have any negative effects, if your not allergic to milk).
“The mindfulness-based psychoeducation group reported significantly greater improvements in […] insight into illness/treatment”
What does that mean?
Daniel, your comment about PTSD is my favourite. You wouldn’t call backpain a backpain disorder or overweight an overweight disorder.
BTW, thanks for putting your documentaries on youtube.
»A devoted Christian, faithful to his friends, his family and his God.«
»“I’ve decided I want to be an atheist,” he announced to his parents one day after school, explaining he was so disillusioned by friends who weren’t living out their faith that he wanted to wash his hands of Christianity. He even began looking at secular colleges to attend instead of the Christian schools he’d been leaning toward.
That dramatic episode of Greg’s life lasted about three months before he reverted to his old self, but it raised the first red flag hinting at his mental illness.«
Seriously? Trying to become an atheist is a hint for mental illness?
Really, we already have enough anti-stigma stigmatization campaigns founded by mental health “professionals” (in this case psychiatrist, psychoanalyst). Diagnosing people with bogus mental illnesses and doing so called anti-stigmatization campaigns are two sides of the same coin.
I’m not sure what the message of the film is. Mental illness exist, diagnosis might be valid, but stigma is bad?
Could the right-wing Christians / tea party movement please stop abusing Justina Pelletier for their propaganda.
“The Pelletiers are solid, community people; Catholic Church members, with strong family ties and core American values. Justina’s father has made a career in senior investments, and Lou and Linda have given their daughter Justina the kind of home every little girl dreams of, with her own room, a pool, and pets. Justina Pelletier really loves to play with her dogs.”
How do you know how Justina feels about her parents?
Hallo Ute,
wonderful comment, so true. If you like to get in contact, you can write me an email:
I’m also very interested in the Open Dialogue approach, other forms of Dialogue and Restorative Circles and would be happy to get connected to people in Germany and Europe that share this interest.
“I can assure you, my daughter’s psychotic manic episodes were in no way meaningful nor were they caused by trauma.”
[…]
“I absolutely 100% believe the medical/genetic/biological basis for her mental illness.”
[…]
“Nobody will ever convince me that the meds do anything but help her.”
Kate, let’s stick to facts:
Your daughters condition most likely will get worse over the years, because of the medication. It might even kill or reduce her life expectancy by 25 years. And you are responsible by convincing your daughter and yourself she has a “mental illness”, it’s only medical/genetic/biological, insisting that she never had traumatizing experiences in her life.
If there really are no psychological and social reason for her “mental illness”, than find out what causes it. Check for food intolerances, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, other reasons that causes inflammation and autoimmune reactions.
But to be honest: I think it’s just the easiest way for you to handle the situation. It’s a medical problem, nobody is responsible, you just have to take the drugs, there are no alternatives. It also takes away your fears that your daughter will kill herself intentionally or accidentally.
I think this is a very good summary of the little information we have:
“Despite the apparent face validity of Hoffer’s “transmethylation hypothesis” (in which it was thought that the production of catecholamines could sometimes go awry and produce a hallucinogenic neurotoxin), it was ultimately rejected for two reasons: the alleged neurotoxins were never identified and the cause of schizophrenia became attributed to dysfunctions in neurotransmitters.”
For some people avoiding some foods makes a much bigger difference than supplements.
If you use fish oil, you should limit the omega-6 intake first (it’s inflammatory).
Don’t eat gluten, especially wheat gluten. Reduce cow milk products. They both have inflammatory and psychoactive properties (gluten exorphins, gliadorphin, casomorphines are opioid-like peptides).
And then you can also try a super-cheap prebiotic supplement: raw potato starch.
fox news is hard to watch… they drive me nuts…
Thank you Rossa! Wonderful post.
It also does not mean that the social oppression by psychiatry are in any way beneficial.
Good points. I think there is lots of evidence, that “early-life psychosocial adversities” have an effect on brain development. That doesn’t mean you have a psychiatric disorder that has to be treated with psychoactive drugs.
🙂
As someone who is not used to this kind of advertisement, I’m always baffled that it has some positive effect for the drug companies (patients asking for it, increased subscriptions).
In my country (as in all other countries with the exception of the US and New Zealand) direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is forbidden. There is also no advertising of non-prescription drugs for sleep, mood and psychological disorders.
Paula, is there a PDF of your paper available? I don’t have a Mac.
I comment to each paragraph
1) Sounds like an advertisement for EMPowerplus again.
2) I agree. It seems that many of the “psychiatric disorders” defined by the DSM have some connection to trauma, stress, social relationships, nutrition (intolerance and deficiencies), gut microbiome and the immune system (inflammation, autoimmunity). I can understand that psychiatry distinguish between depression and psychosis, because they only want treat the symptoms with some psychoactive drugs. If you are looking for the cause of the symptoms, the psychiatric diagnoses are not very helpful anymore.
3) We already know that Vitamin D and B12 and folate could be helpful. Which new knowledge do you generate by a study with a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement?
4) I didn’t mean you shouldn’t do studies about vitamin / mineral supplements for mental health. But if I were at your position I would stay away from a company which such horrible marketing.
you might know this already: what’s also important is to keep the intake of Omega-6 fatty acids low.
maybe a EPA deficiency isn’t the cause of your depression? have you tried a multivitamin supplement?
I agree, Trollo. This study is already used by Truehope for marketing (it is featured on their start page). 18 from 22 studies linked on their Research page are from Rucklidge and/or Kaplan.
The biggest problem with EMP+ is the aggressive marketing: “Can EMPowerplus™ Cure ADHD & Depression?”. If I were a professor I would do everything to not get associated with this company.
You don’t even need a official diagnose by a psychiatrist for stigma. Everybody “knows” what depression, mania or psychosis looks like and that it is caused by chemical imbalance in the brain, so people are often diagnosed and stigmatized by others even before their first contact with psychiatry.
The foundation of psychiatry is discrimination.
It is a cheaply produced and overpriced mutli-formula, nothing special at all. You can get better ingredients much cheaper.
Just for fun: cyanocobalamin contains cyanide and is not a natural form of B12.
Because!
As someone who worked over a year in a kindergarten, I would say that children who don’t qualify as hyperactive/impulsive by the ADHD symptom checklist are more likely to have some psychological troubles than the kids who are.
Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is _expected_?
Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is _inappropriate_?
Often unable to play or engage in leisure activities _quietly_?
Since when is this natural behaviour?
“It is as if the individuals who wrote these symptoms have never been around kids before. It’s as if they don’t like kids…”
I couldn’t agree more.
Why are you asking?
Is MiA an advertisment forum for overpriced micronutrient formulas?
> And the one-size-approach to open dialogue (or
> any other talk therapy approach) is not going to
> get this done.
>
> There are folks out there with *real* physical
> conditions who need care… not just talk.”
My understanding of Open Dialogue is that it is not restricted to talk therapy. It’s about figuring out together which support is most helpful and not jumping to premature conclusion. If there were the assumption that a real physical condition could be a cause of the emotional distress, there would be support in finding the right physician. (That is how I imagine Open Dialogue)
“Records: Father attacked son months before killing teen in Essex”
Reading that makes me even more angry. Even if she had some (so called) “mental health issues”, I feel this would be a normal reaction to the violent and traumatic experiences she had. Everyone should have the right to go through (so called) “mental health issues” without being hospitalized and drugged.
ReDiscover Adult and Family Services Manager Jean Schweer said, “Start by writing down a concise description of your child’s symptoms. Make a prioritized list of all your health-related concerns, from worrisome thoughts to physical aches and pains to weight loss to erratic behavior. Preparing this kind of information ahead of an appointment leaves more time during the appointment for a focused discussion, answers to your questions, and for the kind of assessment needed to eventually make a diagnosis and build a treatment plan.”
…
Help is available. You can learn to manage symptoms of mental illness and find ways to participate in a network of support. ReDiscover offers services for individuals and their families learning to cope with serious chronic illnesses.
“What treatment is available?
ReDiscover, and other community mental health agencies, provide services to help people with depression. There are a variety of antidepressant medications that can be used to treat depressive disorders, but care can typically include combined treatment of medication and psychotherapy.”
> So I’m baffled by Oli’s need to compare it to a cult.
I don’t have a need to compare it to a cult. I just spotted communication patterns that I know from cults or other cult-like organizations, e.g. the Mormon Church and non-religious organizations that look harmless from the outside
“Science Oh Science ! WHAT CRIMES ARE COMMiTTED IN THY NAME !”
True! Let’s be clear. I’m critical of acupuncture, but when it comes to psychiatry I’m more than critical. It is organized crime, science gone wrong and delusional thinking.
I don’t think the idea of reforming psychiatry makes any sense. It’s like reforming fascism.
“Uninformed skepticism hurts patients.”
Please enlighten me. I’m still waiting for a comment that explains how acupuncture works (besides the effects of placebo and ritual).
“A well trained TCM doctor should be able guess your list of symptoms without you telling them first.”
Next topic: cold reading
“So you are free to confront your own biases, and trial TCM treatment to see if it works for you”
This is the same strategy cults use. The E-Meter [1] used by Scientology is also a harmless device. Why not just try Dianetics auditing “to see if it works for you. And then simply choose to stop if not satisfied. So what do you have to lose?”
I just started to think about the implications of a black box / closed source questionnaire and write a comment, but Neuroskeptic covered it all in part 2 :).
Brett, thanks for comments that are pushing the discussion forward.
“Maybe we’re both right? If so, perhaps the question is how to think about a pseudoscientific, helpful placebo treatment? This is the question I posed initially, because how we answer this question has profound implications for many mental health treatments.”
Is it better to get a harmless instead of a harmful placebo treatment? Maybe. But I have concerns when people are encouraged to make treatment decisions based on false or incomplete information.
I have no problem with acupuncture as a ritual that is helpful for some people. My assumption is that the positive effects have to do with the relationship between acupuncturist and the client, relaxing setting, being heard, hopefulness, maybe some form of mindfulness, etc.
Convincing people with unscientific claims to get an acupuncture treatment is unethical (in my opinion).
From the article you quoted:
«“Although the data indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo, the differences between true and sham acupuncture are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to therapeutic effects.”
There is no accepted mechanism for how the acupuncture works, the researchers said»
Mass media coverage of a study without a link to the study itself is not very convincing. The Guardian did a much better job in covering the study [1].
«Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, said the study “impressively and clearly” showed that the effects of acupuncture were mostly due to placebo. “The differences between the results obtained with real and sham acupuncture are small and not clinically relevant. Crucially, they are probably due to residual bias in these studies. Several investigations have shown that the verbal or non-verbal communication between the patient and the therapist is more important than the actual needling. If such factors would be accounted for, the effect of acupuncture on chronic pain might disappear completely.”
Ernst added that a potential problem with the trials in the meta-analysis was that, in all cases, the therapist knew whether he or she was administering real or sham acupuncture. “Arguably, it is next to impossible to completely keep this information from the patient. In other words, a trial is either both patient and therapist-blind, or not blind at all. Acupuncturists tend to tell us that therapist blinding is impossible, but this is clearly not true. I fear that, once we manage to eliminate this bias from acupuncture studies, we might find that the effects of acupuncture exclusively are a placebo response.”»
“How acupuncture is healing trauma after natural disasters”
It’s getting better and better…
Bingo! [1]
“Does this make it any less valid?”
Yes, it does. We cannot just take something made up thousands of years ago, call it a philosophy (religion, believe system) and declare that science doesn’t matter for it’s validity.
Millions of people are helped by religion every day. Is this a proof that God exist (which one?)? Of course not. Does it mean it is okay to believe in science, but also deny evolution? No way!
And I sincerely believe that promoting acupuncture as one tool for emotional distress, might be very harmful in some situations. Like Steve Jobs tried to cure his cancer with alternative treatments including acupuncture [2]. I’m not implying that you promote acupuncture for serious illnesses, but your argumentation supports a mindset, that could lead to such deadly decisions.
I’m open to the possibility that sticking thin needles in the skin (ear) to induce little pain can reduce pain. I just have not found any scientific evidence for the concept of the ear’s liver and kidney points and have no reason to believe that sticking needles at these specific points somehow supports detox.
Just because it’s mostly harmless, doesn’t mean it is a good treatment. Just because people are claiming it’s working, doesn’t mean that it is. May I remind you of all the clinical trials sponsored by the pharma industry that have positive outcomes? How many people report that drug X have saved their life? Still, if we look at the meta-analysis of these trials, we see that e.g. antidepressants are only slightly better than placebo (in the short term).
I don’t see any reason to be less critical, when the acupuncture lobby designing their own (probably biased) studies to proof that acupuncture works (better than placebo). Especially as we quote the studies of the Cochrane Collaboration (Peter Gøtzsche) when it’s about psychiatric drugs, but ignore their research when we discuss alternative treatments.
I think this is harmful for the reputation of MiA in the long-term.
“Conclusions: A small analgesic effect of acupuncture was found, which seems to lack clinical relevance and cannot be clearly distinguished from bias. Whether needling at acupuncture points, or at any site, reduces pain independently of the psychological impact of the treatment ritual is unclear.”
Another video from her, where she talks about her experience with benzos.
The quote are from his newer book “Spark: The Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain”
I’m astonished, that books like this are promoted on MiA. There not much in it besides exercise is good for your brain (which we know already), repeated over and over again embedded in psychiatric language and ideas.
Promoting this book is the most troubling part of this post. From the book:
“In 2006 he charted how various treatments influence BDNF, including all available antidepressants, as well as less common forms of treatment such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). They all boost BDNF in the hippocampus, and Duman pointed out that ECT, the most effective treatment, raises it by 250 percent.
But how is it that a blunt physical manipulation such as ECT — which sends an electrical current through the brain to induce a seizure — can work like drugs, therapy, and exercise? I think ECT provides a useful metaphor. If we look at depression as a sort of brain lock, then we can see a common thread between these approaches: They are all shocks of a sort. They send sparks flying to change the dynamic in the brain. Some parts are stuck in a constant whir, and others are locked in place. The key, I think, is to wake up the brain and the body so you can pull yourself out of the downward spiral.”
and about ADHD:
“Experts estimate that just over 4 percent of American adults — that’s thirteen million people — have ADHD, which is not to say that the remaining 96 percent of the population is completely free of attention problems. To a certain degree, everyone suffers from fleeting attention. And as I’ve mentioned, there are varying degrees of severity for many mental health disorders — shadow syndromes, which are personality traits that don’t necessarily meet the full checklist of symptoms doctors rely on to make diagnoses. People with shadows of ADHD might have constant problems with romantic relationships, for example.”
Spot on.
Psychiatry is offering the opposite:
– prevents good sleep (by medication)
– keeps you out of sunlight and from moving your body (by physical and legal restraints, medication)
– disturbs your metabolism (by medication)
– (re-)traumatizes
It seems Psychiatry is designed for creating “mental illness”.
It’s not an exaggeration. Psychiatry is exactly like you describe it.
Psychiatry is a failure. Why wait another couple of decades and hope, that psychiatry will become a “complete profession” or scientific? We don’t need psychiatry as a profession, when there is biology, neurology, neuroscience, psychology, gastroenterology,…
No question, nutrition is important. I’m sure EMPowerplus™ can help people who have Vitamin or mineral defficiencies. But there is nothing special about EMPowerplus™, besides that it’s very expensive, but has the cheapest commercially produced forms of B12 and folate, that both usually do not occur in living organisms. There are cheaper and better vitamin supplements available. I also find the marketing misleading and potentially harmful, they are not better than big pharma.
> 2- How can Open Dialogue assist people who have been on psych drugs for long periods of time and have been deemed “mentally ill”?
Open Dialogue was developed for first-episode psychosis. The idea is that folks are never on large cocktails of meds. Most get well without any medication, others get benzos short-term instead of neuroleptics.
I don’t know if they use the Open Dialogue approach for people who have been for a longer time in the system / on too much medication. I guess it’s not part of the Open Dialogue training how to taper off medications, but you could have an ongoing dialog about the extreme challenges of tapering off and how to organise support within the community / the social network (You still would need someone who has experience in tapering off).
Everybody praises Open Dialogue, but we tend to forget that it only exist within a psychiatric system. As far as I understand Mary Olson’s Institute for Dialogic Practice offers training for people working in a clinical setting.
What if Justina Pelletier doesn’t have mitochondrial disease? What if the treatment she was receiving, was really hurting her? From the mitoaction.org website:
– There is no reliable and consistent means of diagnosis.
– Diagnosis can be made by one of the few physicians that specializes in mitochondrial disease.
and from the Boston Globe article: ‘Korson recognized that this approach made him a “lumper,” meaning he was more willing to lump patterns of symptoms together to get to a diagnosis, even if the patient did not have the classical markers associated with the illness.’
From the news I read it’s impossible to know if she has mitochondrial disease or if there was indeed something going on that could be described as “medical child abuse”.
[[Comment Removed]]
Thank you Ted for reminding us!
I just don’t have any idea where to start (here in Germany). Is there anything on the Web about the protest before 1985?
Thank you John and Michael. Good two know that there are two different editions. I wonder why the revised edition is only available as a printed book.
Does anyone know where I can download the “Manual of Gestalt Practice in the tradition of Dick Price”? It was available as a free download (“This material may be reproduced for personal, non-commercial purposes”), but I cannot find it anymore.
Great idea. We only need to convince HBO and David Simon (The Wire) 😉
there is a “message from the CEO” video on their website. the guys talks like he is some cult leader. creepy…
It might be a good thing to have access to psychological service that is paid by your health insurance, but
I don’t see why it should lower the prescriptions of antidepressants. As a clinical psychologist you most likely have to diagnose your patients to get billed(?).
Most psychologist don’t take clients who show “symptoms” of a “psychiatric disorder”. They learned it’s a biological thing with the brain, they send the client to a psychiatrist.
In which way are clinical psychologist better educated than psychiatrists or a non-clinical psychologist? I would say regardless of profession 80% of them do more harm than good. They just so preoccupied with all the concepts, theories and diagnoses, they just don’t get it what it is that people need.
Maybe it is a revolution for the Belgian Federation of Psychologists, but it won’t change anything about the influence of psychiatry.
Thanks for the link. Do I need medication, when I feel depressed and a little bit paranoid, after reading this article? 😉
> I don’t know how we get there from here. I don’t know if this high tech fascism can be rolled back anytime soon without millions of people worldwide involved.
I think it’s time to study the books of Gene Sharp and others about nonviolent action. It will take a couple of decades and millions of people, but it can be done!
What are the cures for apnea that help most people?
I didn’t say that one shouldn’t get a test for apnea and I don’t think that vitamin D is the magic bullet to cure apnea. But as depression and anxiety can be caused by apnea, sleep apnea might be the symptom of something else.
I had nocturnal panic attacks and some general anxiety. Thought it was psychological, went to psychotherapy, didn’t help at all. When I tried a gluten-free diet, they were gone after a few days and never came back (didn’t expect that). Did I have undiagnosed sleep apnea? Maybe. Was the anxiety caused by something else? I don’t know. But I’m glad that nobody suggested any psychiatric medication.
If there is no trust and empathy between the shrink and you, why are you still having appointments? sounds like a waste of time.
And if you have a sleep issue like apnoea, there are kinds of things you should look into, e.g. Vitamin D deficiency, gluten sensitivity,…
“Is it time to decriminalize human emotions?”
Hello N.I.,
I also find the personal stories as important as the bigger studies. Thank you for sharing…
It’s a great story and it made me laugh at the unexpected and spontaneous “remission”.
But seriously, I really don’t see what this has to do with psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.
Avoiding eating Wheat and Gluten would make many people happier, too
So, what happened to Michael Hill after he had been arrested?
“And what about you my readers? Do you believe there are elephants and flamingos in my park? Well, if ever you come and visit I will show you that indeed there are, and I, as Denmark’s first official “Mad” psychologist, will show them to you!”
One more reason to come to Copenhagen. Next year I’m going to ride on my bicycle the 555 km to the north in 5 days to see elephants and flamingos. It’s a crazy idea I just made up, but this doesn’t mean I will not do it.
“Violence” against the American flag (a vending machine,…) justifies violence against people? Sorry, but that’s the same stupid logic psychiatry uses.
I guess we have different definitions of violence and non-violence.
Ron, do you know if the talks will be taped and uploaded to the internet? It is just to far away from Europe to attend … 🙂
I don’t know how much of the shrinkage can be reversed, I don’t know any study that looked at that. From the macaque monkey study we know that the shrinkage is caused by the loss of glia cells.
“Therefore, in the present study, antipsychotic exposure could have impaired the production of oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, or microglia in the face of ongoing elimination, thereby reducing glial
cell number.”
It’s quite possible that the shrinkage can be reversed, but we still don’t know if the lower glia cell count is the main damage done to the brain.
So what can you do to support your brain? I don’t know, but some ideas:
– Taper off slowly
– Exercise a little bit (30 minute walks are fine)
– Don’t sit for an extended period of time, walk around more often
– Move your body in novel ways (sport, learning an instrument, yoga, feldenkrais, …)
– Stop eating wheat
– Check your Vitamin B12 and D levels
– mindfulness meditation
Hey Ron, this is a very important study. Do you know if this study is published as a paper?
John, I’m sure trauma plays an important role. So many service users talked to me about trauma, even when we know each other for a couple of minutes. Often they don’t talk about the trauma directly, but most of the time I find it obvious that they haven’t (fully) recovered from the traumatic experience from the past. I never had the impression that this is stuff they just invented because of their “mental illness”.
Ron, very inspiring post.
Don’t miss the opportunity to click the “Was this review helpful to you?” Yes / No button.
I fasted every couple of years and most of the time I felt really energized, calm and happy. When I went on a gluten-free diet a year ago I felt quite similar. My theory is, that the main cause of the mood change was not the fasting itself (not eating any food), but not eating any gluten containing food.
I believe optimizing nutrition can help much more than any psychiatric drug.
»No longer do we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts — rather we are there to realign our patients’ neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter — whatever its configuration«
I agree. It’s sad, that one can get the impression that trauma is some mysterious thing (and we better don’t talk about the experiences) and the best treatment are psychiatric drugs after you’ve got your diagnose.
The truth is, there is more than enough knowledge about trauma and recovery to offer much better “treatments” than psychiatry can provide. Every treatment that ignores relationships is bogus (like psychological trauma is some abstract thing that can exist separately from relationships).
| 1. Why on earth do we need to identify “the neurobiological
| substrates that are affected by adverse experiences in early
| life” in order to be able to develop effective help for trauma
| survivors, unless the “help” we have in mind is of the chemical
| kind?
I’m sure that is exactly what Nemeroff had in mind, but this doesn’t mean research of the neurobiology of trauma is useless or harmful per se. There is nothing wrong in knowing how trauma influences neurobiology. I don’t understand why you think it’s only relevant in search for a “chemical cure”?
I’m not sure if I’m missing something as English is my second language, but I don’t see that there is anything wrong with “The Neurobiology of Child Abuse” and nothing wrong about discussing “Treatment Implications”. I certainly doubt that Nemeroff has anything useful to say about treatment implication besides that you have to treat it with all kinds of psychiatric drugs. Has anyone read that paper?
The Ancel Keys who invented the low-fat-diet/saturated-fat-kills mess? The guy who is jointly responsible for the unhealthy food we eat today (high in poly unsaturated omega-6 fatty acids)?
These are disturbing numbers. Is there any statistics that shows the causes of death? How many accidents? How many suicides? How many deaths due to the non-psychological side effects of the medication?
“I believe reports of the death of psychiatry are exaggerated”
Didn’t he know that Steve Jobs said “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” in 2008. I don’t believe Psychiatry will be dead within three years, but I’m not sure it was a wise decision to use this phrase.
“Twenty years from now, I think we’re going to look back on a lot of this diagnostic stuff and say, “That was garbage.” So as I see it, we have a choice. We can wait twenty years and several more editions of the DSM before we start to clean up this mess. Or we can take advantage of the technological resources that are beginning to become available and start phase three right now.”
Wow! Thank you for all the great comments on the Scientific America blog.
“He points out that there is no discrete genetic variation known to cause depression. Rather, there is genetic overlap across a range of mental illness, including depressive disorder, autism and schizophrenia.”
and every other condition that exists or doesn’t.
A culture-specific syndrome is characterized by:
1. categorization as a disease in the culture (i.e., not a voluntary behaviour or false claim)
2. widespread familiarity in the culture
3. complete lack of familiarity of the condition to people in other cultures
4. no objectively demonstrable biochemical or tissue abnormalities (symptoms)
5. the condition is usually recognized and treated by the folk medicine of the culture.
welcome to the Schizophrenia Test and Early Psychosis Indicator (STEPI, Version 2011.1) for Prodromal Syndromes and Psychosis
This screening test consists of 17 questions about experiences that you may have in your daily life. For the most accurate results, you must be entirely honest in your response to all 17 questions in this test.
1. I have trouble speaking the words I want to say, or I am able to speak but other people have told me that what I say is incoherent.
2. I see or hear things that other people cannot see or hear.
…
4. I sometimes have trouble distinguishing whether something I experience or perceive may be real or may only be part of my imagination or my dreams.
…
8. I believe that someone may be planning to cause me harm, or may be about to cause me harm in the near future.
9. I believe I have special or supernatural gifts beyond my natural talents.
10. I sometimes feel completely unresponsive emotionally, as if I don’t feel anything.
…
13. I think I may be able to predict what will happen in the future.
Delusions: check
Disorganized speech: check
Social or occupational dysfunction: check
Significant duration. Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months: check
Please Jeffrey, take your meds.
Characteristic symptoms: Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a one-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).
Delusions
Hallucinations
Disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder
Grossly disorganized behavior (e.g. dressing inappropriately, crying frequently) or catatonic behavior
Negative symptoms: Blunted affect (lack or decline in emotional response), alogia (lack or decline in speech), or avolition (lack or decline in motivation)
If the delusions are judged to be bizarre, or hallucinations consist of hearing one voice participating in a running commentary of the patient’s actions or of hearing two or more voices conversing with each other, only that symptom is required above. The speech disorganization criterion is only met if it is severe enough to substantially impair communication.
Social or occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.
Significant duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).
Jacqui, I’ve started reading Trauma and Recovery from Judith Herman, the book that you mentioned in your talk at the Family Care Foundation conference. This book is so much more relevant than all the DSMs and all psychiatric drugs combined.
foodforthebrain.org is bullshit. they claim they have a solution for your disease / disorder (!), but in fact they have no clue what they are talking about (serotonin and depression, bla bla).
If Anonymous were behind the attack, this site would be down or defaced. I haven’t read the logs, but I would assume some stupid bots that are out there to attack wordpress sites automatically.
I guess it’s all part of Insel’s strategy. The damage has been done, that is all what was important to him (to gain power). Now he can pretend to be the nice guy again (to the APA). It’s FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
And I thought madinamerica.com is attacking my browser. Seriously, having several MIA tabs open sucked up a lot of resources from Firefox (and often the page didn’t finished loading, even it was rendered just fine). I think this behaviour stopped last week or the week before.
😉
Great documentary. The background music is useless and quite awful (I’m sick of iPhone ad style forever repeating muzak loops).
true!
I’m looking forward to it 🙂
thank you, that this was your last post.
[[This post did not contribute to civil conversation]]
Get real guys. People who have a psychiatric diagnose most likely get a prescription for one or multiple psychotropic drugs. You really want allow people that are under the influence of mind altering drugs (that may even cause suicidal or homicidal thoughts and actions) to bear arms?
Hermes, thank you for reminding us, that it’s not all about transmitters and receptors, but also about neural connections. Maybe these neural networks can be retrained and the important pathways strengthened quite fast, I don’t know. But these behavioural changes you describe would also mean that the person might miss important experiences of life in that time. It’s hard to imagine for me taking any 10 years of my life and replace them with 10 years of experiences under the influence of neuroleptic drugs. I think I would be quite a different person now.
Hi Rossa, it’s very complex indeed. If there is an illness that causes the psychotic symptoms, than it’s quite possible that the symptoms return, after tapered off the drug that suppressed the symptoms (on the other hands there are people who had a psychological crisis that was caused by social circumstances, who where put an psychiatric medication and they were ill just because of the medication and become well after withdrawal).
I have no medical education, but there is more and more evidence, that the immune system and autoimmune responses play a role in mental disorders. I never had any psychotic experience, but after I went on a gluten-free diet my anxiety dropped to a normal level and nightly panic attacks just disappeared.
Many of the non-neuroleptic (experimental) treatments are linked to the immune system:
Omega-3 supplements (reduction of omega-6 in the diet)
Probiotics
Vitamin B12 / Folate
Vitamin D
NAC
Gluten-free / casein-free diet
Mindfulness based stress reduction / yoga
Omega-3s are good, but it’s also important to lower omega-6 intake. The amount of omega-6s in the normal diet is inflammatory. Better to replace oil high in PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids) with oil high in in monounsaturated fats or saturated fats. Especially avoid sunflower, soy and corn oil.
Jonah, thanks for the link to the NZ Herald article. Very interesting.
It’s about an experiment with fruit flies, where they stress the flies with an air puff and look how long it takes the flies to calm down. Then they found a fly that took much longer to calm down than the other flies. They found a mutation on a gene that encodes the dopamine receptor.
If I understand it correctly it means, that if you block the dopamine receptors, it is very likely that you get some (at least very mild) form of akathisia. Worst case scenario: The psychotic symptoms don’t go away with the neuroleptics and they make you constantly stressed (not calm / hyperaroused / fight or flight state), which makes it even harder to cope with the psychotic experiences.very
Now there is also the theory that hyperarousal plays a role in the development of psychosis.
Which doesn’t mean that neuroleptics don’t work for some people, but I find it plausible that they could be psychological very harmful for some others.
Rossa, you’ve made a good point. I’m not against drugs per se, I just think that they are overprescribed and polytherapy is much too common and often harmful.
Hello Sandra,
great post. Just some additional points I find important:
– It is thought that delaying treatment with neuroleptics is harmful. As far as I know there is no proof this assumption.
– It is still argued that loss of brain tissue over the years is mainly caused by the illness, but we know that antipsychotic treatment is associated with brain tissue loss.
– Side effects of neuroleptic drugs are often battled with additional drugs, which can be harmful too.
– Patients should always be tested for B12 and vitamin D deficiencies. They should also be tested for gluten and casein sensitivity.
do we really need this psychetruth bullshit on the mad in america website?
“by 2007, youth with ADHD accounted for 50 percent of total antipsychotic use; 1 in 7 antipsychotic users were youth with ADHD as their only diagnosis.”
these numbers confuse me
Good article, but you’re missing the biological causes that are linked to mental illness: chronic inflammation and glutathione depletion.
Steve McCrea as moderator like in polyphony? Seriously?!
I feel “Power Threat Meaning Framework” is not a very good name.
It seems it is not released yet, I guess we have to wait a couple of hours or days. The PDF on the BPS website contain only one page (the cover), so I cannot tell what I think about the content. I’m between very excited and skeptical.
https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/introducing-power-threat-meaning-framework
https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/introducing-power-threat-meaning-framework
“We psychiatrists were once soul teachers”
Please, elobarate. Did I miss something when reading about the history of psychiatry?
“Our members have a wide range of perspectives.”
Does this still include members of the CCHR?
https://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/response-end-rethinking-psychiatry/
Ask people from different cultures and you’ll get even more variety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constructed_emotion
Could you elaborate?
He saw Donald Trump’s tweets and had an epiphany.
Scary description of a psychotherapy cult. I’m glad you listened to your own wisdom, did the research and wrote this article.
DOA
“Finally, unlike DSM–5, the HiTOP project adheres to the most up to date scientific evidence, rather than relying on expert opinion. HiTOP effectively summarizes information on shared genetic vulnerabilities, environmental risk factors, and neurobiological abnormalities. For example, it is becoming increasingly clear that genetic risk factors do not adhere to diagnostic categories, instead genetic research identifies broad genetic risk factors that cut across diagnoses and largely line-up with the HiTOP dimensions.”
bio-bio-bio “medical” model of psychiatry got replaced by bio-bio-bio “medical” model of (g)astro(entero)logy?
Transcendental Meditation™ (yes, it’s a trademark)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuHfOVxVATM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQpNOWDmF1M
Great article, I agree that psychiatry is really a hard target.
But we have to ask ourself: how tribal are we? Are we maybe capital-S Skeptics, too? From our point of view, is psychiatry a hard target or a soft target?
“So I’m a skeptic, but with a small S, not capital S. I don’t belong to skeptical societies. I don’t hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists.
When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.”
Maybe promoting was the wrong word, English is a foreign language? Should I say praising EMPowerplus? Or recommending? Or how should I describe it to not get moderated?
No question nutrition and mental health are linked, but promoting a company like truehope ist harmful. If Kaplan and Rucklidge were serious scientists they would do research without promoting this one product and company. This is just advertisment for a very expensive multi-vitamin that claims it is THE wonder supplement for all popular psychiatric diagnoses.
I couldn’t find any double-blind trial.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marvin-ross/health-canada-empowerplus_b_1811203.html
http://healthwatcher.net/Quackerywatch/Synergy/News/mdc0401evenson.html
His name is Tom Andersen not AndersOn.
“It is easy to sit here and say how I would have voted. But in truth I don’t know.”
So you would possibly vote for murdering a human being?
The former resident Michael McEvoy thought he was killing a dragon. Why did this happen?
http://www.adn.com/article/20131101/schizophrenic-sentenced-60-years-clinic-murder
It’s staggering how disconnected from the most basic human traits these professionals are.
“Feeling Others’ Pain: Transforming Empathy into Compassion”
https://www.cogneurosociety.org/empathy_pain/
Sometime I have the impression psychologist know nothing about the mind.
This is the correct link for The Catastrophe (The New Yorker, April 27, 2015)
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-catastrophe-oliver-sacks
Thank you Jill, that is the science and information that is helpful.
As far as I understand it RC is not affiliated with Scientology, but is borrowing ideas from Dianetics. RC is criticized as cult or cult-like. Does anyone know more about RC?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-evaluation_Counseling#Criticism
symptoms of so called “mental illness” can be related to the gut flora, a leaky gut, inflammation, autoimmune reactions, food sensitivities, micronutrient deficiencies, etc.
fasting, for a short or long period, could have a small or big, positive or negative impact. so can changing your diet (for example getting rid of gluten containing grains, milk, eggs, …)
These are not real alternatives, but unscientific bullshit, that could be harmful too (because it is not working). A link to the website of Paula Curtis, a member of the Wholeness Center team (just one example):
http://www.innerbalance-healing.com/
“Energy work can be directed anywhere on the planet. How cool is that? Places and animals absorb energy just like we do. Paula can clear and balance the energy in your pets, home, office, or land. It’s especially helpful to cleanse the energy during times of transition.”
This not healing, this is delusional.
Why is they recommend suspension for Quetiapine for some countries (Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal,…), but not for others?
Did I understand Julia Rucklidge right, that she is a proponent of a disease model and doesn’t criticize diagnoses at all (“recover from schizophrenia”).
this talk makes me shiver…
http://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/
I think it’s interesting, but it really depends what kind of interventions they are looking for and which they will implement in the future.
I understand it exactly like you. It’s a very interesting finding and I wonder how it can be explained.
I agree Joe. Regular reading Mad in America might one give the impression that a revolution is underway, but when I look what’s happening in my city I don’t see a revolution happening anytime soon. Quite the opposite, the medical model seems stronger than ever. But that is only my interpretation and I could be completely wrong. So yeah, where is the evidence?
http://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2014/07/28/simon-says-happiness-wont-cure-mental-illness/#comment-1509039161
“point of return website” not “point of no return”
Thanks elocin for that information. I went to the point of no return website and looked what they have too offer. The supplements are overly expensive and the amounts of vitamins are so low, that it’s quite unlikely you will experience any improvement (although they will not have any negative effects, if your not allergic to milk).
“The mindfulness-based psychoeducation group reported significantly greater improvements in […] insight into illness/treatment”
What does that mean?
Daniel, your comment about PTSD is my favourite. You wouldn’t call backpain a backpain disorder or overweight an overweight disorder.
BTW, thanks for putting your documentaries on youtube.
»A devoted Christian, faithful to his friends, his family and his God.«
»“I’ve decided I want to be an atheist,” he announced to his parents one day after school, explaining he was so disillusioned by friends who weren’t living out their faith that he wanted to wash his hands of Christianity. He even began looking at secular colleges to attend instead of the Christian schools he’d been leaning toward.
That dramatic episode of Greg’s life lasted about three months before he reverted to his old self, but it raised the first red flag hinting at his mental illness.«
Seriously? Trying to become an atheist is a hint for mental illness?
Really, we already have enough anti-stigma stigmatization campaigns founded by mental health “professionals” (in this case psychiatrist, psychoanalyst). Diagnosing people with bogus mental illnesses and doing so called anti-stigmatization campaigns are two sides of the same coin.
I’m not sure what the message of the film is. Mental illness exist, diagnosis might be valid, but stigma is bad?
Could the right-wing Christians / tea party movement please stop abusing Justina Pelletier for their propaganda.
“The Pelletiers are solid, community people; Catholic Church members, with strong family ties and core American values. Justina’s father has made a career in senior investments, and Lou and Linda have given their daughter Justina the kind of home every little girl dreams of, with her own room, a pool, and pets. Justina Pelletier really loves to play with her dogs.”
How do you know how Justina feels about her parents?
Hallo Ute,
wonderful comment, so true. If you like to get in contact, you can write me an email:
http://pipnee.com/P5F50FA63
I’m also very interested in the Open Dialogue approach, other forms of Dialogue and Restorative Circles and would be happy to get connected to people in Germany and Europe that share this interest.
“I can assure you, my daughter’s psychotic manic episodes were in no way meaningful nor were they caused by trauma.”
[…]
“I absolutely 100% believe the medical/genetic/biological basis for her mental illness.”
[…]
“Nobody will ever convince me that the meds do anything but help her.”
Kate, let’s stick to facts:
Your daughters condition most likely will get worse over the years, because of the medication. It might even kill or reduce her life expectancy by 25 years. And you are responsible by convincing your daughter and yourself she has a “mental illness”, it’s only medical/genetic/biological, insisting that she never had traumatizing experiences in her life.
If there really are no psychological and social reason for her “mental illness”, than find out what causes it. Check for food intolerances, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, other reasons that causes inflammation and autoimmune reactions.
But to be honest: I think it’s just the easiest way for you to handle the situation. It’s a medical problem, nobody is responsible, you just have to take the drugs, there are no alternatives. It also takes away your fears that your daughter will kill herself intentionally or accidentally.
I think this is a very good summary of the little information we have:
http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2014/03/the-case-of-justina-pelletier-calls-for.html
http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2014/03/justina-pelletier-to-remain-in.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dershowitz#Views_on_torture
Thank you, too. I didn’t know van Dusen and Swedenborg. Interesting read.
I just quoted Wikipedia. If you want to create a gun fight out of it, …
…, but quoting gurus like Gabriel Cousens would not convince me.
I think the transmethylation hypothesis is interesting, especially as there is recent research that links chronic fatigue and autism to methylation.
http://www.academia.edu/2914984/The_Transmethylation_Hypothesis
http://www.maps.org/psychedelicreview/n11/n11063dus.pdf
from wikipedia:
“Despite the apparent face validity of Hoffer’s “transmethylation hypothesis” (in which it was thought that the production of catecholamines could sometimes go awry and produce a hallucinogenic neurotoxin), it was ultimately rejected for two reasons: the alleged neurotoxins were never identified and the cause of schizophrenia became attributed to dysfunctions in neurotransmitters.”
For some people avoiding some foods makes a much bigger difference than supplements.
If you use fish oil, you should limit the omega-6 intake first (it’s inflammatory).
Don’t eat gluten, especially wheat gluten. Reduce cow milk products. They both have inflammatory and psychoactive properties (gluten exorphins, gliadorphin, casomorphines are opioid-like peptides).
And then you can also try a super-cheap prebiotic supplement: raw potato starch.
fox news is hard to watch… they drive me nuts…
Thank you Rossa! Wonderful post.
It also does not mean that the social oppression by psychiatry are in any way beneficial.
Good points. I think there is lots of evidence, that “early-life psychosocial adversities” have an effect on brain development. That doesn’t mean you have a psychiatric disorder that has to be treated with psychoactive drugs.
🙂
As someone who is not used to this kind of advertisement, I’m always baffled that it has some positive effect for the drug companies (patients asking for it, increased subscriptions).
In my country (as in all other countries with the exception of the US and New Zealand) direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is forbidden. There is also no advertising of non-prescription drugs for sleep, mood and psychological disorders.
Paula, is there a PDF of your paper available? I don’t have a Mac.
I comment to each paragraph
1) Sounds like an advertisement for EMPowerplus again.
2) I agree. It seems that many of the “psychiatric disorders” defined by the DSM have some connection to trauma, stress, social relationships, nutrition (intolerance and deficiencies), gut microbiome and the immune system (inflammation, autoimmunity). I can understand that psychiatry distinguish between depression and psychosis, because they only want treat the symptoms with some psychoactive drugs. If you are looking for the cause of the symptoms, the psychiatric diagnoses are not very helpful anymore.
3) We already know that Vitamin D and B12 and folate could be helpful. Which new knowledge do you generate by a study with a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement?
4) I didn’t mean you shouldn’t do studies about vitamin / mineral supplements for mental health. But if I were at your position I would stay away from a company which such horrible marketing.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/wonder-drug-inspires-deep-unwavering-love-of-pharm,1912/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/73-percent-of-us-livestock-show-signs-of-clinical,1195/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/more-us-children-being-diagnosed-with-youthful-ten,248/
you might know this already: what’s also important is to keep the intake of Omega-6 fatty acids low.
maybe a EPA deficiency isn’t the cause of your depression? have you tried a multivitamin supplement?
I agree, Trollo. This study is already used by Truehope for marketing (it is featured on their start page). 18 from 22 studies linked on their Research page are from Rucklidge and/or Kaplan.
The biggest problem with EMP+ is the aggressive marketing: “Can EMPowerplus™ Cure ADHD & Depression?”. If I were a professor I would do everything to not get associated with this company.
They also claim that it works for “severe schizophrenia”:
http://youtu.be/CneVcqGiHnU?t=8m46s
You don’t even need a official diagnose by a psychiatrist for stigma. Everybody “knows” what depression, mania or psychosis looks like and that it is caused by chemical imbalance in the brain, so people are often diagnosed and stigmatized by others even before their first contact with psychiatry.
The foundation of psychiatry is discrimination.
It is a cheaply produced and overpriced mutli-formula, nothing special at all. You can get better ingredients much cheaper.
Just for fun: cyanocobalamin contains cyanide and is not a natural form of B12.
Because!
As someone who worked over a year in a kindergarten, I would say that children who don’t qualify as hyperactive/impulsive by the ADHD symptom checklist are more likely to have some psychological troubles than the kids who are.
Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is _expected_?
Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is _inappropriate_?
Often unable to play or engage in leisure activities _quietly_?
Since when is this natural behaviour?
“It is as if the individuals who wrote these symptoms have never been around kids before. It’s as if they don’t like kids…”
I couldn’t agree more.
Why are you asking?
Is MiA an advertisment forum for overpriced micronutrient formulas?
> And the one-size-approach to open dialogue (or
> any other talk therapy approach) is not going to
> get this done.
>
> There are folks out there with *real* physical
> conditions who need care… not just talk.”
My understanding of Open Dialogue is that it is not restricted to talk therapy. It’s about figuring out together which support is most helpful and not jumping to premature conclusion. If there were the assumption that a real physical condition could be a cause of the emotional distress, there would be support in finding the right physician. (That is how I imagine Open Dialogue)
“Records: Father attacked son months before killing teen in Essex”
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20131227/NEWS02/312270041/
Reading that makes me even more angry. Even if she had some (so called) “mental health issues”, I feel this would be a normal reaction to the violent and traumatic experiences she had. Everyone should have the right to go through (so called) “mental health issues” without being hospitalized and drugged.
ReDiscover Adult and Family Services Manager Jean Schweer said, “Start by writing down a concise description of your child’s symptoms. Make a prioritized list of all your health-related concerns, from worrisome thoughts to physical aches and pains to weight loss to erratic behavior. Preparing this kind of information ahead of an appointment leaves more time during the appointment for a focused discussion, answers to your questions, and for the kind of assessment needed to eventually make a diagnosis and build a treatment plan.”
…
Help is available. You can learn to manage symptoms of mental illness and find ways to participate in a network of support. ReDiscover offers services for individuals and their families learning to cope with serious chronic illnesses.
“What treatment is available?
ReDiscover, and other community mental health agencies, provide services to help people with depression. There are a variety of antidepressant medications that can be used to treat depressive disorders, but care can typically include combined treatment of medication and psychotherapy.”
> So I’m baffled by Oli’s need to compare it to a cult.
I don’t have a need to compare it to a cult. I just spotted communication patterns that I know from cults or other cult-like organizations, e.g. the Mormon Church and non-religious organizations that look harmless from the outside
http://www.grinbergmethod-germany.com/personal/en_recovery.php
And what can we find on their website:
“Does it work for everyone?
No, but the best way to find out if it works for you, and for what you want, is to try it out. You are more than welcome to do so.”
Link to the four-part series in The New Yorker (1981)
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1981-05-25#folio=048
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1981-06-01#folio=052
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1981-06-08#folio=050
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1981-06-15#folio=046
Postscript (1995)
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1995-02-20#folio=200
“Science Oh Science ! WHAT CRIMES ARE COMMiTTED IN THY NAME !”
True! Let’s be clear. I’m critical of acupuncture, but when it comes to psychiatry I’m more than critical. It is organized crime, science gone wrong and delusional thinking.
I don’t think the idea of reforming psychiatry makes any sense. It’s like reforming fascism.
“Uninformed skepticism hurts patients.”
Please enlighten me. I’m still waiting for a comment that explains how acupuncture works (besides the effects of placebo and ritual).
“A well trained TCM doctor should be able guess your list of symptoms without you telling them first.”
Next topic: cold reading
“So you are free to confront your own biases, and trial TCM treatment to see if it works for you”
This is the same strategy cults use. The E-Meter [1] used by Scientology is also a harmless device. Why not just try Dianetics auditing “to see if it works for you. And then simply choose to stop if not satisfied. So what do you have to lose?”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-meter
I just started to think about the implications of a black box / closed source questionnaire and write a comment, but Neuroskeptic covered it all in part 2 :).
Is Kupfer talking in this video about their future assessment apps or about something else?
http://youtu.be/lhFjHm19hTY?t=28m20s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gb-KEOHEJQ
very convincing…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture#Middle_history
Placebo studies and ritual theory: a comparative analysis of Navajo, acupuncture and biomedical healing
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130398/
Brett, thanks for comments that are pushing the discussion forward.
“Maybe we’re both right? If so, perhaps the question is how to think about a pseudoscientific, helpful placebo treatment? This is the question I posed initially, because how we answer this question has profound implications for many mental health treatments.”
Is it better to get a harmless instead of a harmful placebo treatment? Maybe. But I have concerns when people are encouraged to make treatment decisions based on false or incomplete information.
I have no problem with acupuncture as a ritual that is helpful for some people. My assumption is that the positive effects have to do with the relationship between acupuncturist and the client, relaxing setting, being heard, hopefulness, maybe some form of mindfulness, etc.
Convincing people with unscientific claims to get an acupuncture treatment is unethical (in my opinion).
From the article you quoted:
«“Although the data indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo, the differences between true and sham acupuncture are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to therapeutic effects.”
There is no accepted mechanism for how the acupuncture works, the researchers said»
Mass media coverage of a study without a link to the study itself is not very convincing. The Guardian did a much better job in covering the study [1].
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/sep/10/acupuncture-useful-little-benefit-study
«Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, said the study “impressively and clearly” showed that the effects of acupuncture were mostly due to placebo. “The differences between the results obtained with real and sham acupuncture are small and not clinically relevant. Crucially, they are probably due to residual bias in these studies. Several investigations have shown that the verbal or non-verbal communication between the patient and the therapist is more important than the actual needling. If such factors would be accounted for, the effect of acupuncture on chronic pain might disappear completely.”
Ernst added that a potential problem with the trials in the meta-analysis was that, in all cases, the therapist knew whether he or she was administering real or sham acupuncture. “Arguably, it is next to impossible to completely keep this information from the patient. In other words, a trial is either both patient and therapist-blind, or not blind at all. Acupuncturists tend to tell us that therapist blinding is impossible, but this is clearly not true. I fear that, once we manage to eliminate this bias from acupuncture studies, we might find that the effects of acupuncture exclusively are a placebo response.”»
[1] Acupuncture for Chronic Pain – Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3658605/
“How acupuncture is healing trauma after natural disasters”
It’s getting better and better…
Bingo! [1]
“Does this make it any less valid?”
Yes, it does. We cannot just take something made up thousands of years ago, call it a philosophy (religion, believe system) and declare that science doesn’t matter for it’s validity.
Millions of people are helped by religion every day. Is this a proof that God exist (which one?)? Of course not. Does it mean it is okay to believe in science, but also deny evolution? No way!
And I sincerely believe that promoting acupuncture as one tool for emotional distress, might be very harmful in some situations. Like Steve Jobs tried to cure his cancer with alternative treatments including acupuncture [2]. I’m not implying that you promote acupuncture for serious illnesses, but your argumentation supports a mindset, that could lead to such deadly decisions.
[1] http://dilbert.com/fast/1994-02-22/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/technology/book-offers-new-details-of-jobs-cancer-fight.html?_r=0
I’m open to the possibility that sticking thin needles in the skin (ear) to induce little pain can reduce pain. I just have not found any scientific evidence for the concept of the ear’s liver and kidney points and have no reason to believe that sticking needles at these specific points somehow supports detox.
Just because it’s mostly harmless, doesn’t mean it is a good treatment. Just because people are claiming it’s working, doesn’t mean that it is. May I remind you of all the clinical trials sponsored by the pharma industry that have positive outcomes? How many people report that drug X have saved their life? Still, if we look at the meta-analysis of these trials, we see that e.g. antidepressants are only slightly better than placebo (in the short term).
I don’t see any reason to be less critical, when the acupuncture lobby designing their own (probably biased) studies to proof that acupuncture works (better than placebo). Especially as we quote the studies of the Cochrane Collaboration (Peter Gøtzsche) when it’s about psychiatric drugs, but ignore their research when we discuss alternative treatments.
I think this is harmful for the reputation of MiA in the long-term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkeNd1Ni4Uw
Let the pseudoscientist speak for himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMOA2JGdLPY
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-o-smith/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-o-smith/addiction-acupuncture_b_1665796.html
“Much of the research has shown tremendous results in a wide variety of settings.”
Really?
http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.a3115
Authors: Matias Vested Madsen, physician, Peter C Gøtzsche, director, Asbjørn Hróbjartsson, senior researcher
“Conclusions: A small analgesic effect of acupuncture was found, which seems to lack clinical relevance and cannot be clearly distinguished from bias. Whether needling at acupuncture points, or at any site, reduces pain independently of the psychological impact of the treatment ritual is unclear.”
Another video from her, where she talks about her experience with benzos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIztlvzvzlQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5k_wkIJJc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv07IiEl7fw
The quote are from his newer book “Spark: The Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain”
I’m astonished, that books like this are promoted on MiA. There not much in it besides exercise is good for your brain (which we know already), repeated over and over again embedded in psychiatric language and ideas.
Promoting this book is the most troubling part of this post. From the book:
“In 2006 he charted how various treatments influence BDNF, including all available antidepressants, as well as less common forms of treatment such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). They all boost BDNF in the hippocampus, and Duman pointed out that ECT, the most effective treatment, raises it by 250 percent.
But how is it that a blunt physical manipulation such as ECT — which sends an electrical current through the brain to induce a seizure — can work like drugs, therapy, and exercise? I think ECT provides a useful metaphor. If we look at depression as a sort of brain lock, then we can see a common thread between these approaches: They are all shocks of a sort. They send sparks flying to change the dynamic in the brain. Some parts are stuck in a constant whir, and others are locked in place. The key, I think, is to wake up the brain and the body so you can pull yourself out of the downward spiral.”
and about ADHD:
“Experts estimate that just over 4 percent of American adults — that’s thirteen million people — have ADHD, which is not to say that the remaining 96 percent of the population is completely free of attention problems. To a certain degree, everyone suffers from fleeting attention. And as I’ve mentioned, there are varying degrees of severity for many mental health disorders — shadow syndromes, which are personality traits that don’t necessarily meet the full checklist of symptoms doctors rely on to make diagnoses. People with shadows of ADHD might have constant problems with romantic relationships, for example.”
Spot on.
Psychiatry is offering the opposite:
– prevents good sleep (by medication)
– keeps you out of sunlight and from moving your body (by physical and legal restraints, medication)
– disturbs your metabolism (by medication)
– (re-)traumatizes
It seems Psychiatry is designed for creating “mental illness”.
It’s not an exaggeration. Psychiatry is exactly like you describe it.
Psychiatry is a failure. Why wait another couple of decades and hope, that psychiatry will become a “complete profession” or scientific? We don’t need psychiatry as a profession, when there is biology, neurology, neuroscience, psychology, gastroenterology,…
No question, nutrition is important. I’m sure EMPowerplus™ can help people who have Vitamin or mineral defficiencies. But there is nothing special about EMPowerplus™, besides that it’s very expensive, but has the cheapest commercially produced forms of B12 and folate, that both usually do not occur in living organisms. There are cheaper and better vitamin supplements available. I also find the marketing misleading and potentially harmful, they are not better than big pharma.
http://chriskresser.com/folate-vs-folic-acid
http://chriskresser.com/what-everyone-especially-vegetarians-should-know-about-b12-deficiency
http://neurocritic.blogspot.de/2012/07/empowered-to-kill.html
> 2- How can Open Dialogue assist people who have been on psych drugs for long periods of time and have been deemed “mentally ill”?
Open Dialogue was developed for first-episode psychosis. The idea is that folks are never on large cocktails of meds. Most get well without any medication, others get benzos short-term instead of neuroleptics.
I don’t know if they use the Open Dialogue approach for people who have been for a longer time in the system / on too much medication. I guess it’s not part of the Open Dialogue training how to taper off medications, but you could have an ongoing dialog about the extreme challenges of tapering off and how to organise support within the community / the social network (You still would need someone who has experience in tapering off).
Everybody praises Open Dialogue, but we tend to forget that it only exist within a psychiatric system. As far as I understand Mary Olson’s Institute for Dialogic Practice offers training for people working in a clinical setting.
http://www.dialogicpractice.net/training/
Open Dialogue needs to be liberated and independent from psychiatry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/health/adhd-experts-re-evaluate-studys-zeal-for-drugs.html?_r=0
the link is missing…
This Dr. Keith Ablow?
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/12/30/erasing-unwanted-memories-may-now-be-possible/
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/12/11/gene-test-can-help-recommend-best-psychiatric-medications-for-patients/
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/429827/october-21-2013/end-of-the-government-shutdown
(Minute 2:00)
What if Justina Pelletier doesn’t have mitochondrial disease? What if the treatment she was receiving, was really hurting her? From the mitoaction.org website:
– There is no reliable and consistent means of diagnosis.
– Diagnosis can be made by one of the few physicians that specializes in mitochondrial disease.
and from the Boston Globe article: ‘Korson recognized that this approach made him a “lumper,” meaning he was more willing to lump patterns of symptoms together to get to a diagnosis, even if the patient did not have the classical markers associated with the illness.’
From the news I read it’s impossible to know if she has mitochondrial disease or if there was indeed something going on that could be described as “medical child abuse”.
Thank you Ted for reminding us!
I just don’t have any idea where to start (here in Germany). Is there anything on the Web about the protest before 1985?
Thank you John and Michael. Good two know that there are two different editions. I wonder why the revised edition is only available as a printed book.
Does anyone know where I can download the “Manual of Gestalt Practice in the tradition of Dick Price”? It was available as a free download (“This material may be reproduced for personal, non-commercial purposes”), but I cannot find it anymore.
Great idea. We only need to convince HBO and David Simon (The Wire) 😉
there is a “message from the CEO” video on their website. the guys talks like he is some cult leader. creepy…
http://www.esalen.org/page/dick-price-interview
It might be a good thing to have access to psychological service that is paid by your health insurance, but
I don’t see why it should lower the prescriptions of antidepressants. As a clinical psychologist you most likely have to diagnose your patients to get billed(?).
Most psychologist don’t take clients who show “symptoms” of a “psychiatric disorder”. They learned it’s a biological thing with the brain, they send the client to a psychiatrist.
In which way are clinical psychologist better educated than psychiatrists or a non-clinical psychologist? I would say regardless of profession 80% of them do more harm than good. They just so preoccupied with all the concepts, theories and diagnoses, they just don’t get it what it is that people need.
Maybe it is a revolution for the Belgian Federation of Psychologists, but it won’t change anything about the influence of psychiatry.
Thanks for the link. Do I need medication, when I feel depressed and a little bit paranoid, after reading this article? 😉
> I don’t know how we get there from here. I don’t know if this high tech fascism can be rolled back anytime soon without millions of people worldwide involved.
I think it’s time to study the books of Gene Sharp and others about nonviolent action. It will take a couple of decades and millions of people, but it can be done!
http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/
The correct address is http://www.emotional-cpr.org
What are the cures for apnea that help most people?
I didn’t say that one shouldn’t get a test for apnea and I don’t think that vitamin D is the magic bullet to cure apnea. But as depression and anxiety can be caused by apnea, sleep apnea might be the symptom of something else.
I had nocturnal panic attacks and some general anxiety. Thought it was psychological, went to psychotherapy, didn’t help at all. When I tried a gluten-free diet, they were gone after a few days and never came back (didn’t expect that). Did I have undiagnosed sleep apnea? Maybe. Was the anxiety caused by something else? I don’t know. But I’m glad that nobody suggested any psychiatric medication.
If there is no trust and empathy between the shrink and you, why are you still having appointments? sounds like a waste of time.
And if you have a sleep issue like apnoea, there are kinds of things you should look into, e.g. Vitamin D deficiency, gluten sensitivity,…
“Is it time to decriminalize human emotions?”
Hello N.I.,
I also find the personal stories as important as the bigger studies. Thank you for sharing…
It’s a great story and it made me laugh at the unexpected and spontaneous “remission”.
But seriously, I really don’t see what this has to do with psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.
Avoiding eating Wheat and Gluten would make many people happier, too
So, what happened to Michael Hill after he had been arrested?
with a bike like this 🙂
http://ddr-fahrradwiki.de/images/e/ee/Modell_510_1983.jpg
“And what about you my readers? Do you believe there are elephants and flamingos in my park? Well, if ever you come and visit I will show you that indeed there are, and I, as Denmark’s first official “Mad” psychologist, will show them to you!”
One more reason to come to Copenhagen. Next year I’m going to ride on my bicycle the 555 km to the north in 5 days to see elephants and flamingos. It’s a crazy idea I just made up, but this doesn’t mean I will not do it.
“Violence” against the American flag (a vending machine,…) justifies violence against people? Sorry, but that’s the same stupid logic psychiatry uses.
I guess we have different definitions of violence and non-violence.
Ron, do you know if the talks will be taped and uploaded to the internet? It is just to far away from Europe to attend … 🙂
I don’t know how much of the shrinkage can be reversed, I don’t know any study that looked at that. From the macaque monkey study we know that the shrinkage is caused by the loss of glia cells.
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v32/n6/pdf/1301233a.pdf
“Therefore, in the present study, antipsychotic exposure could have impaired the production of oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, or microglia in the face of ongoing elimination, thereby reducing glial
cell number.”
It’s quite possible that the shrinkage can be reversed, but we still don’t know if the lower glia cell count is the main damage done to the brain.
So what can you do to support your brain? I don’t know, but some ideas:
– Taper off slowly
– Exercise a little bit (30 minute walks are fine)
– Don’t sit for an extended period of time, walk around more often
– Move your body in novel ways (sport, learning an instrument, yoga, feldenkrais, …)
– Stop eating wheat
– Check your Vitamin B12 and D levels
– mindfulness meditation
Hey Ron, this is a very important study. Do you know if this study is published as a paper?
John, I’m sure trauma plays an important role. So many service users talked to me about trauma, even when we know each other for a couple of minutes. Often they don’t talk about the trauma directly, but most of the time I find it obvious that they haven’t (fully) recovered from the traumatic experience from the past. I never had the impression that this is stuff they just invented because of their “mental illness”.
Ron, very inspiring post.
Don’t miss the opportunity to click the “Was this review helpful to you?” Yes / No button.
I fasted every couple of years and most of the time I felt really energized, calm and happy. When I went on a gluten-free diet a year ago I felt quite similar. My theory is, that the main cause of the mood change was not the fasting itself (not eating any food), but not eating any gluten containing food.
I believe optimizing nutrition can help much more than any psychiatric drug.
»No longer do we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts — rather we are there to realign our patients’ neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter — whatever its configuration«
I agree. It’s sad, that one can get the impression that trauma is some mysterious thing (and we better don’t talk about the experiences) and the best treatment are psychiatric drugs after you’ve got your diagnose.
The truth is, there is more than enough knowledge about trauma and recovery to offer much better “treatments” than psychiatry can provide. Every treatment that ignores relationships is bogus (like psychological trauma is some abstract thing that can exist separately from relationships).
| 1. Why on earth do we need to identify “the neurobiological
| substrates that are affected by adverse experiences in early
| life” in order to be able to develop effective help for trauma
| survivors, unless the “help” we have in mind is of the chemical
| kind?
I’m sure that is exactly what Nemeroff had in mind, but this doesn’t mean research of the neurobiology of trauma is useless or harmful per se. There is nothing wrong in knowing how trauma influences neurobiology. I don’t understand why you think it’s only relevant in search for a “chemical cure”?
I’m not sure if I’m missing something as English is my second language, but I don’t see that there is anything wrong with “The Neurobiology of Child Abuse” and nothing wrong about discussing “Treatment Implications”. I certainly doubt that Nemeroff has anything useful to say about treatment implication besides that you have to treat it with all kinds of psychiatric drugs. Has anyone read that paper?
The Ancel Keys who invented the low-fat-diet/saturated-fat-kills mess? The guy who is jointly responsible for the unhealthy food we eat today (high in poly unsaturated omega-6 fatty acids)?
These are disturbing numbers. Is there any statistics that shows the causes of death? How many accidents? How many suicides? How many deaths due to the non-psychological side effects of the medication?
“I believe reports of the death of psychiatry are exaggerated”
Didn’t he know that Steve Jobs said “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” in 2008. I don’t believe Psychiatry will be dead within three years, but I’m not sure it was a wise decision to use this phrase.
“Twenty years from now, I think we’re going to look back on a lot of this diagnostic stuff and say, “That was garbage.” So as I see it, we have a choice. We can wait twenty years and several more editions of the DSM before we start to clean up this mess. Or we can take advantage of the technological resources that are beginning to become available and start phase three right now.”
Wow! Thank you for all the great comments on the Scientific America blog.
“He points out that there is no discrete genetic variation known to cause depression. Rather, there is genetic overlap across a range of mental illness, including depressive disorder, autism and schizophrenia.”
and every other condition that exists or doesn’t.
A culture-specific syndrome is characterized by:
1. categorization as a disease in the culture (i.e., not a voluntary behaviour or false claim)
2. widespread familiarity in the culture
3. complete lack of familiarity of the condition to people in other cultures
4. no objectively demonstrable biochemical or tissue abnormalities (symptoms)
5. the condition is usually recognized and treated by the folk medicine of the culture.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome
Jeffrey A. Lieberman,
welcome to the Schizophrenia Test and Early Psychosis Indicator (STEPI, Version 2011.1) for Prodromal Syndromes and Psychosis
This screening test consists of 17 questions about experiences that you may have in your daily life. For the most accurate results, you must be entirely honest in your response to all 17 questions in this test.
1. I have trouble speaking the words I want to say, or I am able to speak but other people have told me that what I say is incoherent.
2. I see or hear things that other people cannot see or hear.
…
4. I sometimes have trouble distinguishing whether something I experience or perceive may be real or may only be part of my imagination or my dreams.
…
8. I believe that someone may be planning to cause me harm, or may be about to cause me harm in the near future.
9. I believe I have special or supernatural gifts beyond my natural talents.
10. I sometimes feel completely unresponsive emotionally, as if I don’t feel anything.
…
13. I think I may be able to predict what will happen in the future.
Delusions: check
Disorganized speech: check
Social or occupational dysfunction: check
Significant duration. Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months: check
Please Jeffrey, take your meds.
Characteristic symptoms: Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a one-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).
Delusions
Hallucinations
Disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder
Grossly disorganized behavior (e.g. dressing inappropriately, crying frequently) or catatonic behavior
Negative symptoms: Blunted affect (lack or decline in emotional response), alogia (lack or decline in speech), or avolition (lack or decline in motivation)
If the delusions are judged to be bizarre, or hallucinations consist of hearing one voice participating in a running commentary of the patient’s actions or of hearing two or more voices conversing with each other, only that symptom is required above. The speech disorganization criterion is only met if it is severe enough to substantially impair communication.
Social or occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.
Significant duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).
Jacqui, I’ve started reading Trauma and Recovery from Judith Herman, the book that you mentioned in your talk at the Family Care Foundation conference. This book is so much more relevant than all the DSMs and all psychiatric drugs combined.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/may/12/internationaleducationnews.highereducation1
foodforthebrain.org is bullshit. they claim they have a solution for your disease / disorder (!), but in fact they have no clue what they are talking about (serotonin and depression, bla bla).
If Anonymous were behind the attack, this site would be down or defaced. I haven’t read the logs, but I would assume some stupid bots that are out there to attack wordpress sites automatically.
I guess it’s all part of Insel’s strategy. The damage has been done, that is all what was important to him (to gain power). Now he can pretend to be the nice guy again (to the APA). It’s FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
And I thought madinamerica.com is attacking my browser. Seriously, having several MIA tabs open sucked up a lot of resources from Firefox (and often the page didn’t finished loading, even it was rendered just fine). I think this behaviour stopped last week or the week before.
😉
Great documentary. The background music is useless and quite awful (I’m sick of iPhone ad style forever repeating muzak loops).
true!
I’m looking forward to it 🙂
thank you, that this was your last post.
[[This post did not contribute to civil conversation]]
Get real guys. People who have a psychiatric diagnose most likely get a prescription for one or multiple psychotropic drugs. You really want allow people that are under the influence of mind altering drugs (that may even cause suicidal or homicidal thoughts and actions) to bear arms?
Hermes, thank you for reminding us, that it’s not all about transmitters and receptors, but also about neural connections. Maybe these neural networks can be retrained and the important pathways strengthened quite fast, I don’t know. But these behavioural changes you describe would also mean that the person might miss important experiences of life in that time. It’s hard to imagine for me taking any 10 years of my life and replace them with 10 years of experiences under the influence of neuroleptic drugs. I think I would be quite a different person now.
Hi Rossa, it’s very complex indeed. If there is an illness that causes the psychotic symptoms, than it’s quite possible that the symptoms return, after tapered off the drug that suppressed the symptoms (on the other hands there are people who had a psychological crisis that was caused by social circumstances, who where put an psychiatric medication and they were ill just because of the medication and become well after withdrawal).
I have no medical education, but there is more and more evidence, that the immune system and autoimmune responses play a role in mental disorders. I never had any psychotic experience, but after I went on a gluten-free diet my anxiety dropped to a normal level and nightly panic attacks just disappeared.
Many of the non-neuroleptic (experimental) treatments are linked to the immune system:
Omega-3 supplements (reduction of omega-6 in the diet)
Probiotics
Vitamin B12 / Folate
Vitamin D
NAC
Gluten-free / casein-free diet
Mindfulness based stress reduction / yoga
Omega-3s are good, but it’s also important to lower omega-6 intake. The amount of omega-6s in the normal diet is inflammatory. Better to replace oil high in PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids) with oil high in in monounsaturated fats or saturated fats. Especially avoid sunflower, soy and corn oil.
Jonah, thanks for the link to the NZ Herald article. Very interesting.
I watched this Ted talk two days ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Bd_p8pbQI
It’s about an experiment with fruit flies, where they stress the flies with an air puff and look how long it takes the flies to calm down. Then they found a fly that took much longer to calm down than the other flies. They found a mutation on a gene that encodes the dopamine receptor.
If I understand it correctly it means, that if you block the dopamine receptors, it is very likely that you get some (at least very mild) form of akathisia. Worst case scenario: The psychotic symptoms don’t go away with the neuroleptics and they make you constantly stressed (not calm / hyperaroused / fight or flight state), which makes it even harder to cope with the psychotic experiences.very
Now there is also the theory that hyperarousal plays a role in the development of psychosis.
Which doesn’t mean that neuroleptics don’t work for some people, but I find it plausible that they could be psychological very harmful for some others.
Rossa, you’ve made a good point. I’m not against drugs per se, I just think that they are overprescribed and polytherapy is much too common and often harmful.
Hello Sandra,
great post. Just some additional points I find important:
– It is thought that delaying treatment with neuroleptics is harmful. As far as I know there is no proof this assumption.
– It is still argued that loss of brain tissue over the years is mainly caused by the illness, but we know that antipsychotic treatment is associated with brain tissue loss.
– Side effects of neuroleptic drugs are often battled with additional drugs, which can be harmful too.
– Patients should always be tested for B12 and vitamin D deficiencies. They should also be tested for gluten and casein sensitivity.
do we really need this psychetruth bullshit on the mad in america website?
“by 2007, youth with ADHD accounted for 50 percent of total antipsychotic use; 1 in 7 antipsychotic users were youth with ADHD as their only diagnosis.”
these numbers confuse me
Good article, but you’re missing the biological causes that are linked to mental illness: chronic inflammation and glutathione depletion.