Tag: psychiatric labels

The child psychiatrist talks about the importance of seeing the big picture and why parents shouldn't "be afraid if their kid is in distress."

The pandemic lockdown last year afforded me a precious gift of time to explore my creative spirit, and that, in turn, gave me a powerful way to cope.

From Reuters, "'At La Fageda, these people don’t have a label – they are totally integrated – and they start improving, reconstructing themselves without...

From Psychology Today: "Most of the initial news coverage of the ICD-11's release focused on its inclusion of a new mental disorder called gaming disorder...However, while gaming disorder...

From Bloomberg: "The counterattack against the drug has been furious, and in many instances led by women. These forces contend that one woman’s sexual abnormal...

Part of what we mean when we say something is socially constructed is that the existence of an entity, in this case a specific medical condition, partly or wholly depends on certain social attitudes, beliefs, or reactions towards that entity. In this particular case, a mental illness exists if and only if it causes certain types of distress that we get to define.

From The Washington Post: "I try not to blame people: the children and young people who have so often been blamed for their own...

In this episode of BBC Radio's Four Thought, child and adolescent psychiatrist Ann York discusses the benefits and potential pitfalls of psychiatric diagnoses and shares her...

From CounterPunch: Although people are often pathologized and shamed for feeling hopeless, hopelessness is sometimes a natural reaction to an oppressive political climate. George Carlin...

Now, personality tests are being used to determine which side of the wealth gap people will fall on. Who you are is not neutral — the lens your personality-test results will be viewed through is: “are you a good worker?” Any definition of this will likely exclude psychiatric survivors, those labeled by the DSM and those who see, think, hear, speak and feel differently.

When I heard a voice speak to me last week, I was experiencing a response to significant events — the voice was a way for my mind to intentionally contain a confusing personal event or experience. As a professional, I am grateful for the powerful reminder that hearing voices is something to embrace and support, which includes putting aside my own prejudices.

In this piece for The Guardian, Susie Orbach argues that we should not turn to the DSM to understand ourselves, but instead to the work of...

In this piece for La Otra Psiquiatría, Fernando Colina describes his vision for a compassionate, non-pathologizing mental health system. Below is the full translation of his...

I want to learn how to control my anger. But to get rid of it would be to get rid of a part of myself. It would also feel like swallowing down injustice. Such a drug probably doesn't exist, but what if there were an antidepressant that could make me stop disliking mental health professionals? The idea feels scary to me, like some kind of mind control pill.

The minute you sit down in the chair in a mental health professional's office, you’re no longer seen as a person. The mental health system is incapable of seeing past the solid wall of your current label. Their only cure is drugs. "First Do No Harm" are powerful words. It’s unfortunate they don’t apply to psychiatry.

In this blog post, Eiko Fried disputes the pervasive assumption that the most common psychiatric diagnoses are biologically based brain disorders, asserting that the...

From The British Psychological Society: A group of senior psychologists and prominent service user campaigners has published a report offering an alternative framework to understand emotional distress. "The Framework...

The problem with the DSM is that it not only pathologizes asexuality, but also pathologizes the distress asexual people feel due to marginalization and prejudice. In attributing people’s distress to their lack of sexual attraction or interest, rather than their environment, psychiatry fails to recognize oppression.

From Rabble: The regulatory body for social workers and social service workers in Ontario — the Ontario College for Social Workers and Social Service Workers — is...

In this piece for Psychology Today, Dr. Jonathan D. Raskin lists 10 facts about the current version of the International Classification of Diseases, which is...

Dr. Brian Koehler is petitioning the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization to drop the stigmatizing term "schizophrenia." Click here to sign the...

In this piece for Medium, Karen Kilbane critiques the way the foundational theories of psychology ingrain children and adolescents with self-doubt and self-criticism. "Our psychological theories...

In this interview for ABC Australia, leading psychology professor Peter Kinderman discusses why we need alternative ways of understanding and supporting people in distress that take...

This week we interview Dr Gordon Warme on the dominance of biological psychiatry and the relationship between culture and psychiatric ‘disorders’.

This week we interview psychology graduate and teacher David Mielke who has become increasingly concerned about the number of children in the education system that have a psychiatric diagnosis and are on psychiatric drugs.